FAFSA disaster

It seems as though each time the dreaded Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, is made easier, it gets a lot worse. Never has the problem been bigger than this year, when colleges have been forced to put off application deadlines to allow more students to work their way through the impossibly mangled FAFSA system.

Students are getting stuck in repeating loops or told by the website that they already have accounts when they don’t, and if they try to access this unheard-of account, they can’t. Some parents who don’t have Social Security numbers find they can get through the system without one. Others can’t. School counselors who try to help get error messages but no indication of what the problem is. Help lines are swamped, and many students can’t get through. As a result, the number of applications is half what it normally would be by now.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona should hire a host of quickly trained people to answer phones or work with families online to fill out forms then and there. He must stand prepared to offer additional financial aid to students who miss college deadlines through no fault of their own.

The public is owed an explanation of what appears to be a bungled rollout. The online application, which had been promised by late October, was late by nearly three months. And once it was up, the glitches made it look more like a rush job than a sophisticated system that would lighten the load on families.

Democratic lawmakers want guarantees that students don’t fall through the cracks. Republicans want an investigation. Both are right.

But lawmakers also bear some blame. The Department of Education was ordered to produce this new, simpler FAFSA system at the same time it had to start collecting student loan payments, which had been on hiatus. That’s two massive projects without needed funding. The price of that cheapness will be high.

That’s something to remember the next time the federal government wants to “simplify” FAFSA.