Government watchdog blames Education Department leadership for chaotic FAFSA rollout

WASHINGTON – For many American families, applying for college financial aid this year was hard. On Tuesday, it became shockingly clear just how hard.

A student born in the year 2000, for example, couldn’t complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, until March, several months late.

If that same student tried to call the federal government for help, they likely got nowhere. Roughly four million calls to the federal Education Department help line for struggling families went unanswered from January through May.

In other words: Three of four times someone reached for the phone – fretting about their child’s future or their own – and tried to contact the government, no one picked up.

Those are just a sampling of the litany of problems that derailed the rollout of long-awaited changes to federal college financial aid this year. The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan federal government watchdog, released two damning reports on Tuesday that revealed new details about the extent to which the effort went haywire.

The findings paint a picture of a flawed government agency that knew well in advance there were big problems ahead that could have dire consequences – but pushed forward anyway, under pressure to meet a mandate from Congress.

Investigators laid the blame squarely on the Federal Student Aid office, the arm of the Education Department charged with helping people pay for college, including overseeing the FAFSA and student loan policy. A “lack of consistent and effective leadership” in the agency overall was a key contributor, they found, to the setbacks and glitches felt by many families this year.

Read more: How the FAFSA crisis turned College Decision Day into chaos

In short: The Education Department made a lot of mistakes. And so did the outside contractors that it paid millions of dollars to make things easier.

At a congressional hearing Tuesday morning, criticism was scathing. Melissa Emrey-Arras, one of the GAO’s investigators, called some of the Education Department’s shortcomings “unconscionable.”

“College is expensive,” she said. “If students get an inaccurate estimate, then they are left high and dry.”

In a statement, the Education Department said there are now more than 500,000 additional students than last year who are eligible for Pell Grants (free government-sponsored financial aid awards for low-income students) because of changes to the FAFSA.

In a letter to college presidents on Monday, Miguel Cardona, the education secretary, said the agency has also worked hard to close the FAFSA submission gap. The call center has added more than 700 new agents since January, he said, and most of the glitches that affected families earlier this year have been resolved.

“We have also taken bold steps to overhaul internal processes and systems that led to challenges and delays,” he wrote.

Read USA Today's investigation: For low-income students, FAFSA can be a lifeline. When it didn't work, they were hardest hit.

GAO: Contractor oversight failures affected FAFSA delays

In typical years, the government makes the FAFSA available to students and their families by Oct. 1. Last year, that date was pushed for months. The form finally opened up, though only for small periods of time, just after Christmas.

There are many reasons why that setback happened. But much of the delay, according to the GAO, had to do with poor oversight of an outside contractor that the Education Department hired in March 2022 to help with overhauling the FAFSA.

“Within months, the system encountered development issues that eventually resulted in the delays and other glitches applicants saw,” the GAO found. “For example, milestones for 25 contract requirements were pushed back months.”

That contractor is not named in the report (and many vendors are often involved in large government projects). Public records show that General Dynamics Information Technology – a company that has been the subject of internal griping at the Education Department, USA TODAY has previously reported – began a multimillion-dollar contract to modernize the federal student aid process in March 2022. A spokesperson for General Dynamics referred questions Tuesday about the GAO's findings to the Education Department.

“The department did tell us that the contractor did cause the delays,” Marisol Cruz Cain, one of the GAO investigators, told members of Congress on Tuesday (she did not specify which contractor). “I think there’s blame on both parts.”

Leadership turnover, miscalculations

The reports also pointed to leadership turnover at the Education Department as a factor in the problems with the FAFSA.

Specifically, the watchdog highlighted a revolving door plaguing one high-level position: chief information officer. The department, investigators found, has employed six of them since 2021. Days before the watchdog released its findings, a new chief information officer was appointed.

“This turnover, I think, illustrates the chaos that’s marked this process,” said Rep. Bob Good, a Republican from Virginia.

As for other problems with the rollout, there were times the government simply got the numbers wrong. They estimated, for example, that 3,500 people from mixed-status families – in which some family members have different immigration statuses – would need to have their identities manually verified.

In reality, that number was more than 219,000. In the end, immigrant families were arguably more adversely affected by the bungled rollout than any other group.

“Because of that, people suffered,” Emrey-Arras said.

Anxiety about next year

The next financial aid cycle has already been slightly delayed. But so far, it's not as bad as last spring.

Throughout the fall, the FAFSA will slowly open up to more students in waves, as the Education Department conducts tests with hopes of avoiding more glitches and errors. The form will be widely available by Dec. 1, the agency has said.

Asked Tuesday whether additional call center staffing might make things easier for families this year, Emrey-Arras said it's too early to tell.

“We’ll see what happens when the new FAFSA rolls out,” she said.

Zachary Schermele covers education and breaking news for USA TODAY. You can reach him by email at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What went wrong with the FAFSA? Finally, some answers