The Education Department is shrinking just as Congress upped its workload

Politico

17-07-2025

'The Department is also following the law and complying with numerous court orders to realign and strengthen the student loan portfolio,' Ellen Keast, deputy press secretary for the Education Department, said in a statement. 'We will continue to deliver meaningful and on time results while implementing the President's OBBB to better serve students, families, and administrators.'
Former Education Department workers and Democratic lawmakers are concerned more essential duties will slip through the cracks, most notably the department's new congressional mandate to launch two new student loan repayment plans.
'The Department is requiring many students with loans to change their student loan plan, but those students are unable to do so due to inadequate staff at the Department of Education, while, at the same time, more people are being fired,' Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the ranking member of the House Education and Workforce Committee, said at a hearing Tuesday.
If the department doesn't get the plans off the ground in time, it will just create more confusion and chaos for borrowers, said Melanie Storey, president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators and a former FSA leader.
'Its really confusing for borrowers,' Storey said. 'It's another barrier of entry for them and disincentive to enroll [in a loan repayment plan] when you have no certainty or predictability about what financing options are going to be available to you.'
Now that the mass cuts are solidified, it also renews concerns about the fast approaching launch of the 2026-27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which had significant delays and technical glitches in previous years.
The form already had issues when the department was fully staffed, Gittleman said. Former department staff have said the FAFSA team will have less support now that other employees, such as those in tech support roles that indirectly work on FAFSA, are gone.
'Even though the FAFSA team was untouched by the RIFs, no team operates in silos in FSA,' she said, referencing the Trump administration's reduction-in-force directive. 'Everything is intertwined.'
One day after the department fired nearly half its employees in March, students and parents across the country couldn't access FAFSA. Seventy-two employees spent hours on a Microsoft Teams call as part of an effort to fix the issue. The incident was quickly resolved, but many employees questioned whether the agency could handle future technical problems after so many of the other teams that indirectly support FAFSA experienced cuts.