On Aug. 7, the U.S. Department of Education announced next year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid isn’t slated to open to the general public until Dec. 1.
That’s a tough pill to swallow for financial aid administrators at Virginia colleges and universities — like Ashley Browning, vice president for enrollment management at Hollins University in Roanoke. She’s spent the last several months dealing with delays and errors in this year’s FAFSA rollout.
For Browning, the news that another application cycle rollout will be delayed felt like a gut punch.
“I try and be a glass-half-full person,” Browning said. “When that news came out, it was hard to not just throw up your hands and think, ‘OK, here we are again.’”
Officials from the U.S. Department of Education have vowed to have all technical issues in the FAFSA system resolved by the Dec. 1 launch. The department is planning to run a test launch with a group of volunteer students and universities starting in October to work out any remaining kinks.
The university officials VPM News spoke with haven’t received any information about how to volunteer for the testing period — but are anxious to learn more about that process.
That includes Brad Barnett, financial aid director at James Madison University. He’s hopeful that next year won’t be as difficult as this year — which he said has been the most challenging year yet.
“We made it through ’24-’25, I think we can make it through anything,” Barnett said.
Ashley Miller, associate vice president for enrollment management at Old Dominion University, worries that if next year’s application cycle is delayed further, staff burnout will lead to turnover. She said this year has taken a toll on her colleagues.
“They're willing to do whatever it takes for the students. As a leader, I want to make sure that they're well taken care of,” Miller said.
“If things get delayed again — and we're putting these increased expectations on them through no fault of their own — then I think we could see a lot of people leave the profession.”
A recent report from the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators confirmed the seriousness of the issue, with over half of the financial aid employees surveyed saying they were at least somewhat likely to seek other employment.
Stuck in a holding pattern
The delays and glitches with the new FAFSA application rollout over the past year have caused many problems for students and families, too.
Izzy Workman, a junior at Hollins University, got hung up on several steps of the new process.
The new form requires students whose parents don’t live together to use information for the parent who is providing more financial support, instead of the parent they’re living with. For Workman, that meant working with her mom to input all of her tax information to replace her dad’s details.
While Workman is mostly paying her own way, she said her mom does sometimes send $500 to help.
The new FAFSA system was supposed to pull tax information directly from the IRS into the form with the touch of a button. But that didn’t work for Workman and her mom, meaning they had to enter the information manually. On top of that, they experienced multiple glitches while trying to submit the form.
“We'd have to refresh the page like a million times, and then it would just kick us out again,” Workman said.
She was finally able to submit the form and received her aid package in late July. Luckily, she ended up getting much more aid than in previous years — including a Pell Grant — which was a relief.
“I could take a breath,” Workman said. “I felt a lot better about the year to come, especially knowing that I can focus on solely my academics and my sports, and not have the financial monster in the back of my head.”
She got the news just in time, too: Workman was on the verge of taking a break from college all together or transferring to a cheaper school — as she’d been struggling to balance classes and sports with working multiple jobs to pay for her tuition over the last two years.
Meanwhile, some students are still waiting on aid packages at colleges across the country. At Hollins, Browning is having difficult conversations with a handful of students in this situation about potentially deferring their start date by a semester or two.
Workman had been struggling to balance classes and sports with working multiple jobs to pay for her tuition, and was on the verge of taking a break from college altogether or transferring to a cheaper school. Sometimes she was late making payments, but said her university’s financial aid office gave her grace.
“I think of other people who didn't have that support system that I had,” she said. “They might have actually had to leave their colleges.”
Some students are still waiting on aid packages at colleges across the country. At Hollins, Browning is having difficult conversations with a handful of students in this situation about potentially deferring their start date by a semester or two.
However, deferment is definitely not Browning’s preference. She pointed out that the number of students who defer but end up enrolling later is low — especially when finances are the reason for their deferment.
“You start working, you start making money,” Browning said. “No matter how much at one point in time you wanted to start [college], life changes.”
For students still waiting on aid to come through for this fall semester, some universities like James Madison University have decided to delay the first deadline for when payments are due, moving the date to the end of August.
That’s what the University of Mary Washington is doing, too, according to spokesperson Amy Jessee.
“For those students who still need to pay their tuition, we let them know that due to FAFSA issues nationwide, UMW students won’t incur consequences for missing the August 8th bill due date," Jessee told VPM News via email. "Students have until August 27th to obtain sufficient financial awards, enroll in a University Installment Payment Plan or pay in full.”
Brenda Poggendorf, vice president for enrollment management at Randolph-Macon College, pointed out that FAFSA applications submitted on paper — which typically come from lower-income families — still haven’t been processed.
The uncertainty about the FAFSA process led Randolph-Macon to cancel a “financial aid night” earlier in this year’s enrollment period, she added — depriving students of a chance to get aid questions answered.
“I think when the dust settles, we're going to see that they were largely lower-income, first-gen kinds of students who just didn't jump into [the FAFSA] this year,” Poggendorf said.
