The Government Was Supposed To Simplify the FAFSA. Instead, They Created a Glitchy Fiasco.

Published

2 years ago

April 11, 2024

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This year, the Department of Education unveiled an updated, streamlined version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form. The financial aid application is used by millions of American students and is required for anyone seeking federal student loans or grants, as well as institutional financial aid at most colleges.

Good idea, right? Well, not exactly.

Instead of making the FAFSA easier to complete, the new form has been riddled with technical glitches and delaysimperiling access to accurate financial aid information for millions of students.

The origin of this year’s blunder stems from the 2020 Consolidated Appropriations Act , which contains a provision requiring the Department of Education to create a simplified FAFSA form. The new form, launched earlier this year, is in fact significantly shorter than previous versions of the application. The new form cuts the number of questions by more than half, mostly by relying on financial information imported directly from the IRS.

However, there were signs of trouble even before the new form launched. Typically, the FAFSA goes live in October, with the deadline for completion in late June. However, this year’s form wasn’t released until December 31stand just as a “soft launch,” meaning the application was only periodically available. Yet the deadline to complete the FAFSA hasn’t been extended.

From the earliest hours of the FAFSA’s availability, persistent technical glitches have made completing the application agonizing for many students and their families. The FAFSA’s own website details dozens of errors in the form that have made completing it nearly impossible for some students.

As a result of these issues, 40 percent fewer students had completed the FAFSA by March compared to the same period last year,with total submissionsincluding incomplete forms with errorsdown 27 percent. At this rate, millions of students will miss out on federal grants or loans, and a significant portion of students won’t have the complete information they need to decide where to attend college.

Most university financial aid departments rely on FAFSA data to determine how much financial aid to offer students. But persistent issues with the FAFSA have meant that many schools aren’t receiving complete or accurate information about applicantsand even that information has been subject to lengthy delays.

Frustratingly, the Department of Education has now told colleges that they can use inaccurate or incomplete information from student FAFSA forms, as long as the end result is that students will receive more aid than they otherwise would.

“You’re doing a disservice to students if you give them the illusion that they’re eligible for more aid in one year, when really, they’re not,” Emmanual Guillory, the senior director of government relations at the American Council on Education (ACE) told The Hill . “It just puts our professionals or financial administrators on the ground in a very compromising position.”

While making the FAFSA simpler to complete sounds like a great idea on paper, the Department of Education’s latest bungle provides a perfect example of all that can go wrong when the government fumbles a seemingly simple task. There isn’t any way to hold the Department of Education accountable for the chaos and confusion this year’s FAFSA has caused for millions of American familiesso there’s not much incentive to prevent such a disaster from happening again in the future.

US

At least two dead and eight critically injured in US university shooting

Published

24 mins ago

December 14, 2025

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At least two dead and eight critically injured in US university shooting

At least two people have been killed and eight others critically injured in a shooting on the campus of Brown University in Rhode Island, officials have said.

The incident is believed to be unfolding near an engineering building on the campus, according to the school’s alert system.

Providence Police and the Rhode Island State Police are responding.

It is unclear at the moment whether arrests have been made.

Brown University says no suspects are in custody and that additional shots may have been fired.

US President Donald Trump corrected an earlier post he shared online, clarifying that a suspect was not in custody. In his previous post, he had stated that a suspect was in custody.

University officials initially told students and staff that a suspect was in custody, but later said this was not the case and police were still searching for a suspect or suspects.

Officials noted that the information remained preliminary as investigators try to determine what has occurred.

Police are actively investigating and still gathering information from the scene, said Kristy DosReis, the chief public information officer for the city of Providence.

The shooting was reported near the Barus & Holley building, a seven-storey structure that houses the School of Engineering and Physics Department, according to the school’s website.

It includes 117 laboratories, 150 offices and 15 classrooms.

Brown is a private university with roughly 7,300 undergraduate students and more than 3,000 graduate students.

Providence Council member John Goncalves, whose ward includes the Brown campus, said: “We’re still getting information about what’s going on, but we’re just telling people to lock their doors and to stay vigilant.

“As a Brown alum, someone who loves the Brown community and represents this area, I’m heartbroken. My heart goes out to all the family members and the folks who’ve been impacted.”

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UK

Specialist teams and online investigators deployed across England and Wales to tackle ‘national emergency’ of violence against women and girls

Published

24 mins ago

December 14, 2025

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Specialist teams and online investigators deployed across England and Wales to tackle 'national emergency' of violence against women and girls

Specialist investigation teams for rape and sexual offences are to be created across England and Wales as the Home Secretary declares violence against women and girls a “national emergency”.

Shabana Mahmood said the dedicated units will be in place across every force by 2029 as part of Labour’s violence against women and girls (VAWG) strategy due to be launched later this week.

The use of Domestic Abuse Protection Orders (DAPOs), which had been trialled in several areas, will also be rolled out across England and Wales. They are designed to target abusers by imposing curfews, electronic tags and exclusion zones.

The orders cover all forms of domestic abuse, including economic abuse, coercive and controlling behaviour, stalking and ‘honour’-based abuse. Breaching the terms can carry a prison term of up to 5 years.

Nearly £2m will also be spent funding a network of officers to target offenders operating within the online space.

Teams will use covert and intelligence techniques to tackle violence against women and girls via apps and websites.

A similar undercover network funded by the Home Office to examine child sexual abuse has arrested over 1,700 perpetrators.

Abuse is ‘national emergency’

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said in a statement: “This government has declared violence against women and girls a national emergency.

“For too long, these crimes have been considered a fact of life. That’s not good enough. We will halve it in a decade.

“Today we announce a range of measures to bear down on abusers, stopping them in their tracks. Rapists, sex offenders and abusers will have nowhere to hide.”

The target to halve violence against women and girls in a decade is a Labour manifesto pledge.

The government said the measures build on existing policy, including facial recognition technology to identify offenders, improving protections for stalking victims, making strangulation a criminal offence and establishing domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms.

Labour has ‘failed women’

But the Conservatives said Labour had “failed women” and “broken its promises” by delaying the publication of the violence against women and girls strategy.

Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp, said that Labour “shrinks from uncomfortable truths, voting against tougher sentences and presiding over falling sex-offender convictions. At every turn, Labour has failed women.”