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Department of Education
Federal Student Aid
Description
Federal Student Aid (FSA) seeks to ensure that all eligible individuals can benefit from Federal financial assistance for education beyond high school. FSA provides more than $120 billion in grants, work-study, and loan funds each year to help pay for college or career school. FSA processes approximately 20 million FAFSA submissions annually.
Designated Services
Previously-reported Services
Applying for Federal student aid
Description
Each year, the Federal Student Aid (FSA) processes more than 17 million Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) forms, resulting in the delivery of over a billion dollars in Title IV aid to more than 10 million postsecondary students and their families. Customers, or FAFSA filers, are U.S. citizens or eligible noncitizens who enroll in an eligible degree or certificate program at an eligible college or career school. As the nation’s largest provider of student financial aid, Federal Student Aid (FSA), a principal office of the United States Department of Education, seeks to ensure that all eligible individuals can benefit from federal financial assistance for education beyond high school. The aid provided through FSA covers expenses such as tuition and fees, room and board, books and supplies, and transportation, enabling millions to invest in their future.
Starting in October each year, prospective and current higher education students use the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) to apply for federal student aid in grants, work-study opportunities, and loans for college, career, or career or career graduate school. The FAFSA form assesses financial need and eligibility, and many states and colleges use FAFSA information to determine eligibility for state and school aid. Prospective aid recipients must complete the FAFSA form to obtain federal financial aid. There is no income cut-off to qualify for federal student aid applied for through the FAFSA form, and many factors—such as the size of the filer’s family and year in school—are considered.
Why this service was designated
The FAFSA form provides access to the single largest source of federal financial aid to pay for higher education. Each year, more than $115 billion in federal funds are provided to over 10 million students at more than 5,600 participating postsecondary schools.
Quarterly data reported
Q3 2023
What we learned from this quarter's data:
For the FAFSA (housed on studentaid.gov (web)) customer satisfaction survey, as expected during the third quarter of the federal government fiscal year, for all seven metrics, respondents have provide a higher percentage of the highest score (i.e., strongly agree). More than 63% of respondents provide the highest score for each metric with more than 70% for 3 of the metrics (trust/confidence, process/ease, and people/employee).
Service details
Transaction point: at FAFSA submission
Channel: website
People served: 3900000
Surveys offered: 191000
Responses: 1700
Q2 2023
What we learned from this quarter's data:
For the FAFSA (housed on studentaid.gov (web)) customer satisfaction survey, as expected during the second quarter of the federal government fiscal year, survey scores have increased for 6 of the 7 metrics. For 5 of 7 metrics, more than 60% of respondents provided the highest scores (i.e., strongly agree).
Service details
Transaction point: at FAFSA submission
Channel: website
People served: 5300000
Surveys offered: 250000
Responses: 2330
Q1 2023
What we learned from this quarter's data:
For the FAFSA (housed on studentaid.gov (web)) customer satisfaction survey, as expected during the first quarter of the federal government fiscal year, which is also the first quarter for the new FAFSA cycle, scores decrease since a higher proportion of dependent applicants file FAFSAs than independent applicants. (Dependent FAFSA applicants file more complex FAFSAs since they have to report more information.) Not surprisingly, for 4 of the 7 metrics, survey respondents provided the highest scores (i.e., strongly agree) at a lower percentage than last quarter. For 5 of 7 metrics, more than 60% of respondents provided the highest scores. One welcome change was that the people metric (courtesy or representative) did experience higher scores this quarter, which we hope will continue to improve this fiscal year. Since the myStudentAid App was retired at the end of June 2022, there were no scores for that survey this quarter.
Service details
Transaction point: at FAFSA submission
Channel: website
People served: 5400000
Surveys offered: 174000
Responses: 1510
Applying for Public Service Loan Forgiveness
Description
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program encourages and rewards public service by providing debt relief to borrowers in full-time public service jobs such as military service, AmeriCorps or Peace Corps volunteers, employees of 501(c)(3) nonprofits, and U.S. government employees at all levels, federal, state, local, or tribal. Borrowers interested in the program use the PSLF Help Tool to assess whether their current or former employers qualify, identify actions they can take to become eligible, and guide themselves through the form and submission process. The tool is used at any time to qualify current or past employment, or after making 120 qualifying payments, a user can apply to receive loan forgiveness through the PSLF program. In addition, amounts forgiven under the PSLF Program are not considered income by the Internal Revenue Service. Therefore, recipients do not have to pay federal income tax on forgiven Direct Loans.
Why this service was designated
The PSLF is a vital promise to provide debt relief to support the teachers, nurses, firefighters, and others serving their communities through hard work essential to our country’s success. PSLF removes the burden of student debt on public servants, makes it possible for many borrowers to stay in their jobs, and entices others to work in high-need fields.
Previously-reported Services
Prior to the first service designation exercise in 2022, HISPs were collecting data using methods unique to each agency, resulting in data that was not standardized. This previously-reported data was collected to increase visibility and awareness regarding customer experience through feedback data. Per A-11 guidance, service providers will collect feedback in a more standardized way.
Applying for Financial Aid
Description
FSA measures customer satisfaction of the FAFSA submission process on its FAFSA.gov and the myStudentAid App.
Quarterly data reported
Q4 2022
What we learned from this quarter's data:
For the FAFSA (housed on studentaid.gov (web)) customer satisfaction survey, for 4 of the 7 metrics, survey respondents provided the highest scores (i.e., strongly agree) at a higher percentage than last quarter. For all 7 metrics, more than 60% of respondents provided the highest scores. The people metric (courtesy or representative) did experience lower scores this quarter, which we hope will improve next fiscal year. Since the myStudentAid App was retired at the end of June 2022, there were no scores for that survey this quarter. Scores for this survey were always phenomenal, and we can apply our success learned to the web application when users file a FAFSA on a mobile device.
Service details
Transaction point: at FAFSA submission
Channel: computer
People served: 2600000
Surveys offered: 280000
Responses: 2400
Q3 2022
What we learned from this quarter's data:
For the FAFSA (housed on studentaid.gov (web)) customer satisfaction survey, for the effectiveness/service metric on Help Usefulness more respondents provided a highest score (i.e., strongly agree) in Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 3rd quarter when compared to the 2nd quarter. For all 7 metrics, more than 50% of respondents, provided the highest scores (i.e., strongly agree). For the myStudentAid App (mobile FAFSA) survey, for six of the seven metrics, there was an increase in respondents providing the highest scores (i.e., strongly agree) when comparing the FY 2022 3rd to the FY 2022 2nd quarter. Since the myStudentAid App was retired at the end of June 2022, this will be the last quarter Federal Student Aid will report on these metrics for this survey. Scores for this survey were always phenomenal, and we can apply our success learned here to the web app when users file a FAFSA on a mobile device.
Service details
Transaction point: at FAFSA submission
Channel: computer
People served: 3500000
Surveys offered: 158000
Responses: 1730
Transaction point: At FAFSA submission
Channel: mobile
People served: 107000
Surveys offered: 107000
Responses: 660
Q2 2022
What we learned from this quarter's data:
For the FAFSA (housed on studentaid.gov (web)) customer satisfaction survey, more respondents provided a highest score (i.e., strongly agree) in Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 second quarter when compared to the 1st quarter across all 7 metrics. For 6 of the 7 metrics (except efficiency), more than 60% of respondents, provided the highest scores (i.e., strongly agree). Similarly for the myStudentAid App (mobile FAFSA) survey, across all seven metrics, there was an increase in respondents providing the highest scores (i.e., strongly agree) when comparing the Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 2nd to the FY 2022 1st quarter. For all seven metrics, more than 60% of survey respondents provided the highest scores (strongly agree).
Service details
Transaction point: at FAFSA submission
Channel: computer
People served: 5100000
Surveys offered: 224000
Responses: 2300
Transaction point: At FAFSA submission
Channel: mobile
People served: 154000
Surveys offered: 154000
Responses: 1000
Q1 2022
What we learned from this quarter's data:
For the FAFSA (newly-housed on studentaid.gov (web)) customer satisfaction survey, as is typical for the first quarter of the fiscal year, respondents provided lower scores across all metrics when comparing the Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 4th quarter to the FY 2022 1st quarter. For the efficiency metric (timeliness of responding to help), less than half (47.1%) of survey respondents provided the highest scores (i.e., strongly agree) . Similarly, for the myStudentAid App (mobile FAFSA) survey, respondents provided lower scores across all seven metrics when comparing the Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 4th quarter to the FY 2022 1st quarter. Despite the lower scores, for all seven metrics, more than 60% of survey respondents provided the highest scores (strongly agree) for every question.
Service details
Transaction point: at FAFSA submission
Channel: computer
People served: 5200000
Surveys offered: 2400000
Responses: 30600
Transaction point: At FAFSA submission
Channel: mobile
People served: 153000
Surveys offered: 153000
Responses: 1370
Q4 2021
What we learned from this quarter's data:
For the FAFSA.gov customer satisfaction survey, for all seven metrics, more than 62% of survey respondents provided the highest satisfaction scores (i.e. “strongly agree”). The FY 2021 4th quarter respondents gave the highest satisfaction scores (i.e. “strongly agree”) across six of the seven metrics compared to the Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 3rd quarter respondents. Although for remaining metric, “Willingness to use website in future - Likelihood of applying again”, FY2021 4th quarter respondents gave slightly lower satisfaction scores, of negligible difference, compared to FY2021 3rd quarter respondents.
For the myStudentAid App (mobile FAFSA) survey, for all seven metrics, more than 68% of FY 2021 4th quarter survey respondents provided the highest satisfaction scores (i.e. “strongly agree”). The FY 2021 4th quarter respondents gave the highest satisfaction scores (i.e. “strongly agree”) across all seven metrics compared to the Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 3rd quarter. (This is the second consecutive quarterly increase for all seven metrics.)
Service details
Transaction point: at FAFSA submission
Channel: computer
People served: 2500000
Surveys offered: 447000
Responses: 5850
Transaction point: At FAFSA submission
Channel: mobile
People served: 89000
Surveys offered: 89000
Responses: 740
Q3 2021
What we learned from this quarter's data:
For the FAFSA.gov customer satisfaction survey, respondents provided higher scores across all seven metrics when comparing the Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 2nd quarter to the FY 2021 3rd quarter. For all seven metrics, more than 60% of survey respondents provided the highest scores. For the myStudentAid App (mobile FAFSA) survey, a similar story, respondents provided higher scores across all seven metrics when comparing the Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 2nd quarter to the FY 2021 3rd quarter. For all seven metrics, more than 60% of survey respondents provided the highest scores.
Service details
Transaction point: at FAFSA submission
Channel: computer
People served: 3200000
Surveys offered: 145000
Responses: 2060
Transaction point: At FAFSA submission
Channel: mobile
People served: 108000
Surveys offered: 108000
Responses: 710
Q2 2021
What we learned from this quarter's data:
For the FAFSA.gov customer satisfaction survey, respondents provided lower scores across all seven metrics when comparing the Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 1st quarter to the FY 2021 2nd quarter. There were some flow errors that emerged in February 2021, that were patched in March 2021, so scores did rebound by the end of the quarter, but the error occurred around some of the largest state filing deadlines (for state aid around March 2, 2021), which amplified the issue. For the myStudentAid App (mobile FAFSA), a similar story, there were some flow errors that emerged in February 2021, that were patched in March 2021, so scores did rebound, but the error occurred around some of the largest state filing deadlines (for state aid around March 2, 2021), which amplified the issue.
Service details
Transaction point: at FAFSA submission
Channel: computer
People served: 46000000
Surveys offered: 267000
Responses: 3000
Transaction point: At FAFSA submission
Channel: mobile
People served: 166000
Surveys offered: 166000
Responses: 1100
Q1 2021
What we learned from this quarter's data:
For the FAFSA.gov customer satisfaction survey, as expected, respondents provided lower scores across six of seven metrics when comparing the Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 4th quarter to the FY 2021 1st quarter as during the first quarter of the FAFSA cycle, there are more dependent FAFSA filers. (Dependent filers have more complex FAFSAs than independent filers as dependent applicants have to report parental information in addition to themselves.) Despite this seasonal trend, survey respondents providing the highest score for courtesy of help representative increased quarter over quarter, and for two metrics 70% of survey respondents provided the highest score. For the myStudentAid App (mobile FAFSA), customer satisfaction scores still remain extremely high, and the customers are still pleased with the app for filing their FAFSA. In the FY 2021 1st quarter, 4 myStudentAid App metrics 70% of respondents provided the highest score, and for respondents who responded how likely they would use myStudentAid App (mobile FAFSA) in the future, 80% or more continued to provide the highest score.
Service details
Transaction point: at FAFSA submission
Channel: computer
People served: 6600000
Surveys offered: 186000
Responses: 3000
Transaction point: At FAFSA submission
Channel: mobile
People served: 26000
Surveys offered: 26000
Responses: 1000