"Last year the financial aid world was thrown into chaos after a newly overhauled Free Application for Federal Student Aid launched with glaring technical errors and user issues. Now, government officials and financial aid professionals say the Trump administration’s mass layoffs and spending cuts at the Education Department are threatening to cause a repeat," Inside Higher Ed reports.

... "Karen McCarthy, vice president of public policy and federal relations for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said financial aid officers at colleges and universities are also stuck in this 'wait and see' mentality. After weathering back-to-back storms—the COVID pandemic and last year’s bungled FAFSA rollout—they were hoping to catch their breath. That seems unlikely now."

"'In our community, people are saying this is the next crisis period,' she said. 'There is concern this will be significantly disruptive for financial aid, with a lot of unknowns and changing information that are hard to adapt to.'"

... "McCarthy said the outage seemed to belie a larger issue post-RIF: that the department no longer had the capacity to fix what should have been a small glitch before it affected hundreds or thousands of families."

"'Our concern is we might see more of those kinds of things in the future,' McCarthy said. 'The FAFSA team people aren’t the ones maintaining the website … they may not have the support to do what they need to.'"

... "But McCarthy said the vendor performance team did more than ensure contractors were meeting deadlines: They helped explain what bureaucrats and policymakers expected from the contractors and, in turn, what was realistic on the contractors’ end."

"'They’re making sure everyone knows what to do: with compliance, with expectations and training and making sure everyone is on the same page,' McCarthy said. 'It’s not just cracking the whip. It’s support, and the vendors need that.'"

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: 3/27/2025