Caught up in President Biden’s loan-cancellation schemes, the department has neglected its congressionally mandated duties to the detriment of students. President Biden's various attempts to get around Congress to forgive student loans have been misguided and costly for taxpayers. But the attention his Education Department lavishes on debt cancellation has arguably led senior officials at the department to neglect tasks Congress actually authorized them to perform. A case in point is the disastrous rollout of the updated Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which will delay financial-aid decisions for millions of college students. Some of the affected students could miss out on going to college entirely as a result.
The FAFSA overhaul should have been a straightforward affair. At the end of 2020, Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act. This bipartisan bill was a special priority of former senator Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.), who retired that year. It directed the Education Department to simplify the form which aspiring college students complete to qualify for Pell Grants and other federal aid. While the old FAFSA stretched beyond 100 questions, Alexander's bill whittled that down to as few as 18. The law also simplified the formula used to award Pell Grants, so financial aid would be more predictable.
The department was supposed to have the simplified FAFSA ready for the 2024–25 academic year, meaning it had three full years to prepare and test the new form. But when it launched at the end of December, the new online FAFSA was available for a little as 30 minutes per day. Social media abounded with stories of frustrated students experiencing glitches, lockouts, and crashes. The department also miscalculated students' financial-aid awards by a collective $2 billion after it forgot to adjust for inflation.
Three months later, the FAFSA is at least available 24 hours a day. But over a dozen outstanding issues still inhibit or prevent some students from submitting the form. New horror stories trickle out almost daily. The New York Times reported earlier this month that the department directed students who couldn't access the form online to send their information by email instead. But no one at the department was assigned to check the email account, meaning 70,000 emails from frustrated students went unread.
All this chaos has had a real cost for America's aspiring college students. Normally by this time of the year, around 48 percent of high-school seniors submit a FAFSA, according to the National College Attainment Network. This year, only 32 percent of seniors have submitted the form. While some students will belatedly submit their FAFSAs, the delays could cause many to miss out on application deadlines for state and private scholarships. It's even possible that some will give up on pursuing college altogether.
The Education Department has also dawdled in transmitting students' FAFSA information to colleges, which need the data to calculate financial-aid packages. While the department claims it is now transmitting the data in large batches, colleges tell another story. An official at Fordham University, for instance, says his school usually receives around 100,000 FAFSA-based student records per year. As of last week, Fordham had received a grand total of three this year. Students' financial-aid decisions are almost certain to be delayed.
What went wrong? Democrats have been quick to blame Republicans in Congress for underfunding the Education Department. But congressional Republicans proposed a 20 percent increase in funding for student-aid administration, on the condition that the extra money not be used for President Biden's various loan-cancellation schemes. Democrats and the White House rejected that offer.
Moreover, all indications suggest the critical resource in short supply was not money, but the attention of senior staff. An Inside Higher Education investigation, drawing on sources familiar with the FAFSA changes, found that the department underestimated the work involved in the FAFSA overhaul from the get-go and viewed the project primarily as a system issue – one that wasn't as high-profile as their other ambitious plans.
Those ambitious plans include President Biden's failed $400 billion attempt to cancel student loans without congressional approval. They also include a $475 billion overhaul of student-loan-repayment plans, more than $130 billion of loan forgiveness by other means, and a flurry of regulations targeting the for-profit-college industry. None of those initiatives were mandated by Congress, and some blatantly violate legislative intent.
Student debt relief, a marquee plank of Biden's presidential platform, drew much of the department's focus as officials took on the arduous task of fixing and streamlining the dysfunctional student loan system, reported Inside Higher Education.
FAFSA simplification falls under the purview of Richard Cordray, who heads the Office of Federal Student Aid. Cordray has no experience in student-aid administration; rather, he is an Elizabeth Warren ally with a long career in Democratic politics. Progressive groups hailed his appointment in 2021 on the ultimately correct assumption that he would be open to their loan-cancellation demands. Whether he was up to the task Congress had actually assigned him was apparently less of a concern.
The Education Department's FAFSA failure ultimately comes down to priorities: Officials in the Biden administration decided that the humdrum work of ensuring that the department upholds its congressionally mandated obligations to students wasn't worth their time. More alluring were unconstitutional schemes to cancel student debt in an effort to boost Democratic prospects during a midterm-election year. And the consequences are now falling on the shoulders of prospective college students across America.
Preston Cooper is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity.