As millions of families have already learned, this year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid may be the easiest ever. Many people complete it in 15 minutes or less. Families who need help connect to our call center quickly. In the first six weeks of availability, 3.5 million students have already submitted their forms.
The story was very different a year ago. When the 2024–25 FAFSA form launched in December 2023, many students and parents struggled to complete it due to bugs, delays and confusing instructions. Our call center was overwhelmed. The U.S. Department of Education was not ready to process FAFSA forms, forcing many colleges to delay financial aid offers and admissions deadlines.
Since it was created more than 30 years ago, the FAFSA has always been notoriously difficult. Not only did it create headaches for about 17 million families each year, but an estimated one million Pell-eligible students each year never filled it out—and there’s no way of knowing how many more people might have enrolled in college if they had applied for available aid.
To address some of these challenges, in December 2020 Congress passed a law to design a new FAFSA that drew data from federal tax records. Unfortunately, implementing this law was tremendously complex.
The Education Department set out to replace or modernize more than 20 computer systems—some older than the parents filling out the FAFSA—and implement new eligibility, privacy and security rules. All this work was done with a frozen budget and with no safety net: If the FAFSA system wasn’t operating, no alternatives were possible without another act of Congress. Students would not be able to receive federal financial aid.
This approach is all too common in the federal government: Congress specifies in great detail exactly what should be done and by when, and agencies allocate the work across teams of staff and contractors. Before programming begins, federal agencies codify these details in contract modifications, privacy disclosures and other legal agreements—each of which requires months of procedural steps to amend. In contrast, the private sector uses a more incremental, agile approach to complex software, allowing developers to measure their progress, consult customers and partners, and adjust their plans as they go.
The Education Department’s problematic history of outsourcing key functions meant we did not have the in-house expertise—like the product managers, software developers, designers and other experts—that any organization needs to guide such a complex technology project. It was nearly impossible for the department to independently test the systems or regularly assess the progress of our contractors. And when we discovered work that was incomplete or riddled with bugs, using our limited tools for holding contractors accountable often risked backfiring by provoking slowdowns, renegotiations and protests just as the project neared critical deadlines.
Our strategy to turn things around had four main components.
First, we needed to build a team quickly. To add to dedicated Federal Student Aid staff, we recruited talent from the College Board and the U.S. Digital Service and added capacity at contractors. We recruited senior information technology staff to permanently strengthen the FAFSA. The team worked nights, weekends and holidays to fix the technical challenges and provide support to students and schools. Although we first began expanding the FAFSA team in late 2022, in hindsight I wish we had begun even earlier and expanded even more quickly.
Second, we implemented a robust testing strategy so we could find bugs as quickly as possible. Before we launched the 2025–26 form, we invited more than 150,000 students and families to beta test the system from end to end.
Third, we increased transparency to students, families and our partners. We held regular press calls and shared our progress publicly. We regularly briefed external partners and solicited their help identifying problems and supporting financial aid advisers. We also drastically increased staffing at our call centers. Wait times that were often 15 to 20 minutes, with high abandonment rates, now average less than a minute.
Finally, for the first time, we provided more than $50 million for colleges, school districts and nonprofits to process FAFSA applications and increase submission rates from students, particularly those in underserved communities.
All of these efforts paid off: More than 5 percent more students received federal financial aid this fall than a year ago. Currently, 94 percent of those who submit a 2025–26 form say they are satisfied with their experience.
However, our job isn’t done. Despite delivering financial aid to more students over all, we are serving about 2 to 3 percent fewer recent high school seniors. We need to make the form easier for students and colleges, including by allowing colleges to submit batches of corrections at one time. And the department needs to launch next year’s form on time on Oct. 1.
We now have a team of career experts in place with the necessary capabilities to continue to shepherd the FAFSA into the future. The incoming administration will inherit a well-performing system and have the time and resources they need to meet that deadline.
No overhaul of a complex system—especially a government system that has existed for decades—is ever easy, and the cause of those challenges is never straightforward. But the resulting changes will be key to helping millions more students achieve their dreams.
