FAFSA delays had minimal impact on Delaware colleges

It’s safe to say Delaware’s institutions of higher education were not greatly impacted by the infamous nationwide Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) delays and problems in 2024.

“The completion of the FAFSA, for most institutions, has no impact on an applicant’s ability to be accepted,” said Randle Reed, director of admissions for Goldey-Beacom College in Wilmington. 

They take a look at the student’s academic record and the application itself to determine admission. 

“It’s funding their education where things get tricky,” he said. 

The school, as is commonplace, offers academic, merit, and endowment scholarships that serve as an essential tuition discount. 

Impact of FAFSA delays

Eric Johnson, director of financial aid at the school, said the debacle barely affected their enrollment numbers. 

“In fact, we exceeded our targets last year, but there’s an unknown, which is who was left out that truly wanted to come,” he said. “That, we’ll never know.”

FAFSA, is the gateway to federal, college, and state aid for college-bound students. 

The 2025-2026 FAFSA became available to students at the beginning of December, an improvement upon the timeline for the prior year’s application, which was marred by unprecedented delays and technical issues. 

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“Early indications are that the U.S. Department of Education has improved the process, which was made possible through partnerships with institutions like UD,” said the University of Delaware in a statement to Delaware LIVE News.  

UD was among several universities chosen by the Department of Education to beta-test the latest FAFSA and validate its data migration process. 

“Some of our current students and their families participated in this process, helping the University and the Department of Education ensure that applications were processed expeditiously,” UD stated. “These families have expressed happiness with the opportunity to complete FAFSA earlier this year and the relative ease associated with the process.”

The University hopes to begin notifying applicants of their award packages in February.

Brian Keister, director of financial aid at Delaware Technical Community College, pointed out his school is unique because it’s a community college and it provides the SEED (Student Excellence Equals Degree) Scholarship, which many students are on which takes some of the pressure and worry off of them receiving their FAFSA. 

He said enrollment hasn’t taken a dip.

Since students at Del Tech have an idea of their eligibility for the SEED scholarship, they don’t need to wait for the award notification to make their enrollment decisions.

The low tuition fees and lack of housing/meal plan costs at Del Tech make it an attractive option for students even without knowing their full financial aid package early on. 

It’s too early to tell how the FAFSA mishaps affected UD enrollment, but school leadership doesn’t think there’s red flags.

“While it is premature for us at this stage of the enrollment cycle to comment on the next incoming class, the university is seeing positive indicators,” UD’s statement read. “For example, the number of applications we have received from first-time, first-year students for Fall 2025 exceeds last year’s figures at this time of the cycle, year over year. Consider that, for Fall 2024, and for the seventh consecutive year, UD received a record number of first-year undergraduate student applications.”

These reasons, among others, demonstrate that interest in a University of Delaware education is strong, the school stated.

Johnson cited that many of the issues with the FAFSA delays boiled down to the Department of Education having problems with the software to transmit ISIR data to institutions, and ISIR is the institutional record of a FAFSA transaction.

FAFSA determinations typically come in during February or March, but last year, they came during April.

“That pushed some decision making around, and there were some students who said, ‘Hey, I have something on the paper on a table from this institution, but I’m still waiting from you’,” Johnson said. “Unfortunately, it’s that scenario where we have to sit and hold our hands say, ‘Well, we can’t really make a move until we receive your information’.”

There were some students that pushed their decision past May 1. 

“Some schools extended their decision deadlines as late as June, some even July,” Johnson said. “For us, ours isn’t a hard filing deadline on May 1. We prefer that you let us know you’re coming on May 1, but if you come on May 2, May 3, June, 3, July, 4, it doesn’t matter. We’ll still bring you in and get you going.”

So while there definitely were individual cases of students having to pass on Early Admission or Early Decision, or perhaps enrolled in a school that provided the financial help earlier, on a macro-level, enrollment wasn’t majorly impacted in Delaware’s institutions of higher education.

Multiple requests to interview Delaware State University and Wilmington University for this story were not successful.