FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Allie Arcese
Sr. Director, Strategic Communications
(202) 785-6954
[email protected]

WASHINGTON, D.C., MARCH 12, 2025 — Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Tuesday evening announced the U.S. Department of Education (ED) would lay off roughly half of its 4,133-employee workforce as part of an effort to improve efficiency and accountability. The announcement comes as reports of a forthcoming executive order directing McMahon to take steps to dissolve the agency continue to percolate. 

The statement noted, “The Department of Education will continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under the agency’s purview, including formula funding, student loans, Pell Grants, funding for special needs students, and competitive grantmaking.”

In response to this news, NASFAA Interim President & CEO Beth Maglione provided the following statement:

“NASFAA has publicly cited the need for reorganization and greater accountability within the Department of Education, but any reform must be strategic — done with a scalpel, not a chainsaw. Our primary concern is the lack of transparency about which functional areas are being cut, why specific departments have been selected for dismantling, and how the transition will be managed without disruption to students or the nation’s institutions of higher education.

Claiming that eliminating half the Department won’t affect its services — without any clear plan to redistribute the workload — is, at best, naive and, at worst, deliberately misleading. It also raises serious concerns about how billions of dollars in federal student aid will continue to be disbursed to students without interruption.

The Department’s work is greater than the sum of its parts, and decimating entire teams within the agency could lead to unintended but dire consequences for critical systems — like the FAFSA — that depend on the work of multiple teams.

If there is a plan to reassign or redistribute the work of hundreds of federal employees to prevent disruptions for students and families, we strongly urge the administration to share it without delay.”

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About NASFAA

The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) is a nonprofit membership organization that represents more than 29,000 financial aid professionals at approximately 3,000 colleges, universities, and career schools across the country. NASFAA member institutions serve nine out of every 10 undergraduates in the U.S. Based in Washington, D.C., NASFAA is the only national association with a primary focus on student aid legislation, regulatory analysis, and training for financial aid administrators.