By The New York Times (U.S.) | Created at 2024-09-25 02:13:24 | Updated at 2024-09-30 07:21:20
5 days ago
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Two reports by the Government Accountability Office found that mismanagement and wildly unrealistic projections derailed the student aid application process this year.
Sept. 24, 2024, 9:58 p.m. ET
Leaders in the Education Department systematically failed to manage deadlines and badly underestimated technical shortcomings while overhauling the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, according to a pair of damaging reports released by the Government Accountability Office on Tuesday.
The reports provide new insight into a breakdown that is already painfully familiar to thousands of students and families, who struggled for much of this year to get an accurate estimate of how much they would need to pay for college because of glitches in the application form, known as FAFSA.
Signs of trouble with FAFSA started around this time last year, when students typically can begin to submit their household’s financial data to the government, which in turn helps calculate financial aid offers.
By January, many students found themselves running into a variety of bugs and data entry problems that locked them out of the form, produced an inaccurate summary of their finances or otherwise prevented them from applying.
Many findings in the reports released on Tuesday, including how the Education Department struggled to manage contractors it hired to help build the form, have been publicly known for some time through reporting and several congressional inquiries.
But the accountability office’s findings highlighted startling details about just how poorly the department underestimated the problems that would affect families and force college administrators to sort out discrepancies through much of this summer.
