Dive Brief:
- Two prominent Republican lawmakers are accusing the U.S. Department of Education of “stonewalling” an investigation into the botched rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
- The U.S. Government Accountability Office opened an investigation into the rollout earlier this year. But the head of the congressional watchdog recently notified the Education Department that it hasn’t received “many of the requested items” from the agency, according to a Friday letter from the lawmakers.
- An Education Department spokesperson said Monday that the agency has received the letter from Republican lawmakers and remains committed to responding to the GAO’s requests as soon as possible.
Dive Insight:
The revamped FAFSA aimed to simplify the process of applying for federal financial aid, including Pell Grants and loans. But the Education Department’s debut of the form was beset by frequent delays, technical glitches and last-minute changes, spurring concerns that some high school students will forgo college because of issues with the form.
Indeed, nearly 1.8 million high school seniors completed the FAFSA through late May, down 14.4% compared to the same time last year, according to a recent analysis from the National College Attainment Network.
Republicans have frequently accused the Education Department of focusing on other priorities, such as student loan forgiveness, to the detriment of the new form’s rollout. U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona denied this allegation last week during a fireside chat at the Education Writers Association’s conference in Las Vegas.
“The idea of ‘We took resources away from this [FAFSA] to do that’ is false,” Cardona said.
In a Wednesday letter to GAO Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, the Education Department’s general counsel said the department has “responded where it could” to the office’s requests while continuing to work on the FAFSA rollout.
“Overall, the Department has been providing responsive information to nearly every category of request, with our tempo increasing as staff working around the clock on FAFSA have had more time to devote to other key priorities such as these GAO engagements without further jeopardizing the 2024-25 FAFSA,” General Counsel Lisa Brown wrote.
Brown also noted that some data wasn’t available and, in other cases, staff members must collect and aggregate some of the requested data, which the department expects to be available in June.
However, the two Republican lawmakers — Sen. Bill Cassidy, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate’s education committee, and Rep. Virginia Foxx, chair of the House’s education committee — echoed concerns about FAFSA taking a backseat to other priorities in their letter to the Education Department on Friday.
They pointed to recent reporting from The New York Times, which found that Education Department staff warned top officials in 2020 that revamping the form would be a major overhaul with tight deadlines. The Education Department requested a one-year extension from Congress to complete the overhaul in response, but the rollout was still plagued with issues.
According to Cassidy and Foxx, that’s because the Education Department has focused on debt relief.
“Instead of taking these concerns seriously, the Biden Administration proceeded to channel extensive resources away from congressionally mandated responsibilities, including the return to repayment and FAFSA simplification, and toward projects that were not sanctioned by Congress at all, including the Biden Administration’s illegal loan forgiveness scheme,” Cassidy and Foxx wrote in their letter.
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