WASHINGTON – An hours-long outage Wednesday on StudentAid.gov, the federal web site for pupil loans and monetary assist, underscored the dangers in rapidly gutting the Department of Education, as President Donald Trump aims to dismantle the agency.
A whole lot of customers reported FAFSA outages to Downdetector beginning noon Wednesday, saying they had been having hassle finishing the shape, which is required for monetary assist at faculties nationwide. The Nationwide Affiliation of Pupil Monetary Support Directors, a gaggle of people that deal with faculties’ monetary assist awards, additionally obtained reviews of customers experiencing technical points and having hassle finishing the FAFSA.
“We’ve been making an attempt to get extra readability on why it’s down,” stated Allie Bidwell Arcese, a spokeswoman for NASFAA. The Training Division hadn’t shared any info on the outage, she stated. “The upkeep and troubleshooting could also be impacted by yesterday’s layoffs.”
The builders and IT help workers who labored on the FAFSA kind had been arduous hit within the Training Division’s layoffs Tuesday, together with workers buyouts and the termination of probationary workers. In all, the Training Division has lowered its workers by half, to roughly 2,000, since Trump took workplace.
A list of laid-off staff obtained and verified by AP exhibits greater than 300 folks minimize from Federal Pupil Support — two dozen of them from Federal Pupil Support’s expertise division. That included the complete workforce accountable for methods supporting the FAFSA kind, an individual with information of the outage informed The Related Press, talking anonymously for concern of retaliation. Whereas laid-off staffers are nonetheless technically employed till March 21, they’d restricted entry to their e mail, telephones and computer systems, making a response to the outage tough, the individual stated. At one level Wednesday, about 70 folks had joined a Groups name to attempt to pinpoint the reason for the outage.
The decision continued for hours. By Wednesday night, the web site carried a banner claiming “Deliberate Upkeep” was underway, and login entry was minimize off.
The Training Division didn’t reply to a request for touch upon the outage.
Problems with the FAFSA had vexed the administration of former President Joe Biden, drawing rebuke from Republicans. The shape was overhauled final 12 months in an try to simplify it, however technical issues blocked college students from submitting kinds or bungled financial aid calculations.
Advocates say the frustration in all probability led hundreds of scholars to give up on going to college at all. Final fall, U.S. faculties noticed a 5% lower in freshmen enrollment over the earlier 12 months, and it was deeper at faculties with giant numbers of low-income college students, in accordance with the Nationwide Pupil Clearinghouse.
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