Education Department Scrambles to Make Up for Lost Time After FAFSA Blunders

With applications down significantly from past years, officials announced a renewed effort to get students to apply for federal financial aid.

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“It’s been a challenging year for the FAFSA,” Miguel A. Cardona, the education secretary, told a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday. “But I’m proud of the progress we’ve made in recent weeks.”

The Education Department is trying to make up for lost time after applications for federal financial aid plunged this year, with millions of students navigating delays and glitches caused by the disastrous rollout of the new application form.

James Kvaal, the under secretary of education, told reporters on Tuesday that the department had fixed many of the problems with the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as FAFSA. That includes a major glitch that affected students who could not provide a Social Security number.

But Mr. Kvaal said that, by its latest count, the department had received just over 8.4 million submissions so far this year — far fewer than the roughly 17 million it processes in normal years. According to the department’s website, the deadline to apply is June 30.

“It’s been a challenging year for the FAFSA,” he said. “But I’m proud of the progress we’ve made in recent weeks.”

Education Department officials said they were enlisting help from nonprofit groups and activists to encourage more students to fill out the FAFSA form — or to finish the applications that they started but never submitted.

The department began rolling out the new FAFSA form in January — months behind schedule — with the goal of making it easier and more accessible. But students instead encountered a bureaucratic maze caused by delays in launching the website and processing critical information.

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