There are few things on the Biden administration’s long list of failures that so exemplify pure ineptitude as the rollout of the simplified Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Three months after finally launching, the Department of Education can’t stop messing it up.

The latest error from the incompetent and bloated agency was a calculation mistake that resulted in the belated transmission of student data to colleges that will delay financial aid award letters for some 200,000 students.

This was not how it was supposed to go.

The 2024-25 FAFSA application was supposed to mark a new era for the federal college financial aid application. The application, long a burden on students seeking help with their tuition, was simplified and the whole process of applying was going to be streamlined.

Instead, there has been one rollout failure after another, with the same students who were supposed to benefit from the new application being those most harmed by the Department of Education’s repeated failures.

First it was a delay in the release of the application. Instead of launching on Oct. 1 as normal, the application didn’t launch until the end of 2023. This created a delay in transmitting student data to colleges so that financial aid packages could be properly awarded. Then, when the department finally started sending the data to the schools, it was three months late and was accompanied by the most recent calculation error.

The cascade of failures in rolling out the new FAFSA application has had real-world effects. Students will get their financial aid letters far later than normal, thus affecting their ability to make informed decisions about where they intend to attend college. In turn, colleges could face a steep enrollment drop as students delay their college decisions or put off attending school altogether.

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For the Biden administration and the Department of Education, this comedy of errors all takes place amid a backdrop of policy initiatives that are aimed at bolstering the president’s left-wing credentials. This includes defying the Supreme Court with student loan forgiveness, ignoring foreign influence in higher education, and rolling back regulations meant to protect due process rights, athletic programs and single-sex facilities for women, and religious freedom.

If the department had bothered to tackle the rollout of the updated FAFSA application with the same zeal it has dedicated to enacting a wish list of far-left policy goals, perhaps the application would be functional and students wouldn’t be at the mercy of incompetent government bureaucrats as they make critical decisions regarding their future.