"The Biden-era U.S. Education Department, under Secretary Miguel Cardona, endured more than its fair share of crises over the past four years," NPR reports.

... "The Biden education team's other notable success may surprise you."

"'Ironically, one of their successes,' says Karen McCarthy with the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), 'is in the area of loan forgiveness. And I feel like, to a lot of other people, they see loan forgiveness as one of [Biden's] failures.'"

"McCarthy is one of several experts in our poll to highlight that Biden pursued two different strategies to achieve federal student loan forgiveness: an ambitious, high-profile strategy that failed (more on that in a minute) and a lower-profile, bureaucratic strategy that succeeded."

... "More than 17 million current and aspiring college students fill out the FAFSA each year in order to qualify for student loans, grants and more. For many, the form is nothing short of a bridge between students' hopes and dreams, and college. In late 2023, that FAFSA bridge collapsed."

"The short version of this story is that, in 2020, Congress voted to make the FAFSA easier to complete, but that required the U.S. Department of Education to overhaul the online form – and the launch of that new form did not go well."

"'My gosh, that was so bad,' says McCarthy, whose group, NASFAA, represents college financial aid administrators. 'The FAFSA is normally up by October, and really nobody could start filling it out until January.'"

"There wasn't just one problem with the rollout – there were many. (The nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office has outlined them in detail.)"

"McCarthy says those problems resulted in the department taking months longer than usual to send students' financial aid information on to schools. 'It really is quite amazing that students got aid packages and enrolled in the fall.'"

NASFAA's "Notable Headlines" section highlights media coverage of financial aid to help members stay up to date with the latest news. Articles included under the notable headlines section are not written by NASFAA, but rather by external sources. Inclusion in Today's News does not imply endorsement of the material or guarantee the accuracy of information presented.

Publication Date: 1/16/2025