Secretary of Education Linda McMahon certified the launch in an August 26 letter to congressional leadership, emphasizing the Trump Administration's focus on "technical competence and expertise" in contrast to what she characterized as implementation failures under the Biden Administration.
"The FAFSA form is working thanks to the investments and focus that the Trump Administration has placed on technical competence and expertise," McMahon wrote to the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate education committees.
The successful launch could represent a significant turnaround from the troubled 2024-2025 FAFSA rollout, which was delayed for months due to technical glitches and processing errors. Those delays affected financial aid calculations for millions of students and created uncertainty for college enrollment decisions nationwide.
The problems were so severe that Congress passed the FAFSA Deadline Act in 2024, codifying what had previously been an assumed October 1 launch date. The legislation amended Section 484(d)(4)(B) of the Higher Education Act to require the Education Secretary to certify the launch date to Congress.
"Unfortunately, no one could anticipate how poorly the Biden Administration would implement both laws, leading Congress to pass the FAFSA Deadline Act in 2024, putting into statute what everyone had always assumed would be true—the FAFSA must launch by October 1," McMahon stated in her letter.
An on-time launch has significant implications for college access and affordability, particularly for first-generation college students and those from low-income families who depend heavily on federal financial aid.
Previous FAFSA delays created cascading problems throughout the higher education sector. Students faced uncertainty about aid packages, colleges struggled with enrollment planning, and some prospective students deferred enrollment or abandoned college plans altogether due to financial uncertainty.
The streamlined application process, originally mandated by the FAFSA Simplification Act of 2020 and the FUTURE Act of 2019, both signed by then-President Trump, was designed to reduce the number of questions and simplify the application experience for families.
