\n<\/p>\n
The Education Department and its Office of Federal Student Aid typically hold a conference the first week of December each year.<\/p>\n
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | Caiaimage\/Chris Ryan\/iStock\/Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n Each year during the first week of December, the Department of Education has historically hosted the Federal Student Aid Training Conference to provide university administrators with updated education on regulations and technical systems. That hasn\u2019t happened this year.<\/p>\n Now, many financial aid experts are expressing their frustrations on social media, attributing the lapse to the Trump administration\u2019s major reductions in force and calling it a shortsighted mistake.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no conference. That\u2019s what happens when you fire many of the staff who organized and conducted the training,\u201d Byron Scott, a retired FSA staff member, wrote on LinkedIn. \u201cPerhaps in \u2018returning\u2019 this Department of Education function to the states\u2014where [it] never was\u2014the Department forgot to tell the states about this new responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n Department officials have neither announced the event\u2019s cancellation nor clarified whether and when it might take place. The conference website, where logistical information is traditionally posted, only says, \u201cInformation coming soon.\u201d <\/p>\n One senior department official who spoke with Inside Higher Ed <\/em>on the condition of anonymity said the conference is slated to occur in person in March. <\/p>\n \u201cThe announcement was queued up but the shutdown got in the way,\u201d the source wrote in a text message. \u201cI think the plan [will be released] in the coming days.\u201d<\/p>\n An Education Department spokesperson did not respond to questions about the March date but blamed any delay on the government shutdown.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Democrats shut down the government for 43 days, and as you can imagine, planning a conference is not an exempted activity,\u201d the spokesperson said. \u201cWe\u2019ll have more updates on this in the coming weeks.\u201d <\/p>\n If the conference is eventually held in person, it would be the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020.<\/p>\n The senior department official said they hope that \u201creturning the conference to in-person will make the wait worth it.\u201d <\/p>\n But Heidi Kovalick, director of financial aid at Rowan University, responded to Scott\u2019s LinkedIn post saying that right now is \u201ca critical time.\u201d <\/p>\n Financial aid officers have a lot to adapt to; the One Big Beautiful Bill Act mandated major changes to the student loan system, and the department issued regulations outlining new standards for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, among other significant shifts since Trump took office.<\/p>\n \u201cFin[ancial] aid administrators really need to hear from the experts,\u201d Kovalick wrote. \u201cOf course as others have mentioned, [it\u2019s] kind of hard when they have been forced out. We miss you all.\u201d<\/p>\n Regardless of whether staffing shortages or the government shutdown played a role in the delay, Melanie Storey, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said one of her greatest concerns is the tight timeline financial aid officers will face if the department does reschedule the conference for spring. <\/p>\n \u201cTruthfully, March is pretty soon\u2014three months away. Institutional budgets are tight. People are going to have to book flights and hotels, and you know that that can be expensive,\u201d she said. Still, the NASFAA president applauded the department for its effort to return the conference to an in-person event. <\/p>\n \u201cThe last few were virtual, which had mixed reviews. The sessions had to be prerecorded. They weren\u2019t always as timely. And there wasn\u2019t an opportunity for interaction. But those are all the things that financial aid professionals prioritize,\u201d she said. \u201cIf March is when they can do it, well, we\u2019ll be happy to see it in March.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Education Department and its Office of Federal Student Aid typically hold a conference the first week of December each year. Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | Caiaimage\/Chris Ryan\/iStock\/Getty Images Each year during the first week of December, the Department of Education has historically hosted the Federal Student Aid Training Conference to provide<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35893,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1122,6582,1016,3332,319,20148,781],"class_list":{"0":"post-35892","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-aid","9":"tag-conference","10":"tag-delayed","11":"tag-employees","12":"tag-federal","13":"tag-lament","14":"tag-university"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35892","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=35892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}