CALCULATION ERROR

Feds Spoil Financial Aid Applications of 200,000 U.S. Students

A Department of Education spokesperson said that the faulty reports sent to colleges were caused by a “vendor issue,” but did not specify which vendor was responsible.

The U.S. Department of Education has sent out approximately 200,000 faulty student financial applications to colleges due to an error in its processing, the agency announced on Friday.

According to an announcement on the Federal Student Aid website, 1.3 million of the 1.5 million that the agency has processed were unaffected by this issue.

The announcement described the issue as a calculation error. “The FAFSA Processing System (FPS) was not including all data fields needed to correctly calculate the Student Aid Index (SAI) for dependent students who reported assets,” the announcement said.

Universities and colleges depend on FAFSA assessments from the federal government in order to craft financial aid packages.

A DOE spokesperson told USA Today that the faulty reports were caused by a “vendor issue,” but did not specify which vendor was responsible. While hundreds of thousands of records are being reprocessed, officials have recommended that schools offer tentative financial aid packages.

According to Justin Draeger, the president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, that suggestion “is not feasible or realistic.”

“At this stage in the game and after so many delays, every error adds up and will be felt acutely by every student who is counting on need-based financial aid to make their postsecondary dreams a reality," he said, according to USA Today.

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