Chaos plagued financial-aid process. How the government botched the rollout.
The Education Department was already more than a year behind schedule on rolling out the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Then, last October, staffers were alerted to a major oversight: The formula for determining aid didn’t account for inflation. The system had to go live in December.
But the inflation adjustment was mandated by law, and the Education Department was facing mounting criticism that students could lose out on crucial financial aid. By early December, the Education Department began planning to make the update, but work still didn’t begin in earnest for a few more weeks. The delay, which hasn’t been previously reported, exemplifies the troubled effort to overhaul the Fafsa, which serves as a gateway to billions of dollars in college scholarships, grants and loans.
Chaos reigned in the months leading up to the launch, and the system was plagued with glitches and data errors once it went live. The impact has been devastating, delaying the timeline for students to commit to colleges and deterring some from applying for scholarships at all. The Education Department has received more than 9.7 million forms so far, down 13% from a year ago.
The problems were plentiful, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found. Among the largest failings: The government opted against hiring an outside manager to coordinate the sprawling project, after underestimating how tough it would be to revamp the Fafsa system. More than a dozen times, the Education Department issued memos fixing its own prior instructions to contractors.
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