(The Hill) — The Education Department’s new deadline for the launch of the 2025-2026 Free Application for Federal Student Aid forms is leaving advocacy groups in a tough spot as they say the move is the best of bad options but brings up feelings of dread after the FAFSA situation last year.  

Experts said a decision had to be made whether to delay this year’s forms or stick to the normal Oct. 1 deadline with applications that would have bugs and lead to difficulties for students and families.  

While the department is promising the Dec. 1 deadline will mean fully operational applications for everyone, groups will be keeping a watchful eye after the FAFSA chaos last year that has some colleges still processing the forms. 

“I will say there definitely is not 100 percent trust from the financial aid community, because it really was — the 2024-2025 year — was really traumatic, and there has definitely been a breakdown in trust. So [the Department of Education] does have some work to do, I would say, in restoring that trust, and I think there they know that,” said Karen McCarthy, vice president of public policy and federal relations for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. 

The Department of Education (DOE) announced on Wednesday that the FAFSA forms for the next school year would only open up to select individuals starting Oct. 1. The forms will go through a phased rollout with only some getting selected to process their applications early so that the department can identify the bugs in the system.  

The new deadline for the applications to be available to everyone is on Dec. 1, two months after the typical start date but earlier than last year’s rocky release.  

“I think it’s a difficult tradeoff between functionality and timeliness, and that’s a question that NCAN [the National Collegiate Attainment Network] has been discussing with our members and discussing internally and trying to sort through. But ultimately we concluded that the most important thing is that the form be fully functional, that counselors and financial aid administrators have confidence in the system and students, most importantly, and that requires ensuring it’s reliable and functional from end to end, and that students can receive financial aid awards in a timely fashion. S this announcement allows them to do the necessary testing to make sure it’s fully functional. And that’s a positive development in our view,” said Catherine Brown, senior director of policy and advocacy at NCAN. 

Republicans in Congress were less forgiving.  

“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,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, who last month introduced a bill requiring the forms be released in October. “We saw last year that colleges cannot create financial aid packages without timely FAFSA information. Many students may forgo college when they cannot choose a school because they do not know their eligibility for student aid.” 

Along with complaints about the delay, there are some parts of the application that still won’t be ready in time, according to advocates.  

There are two ways schools process FAFSA forms, individually and in batches. Universities will typically process the applications in batches because it is easier and less time consuming.  

“The Department of Ed has been saying that the all of the FAFSA functionality will be available, including corrections, December 1, according to their timeline, and when we clarified with them — does that include both the individual corrections and the ability to send batches — they confirmed that it does not include the ability to send batch corrections. And they don’t have an estimated goal date for the launch of the batch corrections for 2025-2026, so that was a kind of a disappointing part of the announcement that they made this week, because they had been saying full functionality by December 1, and to us, full functionality includes batch corrections,” McCarthy said.  

The frustrations and skepticism come after the disastrous rollout of revamped FAFSA forms last year, which didn’t even begin until Dec. 30, when the forms were available for certain timeframes.  

From there, months of bugs and errors plagued the system and created backups for students, families and colleges.  

In March, DOE said there was a 40 percent gap between applicants for the 2024-2025 school year and the 2023-2024 academic year. Currently, the department says the gap has closed to 4 percent, but Brown said her group’s FAFSA tracker, which is only for high school graduating seniors, still has the gap at 10 percent compared to last year.  

“We’re hopeful that that gap is closing, but it is still of grave concern. And, you know, we may see it play out in terms of fall enrollment,” she added.  

And fears of a repeat of the previous FAFSA cycle are leading schools and advocates to make backup plans.  

“In the worst-case scenario, December 1 is not the date that the forms are fully functional and fully online, and then institutions just have to try to think ahead and be strategic with how they plan to communicate with those who are interested in enrolling at their institution, what their aid could be, given the constraints that they’re under,” said Emmanual Guillory, senior director of government relations at the American Council on Education.