College financial aid form will be delayed for some students after last year’s botched rollout

Washington (CNN) — Only a limited number of students and families will be able to access the government’s college financial aid form – which they must submit to be eligible for federal loans and grants – on the traditional October 1 launch date.

The 2025-2026 Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, will be released on October 1 to a subset of students and then be made available to an increasing number of applicants over the following two months.

The FAFSA will be fully available to all students on or before December 1, the Department of Education said Wednesday.

The delay comes after a rocky rollout of an updated version of the FAFSA for the 2024-2025 academic year. The changes to the form are meant to make the FAFSA easier to fill out and deliver more financial aid to students and families, but the implementation was plagued with problems. When the new version of the FAFSA was released last December, it was initially only available for hours at a time.

The botched rollout resulted in significant delays for students, many of whom were still waiting for financial aid award letters – which show how much they will have to pay for college – when trying to decide where to enroll for the coming fall.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have criticized the FAFSA rollout and expressed concerns that the complications with the form would prevent some low-income students from going to college at all.

“This is completely unacceptable. For the second year in a row, the Biden-Harris administration is going to miss the traditional date to make the FAFSA form available to students,” Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said in a statement.

Cassidy, the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, introduced legislation earlier this summer that would require the Department of Education to make the FASFA available by October 1 every year. The bill has yet to be taken up for a vote.

The new FAFSA launch process was decided based on feedback from stakeholders.

“Consistently, we heard that the product should be tested and working fully before the parts are rolled out,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said on a call with reporters.

The phased release is meant to prevent most students and families from experiencing glitches with the new FAFSA. The testing phase will allow the department to fix any problems that may arise before the form is available to everyone. Last year, a new Internal Revenue Service free tax filing pilot program was similarly launched in a phased rollout.

The Department of Education has also made leadership changes within its Federal Student Aid office to help relaunch the FAFSA this year. The former head of the office, Richard Cordray, stepped down in April, and Jeremy Singer – who has taken a temporary leave as president of The College Board – is now heading up the FAFSA operation.

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