FSA released an electronic announcement (EA) on February 18th describing how the question about a respondent’s sex has changed in the current FAFSA form to comply with ED’s recent announcement that “male” and “female” will be the only two options on the current and future forms.
This change is problematic for students because it eliminates the ability of students to select "Prefer Not to Answer." Many students select "Prefer Not to Answer" because they are concerned about sharing more private information than is necessary with the federal government, especially at this time when many have raised concerns about data privacy. "Prefer Not to Answer" remains an option for the race and ethnicity questions and should also be available for sex.
All demographic questions are strictly for research purposes. These questions do not impact financial aid awards and are not shared with institutions of higher education or state agencies, raising further questions about the need to exclude Prefer Not to Answer as an option.
NCAN will be expressing our concern about this change in our formal comments to FSA on the draft '25-'26 FAFSA form, and we encourage our members to do so as well.
The EA explained how the update will apply to corrections. It says:
If a student previously answered “Non-binary” or “Prefer not to answer” and goes to submit a correction to their 2024-25 or 2025-26 form for any reason, they will be required to respond to the updated sex question in order to successfully resubmit their FAFSA form. Students will be prompted to do so as part of submitting the correction.
Students who have already submitted a 2024–25 or 2025–26 FAFSA form before February 14, and do not require other corrections, are not required to take any action. Additionally, outdated versions of the paper FAFSA form submitted after February 14 will still be processed, regardless of the answer selected, and will not require a correction. Institutions do not need to take any action.
Corrections that are initiated by institutions, regardless of method (FAFSA Partner Portal or EDE), will not require an updated response value to be entered, regardless of the student’s previous answer to question 11.
A recent order will mandate some adjustments to a question on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). The EO issued on January 20, 2025, related to "biological truth" will require an adjustment be made on the question currently related to
gender. The order indicates that for all federal processes and forms, there are only two allowable responses – male or female. The gender question currently contains those options as answers as well as “non-binary” and “prefer not to answer.”
The gender question on the 2024-25 and 2025-26 FAFSAs has been modified as of February 18, 2025. The question will ask about the applicant’s sex and will only provide male and female as answer options. The nonbinary and prefer not to
answer options will be removed from the form. This does not require any changes for those who have already filed the form. The draft for the 2026-27 form reflects these changes moving forward.
Please remind students that these questions are used for research purposes only. The responses have no effect on their aid eligibility. The answers to these questions are not shared with contributors, state agencies, or higher education institutions.
With such limited usage, we encourage you to help students answer the questions as instructed and move forward with completing the form.
Please note that if a student opts to go in and make any correction to either of the currently available FAFSAs after the question is modified, it they previously chose nonbinary or prefer not to answer, they will be directed to this question and must
choose male or female in order for the all the corrections to be processed.
FSA ID Adjustment
In addition, in February there was an adjustment to simplify the matching process when a contributor without a Social Security number (SSN) was invited to a FAFSA. Previously, if a student invited a parent without an SSN to contribute to their FAFSA,
the address the student provided in the FAFSA was required to match the address in the parent’s account EXACTLY to make the connection. With this change, the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) now allows a connection to be made when there are common
small differences in the two addresses, such as punctuation differences, “St” vs. Street”, “Apt” vs “Apartment”, etc. This should allow for a significant increase in the number of successful invites of parents without SSNs. Note that this change is applicable when the parent already has an account prior to the invite.
The National College Attainment Network (NCAN) will continue to update our membership as any current or future changes to the FAFSA or FSA ID process are announced.
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