U.S. Department of Education Announces Jeremy Singer as FAFSA Executive Advisor in the Office of Federal Student Aid

The U.S. Department of Education (Department) announced today Jeremy Singer as FAFSA Executive Advisor in the office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) to lead the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) overall strategy and accelerate technology innovation to further enhance FSA’s technical and operational capabilities.

FAFSA Executive Advisor
The Department is committed to carrying out transformational changes at FSA, including continuing making improvements to the Better FAFSA, and to ensure a smooth launch and successful 2025-26 FAFSA season. The Department is bringing on Jeremy Singer, a technology solutions expert, to help FSA deliver the Better FAFSA and improved experience for students and families.

Singer is taking temporary leave from his role as President of College Board to join the Department. He will lead FSA’s overall strategy on the 2025-26 FAFSA form, working closely with the Department’s leadership and the FAFSA implementation team to strengthen internal systems and processes, bolster technical capabilities, and drive innovation to help ensure optimal performance leading to the launch of the 2025-26 FAFSA form.

“Jeremy brings deep experience having successfully led the development and introduction of major technology innovations in education, which will be integral to improving the FAFSA experience and ensuring millions of students and families can easily access the federal financial aid they are entitled to,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

The Department remains committed to ensuring all students receive the federal aid they need to access higher education and is working to improve the application experience for the next FAFSA cycle. The Department has heard from students, families, institutions, states, and those that support them that it is most important for the 2025-26 FAFSA form to be available on October 1st, and the Department is working toward that goal. To minimize disruptions and ensure a smooth experience for students, families and institutions, the 2025-26 FAFSA will remain consistent with the 2024-25 form. The Department has made significant progress to address and resolve all major known issues with the 2024-25 form and will continue to make improvements to the form to enable a better user experience.

For the 2024-25 award year, which will begin July 1, 2024, the Department has already received and processed over 11.1 million FAFSA forms. The Department also released new data that show that it has made significant progress in closing the gap in FAFSA submissions to 8 percent compared to this time last year, down from nearly 40 percent in March. This FAFSA cycle was the culmination of extraordinary change:

• Over 20 systems within FSA, some over 50 years old, had to be rebuilt from the ground up.
• The changes have meant that students can complete the form faster – many in less than 15 minutes.
• 7.1 million students in total are expected to be eligible for Pell Grants, including 5.7 million students eligible for a maximum Pell Grant, making 1.7 million more students receiving the maximum Pell Grant. Overall, 665,000 more students will receive Pell grants.

The expansive scope and timeline of the changes for the 2024-25 FAFSA has been challenging for students, families, institutions, states, and organizations that support them. The Department will continue to work with partners and solicit specific feedback on ways to improve the help text on the form, student tip sheets, and other direct communication to students to ensure students can successfully complete the 2025-26 FAFSA. We will also conduct a series of listening sessions over the coming weeks to inform how we can better support students, families, colleges, states, and other partners for a successful 2025-26 FAFSA season.

In addition, the Department will publish a Request for Information (RFI) this summer to solicit feedback from those not able to attend the sessions. The listening sessions and RFI will also lead to the development of a new Better FAFSA Better Future Roadmap, to be released in late summer, that will outline new tools the Department is making available such as additional trainings, webinars, counselor guides, and student tip sheets.

FAFSA Student Support Strategy
In May, the Department launched the FAFSA Student Support Strategy to increase the number of students completing their FAFSAs and enrolling in college. This strategy has now provided over $30 million in funding and counting and has reached more than 180 organizations across the country.

The funding is supporting various projects and activities, including launching paid media campaigns to increase FAFSA completion, providing stipends to school counselors hosting FAFSA completion events, launching mobile FAFSA clinics, providing one-on-one support during FAFSA office hours, translation services, and other activities all organizations focused on ensuring that students and families are successful in submitting the 2024-25 FAFSA. This work will continue through the summer months.

A regularly updated list of awardees can be found at the ECMC website.