By MorraLee Keller, Senior Director, Strategic Programming
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Last week, the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) shared coming updates associated with the FSA ID process during a stakeholder call. Having not found yet a long-term solution for retrieving financial information from the IRS for those contributors without
a Social Security number, FSA indicated that for the “foreseeable future,” those contributors will continue to be able to manually enter their data into the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Continuing to waive the
identity verification process and allowing immediate access into the FAFSA will carry over into the 2025-26 cycle. These contributors are encouraged to submit the required form and documentation so that their identity can be verified prior to identifying
a long-term solution that would require a verified FSA ID to access the FAFSA.
Other notable items shared included:
Continuous enhancements are being made to increase the match rate with Transunion so that a larger percentage of people can complete the identity process online.
The attestation form will be moving to an online form that will be submitted.
There is a backlog of identity documents that need reviewed. FSA’s hope is to hire and train additional staff and hope to have the backlog cleared by the end of the calendar year.
Because of the document backlog, there is currently not a stated turnaround time for that processing.
FSA hopes to procure a vendor to develop and enhance methods for collecting the required documentation that would not involve an email process.
The National College Attainment Network (NCAN) advises our members to ensure their students and contributors know that not having a verified FSA ID at this point will not affect/impact their ability to receive federal aid for the 2024-25 academic year.
FSA also mentioned the continuous issues with the contributor invitation/access to the form. They indicated they are developing enhancements to that process so that all sections of the form can be completed and submitted.
In another processing area, a new electronic announcement was issued last week
that revised the process that colleges will need to follow when they have conflicting information in the form of a contributor indicating they did not file a tax return, but information was found at the IRS and brought into the FAFSA. Colleges will
now be required to collect a 2022 signed tax return or tax transcript to verify the information they are using to calculate the Student Aid Index (SAI). The timing of this announcement is difficult as many colleges may have already awarded and perhaps
disbursed aid to student accounts and will now have to revert to collecting documentation.
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