In our spotlight on Business Report tonight, there's more uncertainty for higher ed students.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, will once again be pushed back to a December release date.

That's about two months later than it's typically available.

And the problems stem from last year's botched rollout, which left scores of students in New Jersey and all across the U.S. in limbo about whether their financial aid packages and even scholarship money would be processed in time for the start of classes.

For all the latest, I'm joined by Hannah Gross our education and child welfare writer.

Hannah, good to see you.

Thanks for coming in.

So what is happening this time?

Because students are seeing this and it's sort of like deja vu from last year.

Students in colleges are still feeling the impact of the rollout of a new federal student aid form that was released last year, supposed to get off the ground by October 1st.

Right now, they're going into testing with the really small number of students before it's widely available, likely at the beginning of December.

So like a beta testing.

Is this something that maybe would have helped last year had they done that?

Yes, The Government Accountability Office actually found that it wasn't properly tested last year and that contributed to some of the issues.

So they're working to correct that this year, adding more staff, adding more customer service reps at the federal Department of Education.

So what implication, if any, will this two month delay have for students?

I mean, because classes have already started.

Yeah.

So for kids who are current high school seniors and who are thinking about attending college next year, it kind of just compresses the timeline.

So they'll have to apply for aid starting in December instead of October.

This will give colleges less time to process some of that financial information and could impact when they're giving out aid offers to students.

And impact the college decision process.

I mean, but you've been on this story for the last year and you've had conversations with families, with students.

What type of real life effect has this had on folks?

I mean, what have they shared with you about either not being able to attend school or maybe putting a school on a back burner because of worries about being able to pay for it?

Yeah, I mean, initial college decision day of May 1st, that came up before a lot of students had received their financial aid offers.

So without extensions, they would have to make a decision about if they wanted to attend college, where they wanted to attend college without really knowing how much that would cost them and their families, which is a really tough decision to make.

Yeah, I mean, it's also just so compressed, right?

I mean, in order for them to weigh different packages, sort of compare them, I would imagine that time is also limited.

Mm hmm.

FAFSA is used by students, by colleges.

It can help unlock federal aid, state aid, and also school specific aid.

So it's billions of dollars.

So what's been I mean, in your reporting, you have some of the pushback from our federal leaders.

What do they want to see happen from the U.S. Department of Education here?

They want to see more support for students who are going through this, filling out this application and want to get their aid information in a timely manner.

And also for colleges who are suffering as a result of this, too, it's put a lot of strain on financial aid offices who had to deal with all of this in a much shorter time period than usual.

And it's also caused a decline in enrollments, especially in some of those smaller private colleges that depend a lot on tuition.

Yeah.

Let's not forget those folks, those heroes who work in those offices who have really been under the gun.

Very quickly, you wrote about the new graduation required.

How does that play in with this application form?

I mean, it makes filling out FAFSA even more important because the graduating high school class for this year will need to fill it out in order to graduate unless they get an exemption either from themselves, if they're 18, from a parent or guardian or from a school counselor.

And last year, just a little bit more than 50% of students in the graduating class completed it.

So they need to bring those numbers up.

Yeah, big time, I would say.

Hannah Gross Is our education and child welfare writer.

You can read her full report online at NJ Spotlight News.org.

Hannah, thanks so much.

Thank you Bri.