\n<\/p>\n
The user-experience enhancements are coming this summer.<\/p>\n
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid will get a slate of user-experience improvements this summer, including updates to how parents without Social Security numbers input information and an expedited turnaround of aid info after the form is submitted.<\/p>\n
In addition to applicant-facing changes, the update will also include a new fraud-detection system aimed at curbing a growing financial aid fraud economy that can cost a college or university millions of dollars every year.<\/p>\n
The updates, announced at the 2026 Federal Student Aid Training Conference earlier this month, are the latest in a line of efforts to make the FAFSA process faster and more accessible. Those efforts seem to be working, with experts attributing high rates of FAFSA completion in part to those improvements. As of early January, 33\u00a0percent of the high school Class of 2026 had filled out the FAFSA, nearly a 10\u00a0percent increase from the Class of 2023 (the most recent to experience a regular Oct. 1 FAFSA opening).<\/p>\n
Karen McCarthy, vice president of public policy and federal relations with the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, noted that it\u2019s exciting to see the Education Department and its Office of Federal Student Aid making some quality-of-life adjustments after a swath of technical glitches related to simplifying the FAFSA severely disrupted the federal aid process in 2023 and 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe new FAFSA that struggled to get off the ground is now off the ground and in a solid enough place that they\u2019re able to turn their attention toward some of the nice-to-have enhancements that will make the process even more smooth for applicants,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
One of the key updates will expedite the application process for parents without social security numbers. While those with SSNs have historically been able to connect their tax information to the FAFSA to fill in income information, immigrants and foreign nationals have had to enter that information manually. Starting this summer, those individuals will be able to use their Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, a tax processing code issued by the Internal Revenue Service to those who don\u2019t qualify for an SSN.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose that have been having to manually enter [information] would be looking at their tax return, trying to make sure they\u2019re putting the right information on the right line, and they\u2019re not going to have that burden anymore,\u201d said MorraLee Keller, a senior consultant at the National College Attainment Network, an association for college access organizations. \u201cThat\u2019s going to be great and speed up the time that it takes to complete the form.\u201d<\/p>\n
Experts have expressed concern that the Trump administration could use information from undocumented individuals\u2019 FAFSAs in the administration\u2019s widespread deportation efforts, though ED has said it would not share the data with other agencies.<\/p>\n
Parents who have previously filled out a FAFSA for another dependent will also be able to fill out the form more easily using an autofill-like function, speeding up the process.<\/p>\n
The form will also tell students and families how much federal aid they are eligible for, including the Pell Grant, immediately after they submit the FAFSA, rather than after a typical one- to three-day wait. They can then begin making any needed corrections to their application immediately.<\/p>\n
Milyon Trulove, vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid at Reed College, highlighted the value of allowing students to immediately see whether they\u2019re Pell eligible, especially because many Pell-eligible students never realize they can afford college.<\/p>\n
\u201cStudents will know immediately that this is an option for them\u2014it takes out any ambiguity of whether or not you qualify or will get additional support to go to college,\u201d he said, noting this is particularly helpful for students interested in community college, because Pell Grants, in most cases, would cover nearly the full cost of attendance. \u201cIt sends the message that college is available to you right now today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The update will also address the growing issue of financial aid fraud; in recent years, colleges have seen an increase in individuals using stolen identities to receive federal financial aid money. Institutions have always born the responsibility of dealing with fraudsters, which has become an overwhelming task for many financial aid administrators, especially at open-access and underresourced institutions, according to experts.<\/p>\n
Previously, the Trump administration attempted to combat fraud through ID-verification measures, though those were more poorly received due to concerns about accessibility. Congress is also currently considering two bills to combat financial aid fraud.<\/p>\n
Financial aid teams \u201cwere kind of waving the white flag and saying, \u2018Can the Department of Education help us with this?\u2019\u201d McCarthy said. \u201cWe have been very supportive of the concept that they have been working on for quite some time where the bulk of responsibility for detecting suspected fraud would shift back to the Department of Education.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bryan Ashton, chief strategy and growth officer at Trellis Strategies, a higher education research and consulting firm, said that the new fraud detection will also be a boon for individuals who have had their identities stolen by these so-called ghost students. The victims, he said, are often students in the some college, no credential population.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore robust checks within the FAFSA should help support under-resourced institutions in identifying fraud and limiting institution and individual liability,\u201d he wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed.<\/em><\/p>\n The new fraud-detection functionality will likely be implemented in the coming months. The details of how it will work are yet to be released, and ED did not respond to Inside Higher Ed<\/em>\u2019s request for details. But McCarthy said she is hopeful that the FAFSA tool will also allow for higher-quality fraud detection than institutions have been capable of on their own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The user-experience enhancements are coming this summer. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid will get a slate of user-experience improvements this summer, including updates to how parents without Social Security numbers input information and an expedited turnaround of aid info after the form is submitted. In addition to applicant-facing changes, the update will also<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[23959,9135,13962,2377,111,5989],"class_list":{"0":"post-47355","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-enhancements","9":"tag-experience","10":"tag-fafsa","11":"tag-planned","12":"tag-summer","13":"tag-user"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}