By Catherine Brown, Senior Director, Policy and Advocacy
Reading time: Five minutes
As the National College Attainment Network (NCAN) and our members continue to help students and families complete the 2024-25 Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, our policy and advocacy lens is increasingly shifting to what it will take to be ready for the 2025-26 cycle.
While we are tracking and working to resolve many issues,
we are primarily focused on achieving four major objectives this summer. All four items are within the US Department of Education’s (ED) authority to do without legislative or regulatory changes.
Confirm October 1 as the FAFSA release date. Most urgently, ED must confirm an October 1 FAFSA release date for the 2025-26 award year. As we wrote in a coalition letter sent to the Administration on June 10, “With less than four months until October 1... we are concerned that the FAFSA will be delayed again, and that the release date will remain uncertain until just before the
form becomes available. This approach will lead to a repeat of last year, with schools and counselors unable to plan the counseling and outreach efforts that are needed, colleges unable to ensure a smooth and timely process for generating financial
aid offers, and students left in the lurch.”
With each passing day, the lack of a certain release date increases our concern that the coming year will be as disorganized and problematic as this one has been. It’s also critical that the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) have the resources and tools
that accompany the FAFSA ready by the time the form launches, including the federal student aid estimator, the FAFSA demonstration site, communication and training materials, a user-friendly Pell look-up table, eligibility and technical guides, and
a quick, effective, and secure process for obtaining an FSA ID.
Streamline the FSA ID process. The FSA ID process has been the single biggest obstacle to students completing the 2024-25 FAFSA, particularly for students from mixed status immigration families. Contributors without Social Security Numbers (SSNs) were unable to complete the form online until mid-March, and those who cannot get through the identity verification process are
still using a workaround to manually enter their income and asset information and submit a FAFSA online. The process for verifying the identities of people who do not have SSNs, which relies on information from the TransUnion Credit Bureau, has never worked well for most applicants who need it. NCAN has heard from hundreds of member organizations
about challenges associated with getting contributors’ identities verified. From identify documentation that never got matched to the proper file to not being able to get a case number to not being able to fix a typo, this process has been discouraging
for thousands of families.
NCAN has offered detailed, extensive recommendations to ED for fixing this process, and we think it ought to be overhauled from start to finish. If the process to transfer data from the IRS for those without an SSN is not available by the time the 2025-26 FAFSA opens, NCAN encourages FSA to
keep the manual data entry process and eliminate identity verification for those without an SSN. If manual entry of tax information is the only method that enables this population to complete the FAFSA, it’s time to stop subjecting people to the broken,
unnecessary, and time-consuming TransUnion identify verification process.
ED should announce that people without SSNs will have to manually enter their income information for the 2025-26 cycle and use the coming academic year to find a better way to match these individuals with their IRS data. If the identity verification process
is going to be required for people without SSNs, then FSA needs to create an online portal that allows contributors to securely upload copies of their documents and associate them with their child or spouse’s FSA ID and FAFSA and should allow contributors
to manually enter their information before they have finalized the identity verification process.
Fix the call center. NCAN staff continue to hear from students and families who are sitting on hold with the FSA Information Center (FSAIC) for two hours or more only to be told upon reaching an operator, that they cannot be helped. This must stop. ED should immediately increase the capacity of the FSAIC even if doing so requires redirecting
operators from other topic areas, such as Public Service Loan Forgiveness, or spending additional money to increase capacity. If additional money is needed, the $50 million FAFSA Student Support Strategy should be tapped.
States, communities, and college access programs across the country are providing personalized support to help students complete the FAFSA, but there are some issues that only FSAIC operators can resolve. The most high-touch, robust counseling initiative
will not increase FAFSA completion rates unless able operators answer the phone in a timely manner and fix the problems presented when a counselor, student, or family member makes a call. Yet too often calls to FSAIC go unanswered or their problems
described go unaddressed, leaving the caller demoralized, with no remaining steps to take to get through the form. NCAN recommends that FSA train a group of staff to specialize in FSA ID issues and give them the authority to reset the accounts when
all appropriate information and been submitted.
People calling the FSAIC represent the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to increasing the FAFSA completion rate: they have already started the FAFSA and shown enough dedication to completing the form that they find the FSAIC number and sit on hold until
someone answers. ED should ensure that every one of those calls results in a completed form.
Modify the language for the “unsubsidized loan only” question. This question is designed to allow certain dependent students to signal that their parent(s) will not cooperate in providing information to complete the FAFSA. FSA has indicated
that the volume of students who chose "yes" for this question was extraordinarily high, suggesting that students were misinterpreting the question. To avoid lengthy FAFSA corrections, NCAN recommends rewording the question, setting the default answer
to “no,” and providing detailed help text to students who attempt to change the answer to “yes” to ensure they understand the limited circumstances under which it applies.
These priorities were distilled from conversations with NCAN members, including FAFSA experts, state policy leaders, and practitioners. We welcome your partnership and feedback and will, as always, keep you posted as the issues evolve.
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Confirm October 1 as the FAFSA release date. Most urgently, ED must confirm an October 1 FAFSA release date for the 2025-26 award year. As we wrote in a 
Streamline the FSA ID process. The FSA ID process has been the single biggest obstacle to students completing the 2024-25 FAFSA, particularly for 
Fix the call center. NCAN staff continue to hear from students and families who are sitting on hold with the 
Modify the language for the “unsubsidized loan only” question. This question is designed to allow certain dependent students to signal that their parent(s) will not cooperate in providing information to complete the FAFSA. FSA has indicated
that the volume of students who chose "yes" for this question was extraordinarily high, suggesting that students were misinterpreting the question. To avoid lengthy FAFSA corrections, NCAN recommends rewording the question, setting the default answer
to “no,” and providing detailed help text to students who attempt to change the answer to “yes” to ensure they understand the limited circumstances under which it applies.