US education department insiders warn student loan system at risk: 'The gatekeepers are gone'
Source: The Guardian
Mon 24 Mar 2025 07.00 EDT
Last modified on Mon 24 Mar 2025 07.03 EDT
Hundreds of firings inside the federal government’s student aid department have sparked concern among workers and student loan advocates, who warn that the student loan system is at risk. Linda McMahon, the wrestling industry billionaire now serving as education secretary, has presented the sweeping cuts as an efficiency drive. But employees within the US Department of Education warn they set the stage for widespread fraud and abuse.
“They got rid of all of the quality checkers. It’s only a matter of time [before] they cause the whole system to fail,” said one senior official who was spared by the cuts. They requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. “If this was a bank, and they fired all the quality assurance team, their regulator would have shut them down,” the official said. “It’s the opposite of safety.”
Federal Student Aid, a unit within the education department, oversees $1.6tn in student loans. At least 300 of its employees were dismissed last week. Following the firings, Trump signed an executive order on Thursday instructing McMahon to start dismantling the Department of Education, in an apparent attempt to circumvent the need to obtain congressional approval to formally close a federal department.
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (Fafsa) website also experienced an hours-long outage. Officials denied it was related to the cuts. The senior official argued the blitz will likely result in more issues, such as longer wait times to get in contact with loan service providers, and more errors. “As an organization, we were already doing a lot more work than our staffing provides. We would need 10 times more people for a bank of our size,” they said. The Trump administration is also “lying” about how the cuts were targeted, according to the official. “They said they got rid of low performers, but they didn’t do any of that assessment.”
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/24/student-loan-aid-department-firings
= new reply since forum marked as read
