\n<\/p>\n
Before the Department of Education laid off half its staff in March, college financial aid officers on the west coast could typically help a student track down their missing login information for the federal aid application in a matter of minutes.<\/p>\n
But now, due to limited hours of agency operation, tracking down a student\u2019s Federal Student Aid ID can take days or even weeks; an east coast-based help line, which used to be open until 8 p.m. now closes at 3 p.m.\u2014or noon Pacific time, according to Diane Cooper, the senior financial aid officer at Northwest Career College in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
For Cooper, the reduction in force has upended countless advising sessions and made it difficult to enroll working adult learners with tight schedules.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I have a student who\u2019s driven 30 minutes to get here and then we have this issue, I can\u2019t do anything,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cWhen they did this reduction, I don\u2019t think they thought about colleges on the west coast.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the past three months, the financial aid office at Northwest has tried to be proactive and warn students about retrieving their username and password in advance, but not everyone gets the message in time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen [prospective students] face a roadblock, it\u2019s very frustrating,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cI\u2019ve even had some people say, \u2018Well, college just must not be meant for me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Difficulties applying for financial aid are just one of the many road bumps students and university staff across the country have faced since Education Secretary Linda McMahon and the Department of Government Efficiency cut the department down to just over 2,000 employees\u2014about half of what it was during the Biden administration.<\/p>\n
The Department of Education told Inside Higher Ed<\/em> that all three of its help lines, the Federal Student Aid Information Center, FSA Partner School Relations and the FPS Helpdesk were open well past noon Pacific time.<\/p>\n \u201cJust within President Trump\u2019s first six months, the Department has responsibly managed and streamlined key federal student aid features, including fixing identity verification and simplifying parent invitations, while ensuring the 2026\u201327 FAFSA form is on track,\u201d said deputy press secretary Ellen Keast.<\/p>\n But Cooper said ever since the reduction in force if she calls FPS in the afternoon they are closed.<\/p>\n Since March, colleges, advocates and others have noticed lags in communication about financial aid. Between March 11 and June 27, the department also dismissed more than 3,400 civil rights complaints\u2014an unprecedented number, according to one former official. Additionally, the department ended an IPEDS training contract, among other changes at the Institute for Education Sciences, sparking concerns about the future of data collection at the agency.<\/p>\n Some college administrators expressed optimism that the staff shortage would be temporary after a district court blocked the layoffs in May. But the Supreme Court extinguished that hope last week when it overturned the ruling, giving McMahon the go-ahead to proceed with the pink slips and other efforts to dismantle her agency.<\/p>\n Now, higher education experts are adjusting to the reality of a smaller department for potentially years to come.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a whole lot easier to break things than it is to put them back together again,\u201d said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education (ACE).<\/p>\n He and others worry that the department\u2019s deficiencies will only get worse as staffers rush to overhaul the federal student loan system and implement other policies in the Big Beautiful Bill over the course of the next year. Add to that President Trump\u2019s plan to dismantle the department by transferring certain programs to other agencies and what you have, Mitchell said, is \u201ca mess.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI suppose we all need to adopt a \u2018time will tell\u2019 philosophy about this,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I for one am not optimistic.\u201d<\/p>\n Keast, on the other hand, said the department is complying with court orders and fulfilling its statutory duties.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will continue to deliver meaningful and on time results while implementing the President\u2019s [One Big Beautiful Bill] to better serve students, families, and administrators,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Cooper and Northwest Career College are not alone in struggling to get help from the Federal Student Aid Office. Nearly 60\u00a0percent of colleges and universities experienced noticeable changes in agency responsiveness or processing delays, according to a survey conducted by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators in May.<\/p>\n While 48\u00a0percent of respondents ranked front-facing glitches that directly affect students as their top concern, Melanie Storey, NASFAA\u2019s president and CEO, noted that the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and aid distribution have been operating relatively smoothly. Many of the challenges created by the reduction in force, she said, are actually taking place behind the scenes.<\/p>\n Nearly half of the institutions surveyed said that the FSA regional office they reported to had closed, and about a third said they were experiencing gaps in support as a result. Applying for the financial aid eligibility of a new program or addressing compliance concerns was already difficult before the regional offices closed, said Storey, who worked at FSA during the Biden administration. Now it will be even more arduous.<\/p>\n \u201cOur communities are just not getting answers to questions that they have,\u201d she explained. \u201cBut if we see a breakdown in that work, we will see a breakdown in the delivery of aid.\u201d<\/p>\n Paula Carpenter, the director of financial aid at Jefferson College, a community college in eastern Missouri, said the biggest unknown is whether she will be able to complete the college\u2019s recertification before the September 30 deadline and maintain its eligibility for federal aid.<\/p>\n In the past, when it was time to begin the recertification process, Carpenter received an email from staff at the FSA Kansas City office, which was one of eight that closed in March.<\/p>\n Now, \u201cI\u2019m uncertain on when I should submit the application, how long it\u2019s going to take, and the impact it will have on other changes along the way,\u201d she said. \u201cThe loss of those working relationships we had with the Kansas City participation team is definitely creating a lot of uncertainty.\u201d<\/p>\n Although critics have accused DOGE of operating in a rash and haphazard manner, one senior FSA official told Inside Higher Ed<\/em> that the decision to cut staff at the regional offices that handled eligibility and compliance was likely deliberate.<\/p>\n \u201cThe easiest place to cut is in functions that the broader public doesn\u2019t see, even if they may be impactful,\u201d said the official, who requested anonymity to speak freely. \u201cYou can\u2019t cut the FAFSA\u00a0\u2026 and you can\u2019t cut the teams that support the actual technology for dispersing aid and handling repayment, because then borrowers start calling the press and calling Congress,\u201d they added. \u201cBut if it just takes longer for schools to go through the process, get questions answered and get support then there\u2019s not a discrete pain.\u201d<\/p>\n But just because the pain may not be publicly distinct, that doesn\u2019t mean colleges aren\u2019t feeling it.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s never been a worse time to be starting or renewing a Title IV program, and there\u2019s never been a better time to be not following Title IV regulations,\u201d the staffer said.<\/p>\n Other concerns raised by higher education advocates are more focused on the future.<\/p>\n The sweeping Big, Beautiful Bill, signed into law July 4, includes a swath of higher education policy changes, ranging from revamping student loan repayment plans to introducing a novel accountability metric for colleges. Getting those changes implemented by July 1, 2026 with fewer employees is a tall order for the department, and many higher education advocates worry that the agency will struggle to pull it off.<\/p>\n Mitchell from ACE fears that a general lack of data will hamper efforts to implement the new policies. The Institute for Education Sciences, an agency focused on collecting and analyzing education data to inform policy, was almost entirely gutted by the layoffs. Fewer than 20 employees remain, down from more than 175 at the start of the year, according to the Hechinger Report.<\/em> <\/em>The National Center for Education Statistics, one of the most crucial arms of IES, is down to just three staff members.<\/p>\n Without IES fully staffed, Mitchell worries colleges and universities will be held to new student outcome standards based on inaccurate data.<\/p>\n \u201cWho will be on the other side receiving information about program level earnings? We don\u2019t know,\u201d he said, referring to the new post-graduation income test that colleges will have to pass. \u201cIf the cuts go through the way they are planned, higher education will largely be flying blind. We won\u2019t know what programs and interventions will work to improve student success at the very moment when higher ed is facing a crisis of confidence about whether it is doing the right thing for students.\u201d<\/p>\n Without the department, colleges will have to increase their own technical capacities, he added, and that comes at a cost.<\/p>\n The department acknowledged that the bill includes major changes to the federal student aid system and the development of a new accountability program but said that, with billions of dollars in federal funding, the Office of Federal Student Aid will be able to complete both projects.<\/p>\n More disruptions are expected at the department in months to come as the Trump administration aims to shift certain responsibilities and programs to other agencies. Last week, shortly after the Supreme Court ruling, McMahon formally announced a plan to move career, technical (CTE) and adult education programs to the Labor Department. Trump and other officials have also talked about moving the federal student loan program to either the Small Business Administration or the Treasury Department.<\/p>\n But the FSA official said the department is using the transfer of smaller CTE programs as a test run first and will take its time to move the federal aid system\u2014if it does at all. The official is also confident the department will be able to put the new policies and programs in motion, but only if Congress extends the deadlines.<\/p>\n \u201cI think there\u2019s a wide recognition, including on the Hill, that the timelines in the bill aren\u2019t realistic,\u201d the official said. \u201cI feel good about being able to get [it] done\u00a0\u2026 [But] if the question is, can we hit all the details and all the timelines? I think that\u2019s impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n Both the department staffer and Storey from NASFAA said that if lawmakers and White House staff are smart, they will apply the lessons learned from the last time FSA overhauled student aid programs. For the Biden administration, pressure to finish a big project in a short amount of time, combined with a lack of feedback from college leaders, led to a botched rollout of the new financial aid application, they said. Hopefully, this time things will be different.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we learned anything from the FAFSA debacle, it was that while the department was struggling to get their implementation in order, they neglected institutions and vendors who are incredibly important partners in that ecosystem of delivering aid,\u201d Storey said. \u201cLet us not make that mistake again. Ignore the role of institutions, at your peril. They are the front lines.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Before the Department of Education laid off half its staff in March, college financial aid officers on the west coast could typically help a student track down their missing login information for the federal aid application in a matter of minutes. But now, due to limited hours of agency operation, tracking down a student\u2019s Federal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1867,4673,280,496,4058,1472],"class_list":{"0":"post-11584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-affect","9":"tag-colleges","10":"tag-dept","11":"tag-education","12":"tag-layoffs","13":"tag-mass"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Behind the Scenes \u2018Breakdown\u2019<\/h2>\n
Future of \u2018Flying Blind\u2019<\/h2>\n