The Long-Awaited FAFSA Autopsy Is Here
Liam Knox
September 24, 2024
Government investigators dissected the federal aid form’s botched rollout at a congressional hearing Tuesday. Their findings paint a familiar picture of bureaucratic bungling, with some telling new details.
A government watchdog’s investigation into last year’s rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid found that Education Department officials failed to properly test and prepare the form and launched it despite signs that it was not ready for wide release—an oversight that proved disastrous.
The department’s missteps are detailed in two documents from the U.S. Government Accountability Office released Tuesday. Their findings were at the center of a House higher education subcommittee hearing Tuesday that featured testimony from two GAO officials, where lawmakers on both sides of the aisle pressed for answers about who was to blame for the failures and called for accountability.
