Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Education will conduct a full-scale review of its Federal Student Aid office, following a chaotic rollout of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
- On Thursday, U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said the department will inspect all of FSA's operations, as well as management and staffing procedures. As part of that process, the agency will seek to "hold vendors accountable for performance issues" through an evaluation of the office's contracting procedures.
- An independent consulting firm will also conduct a workflow and organizational structure audit, Cardona said.
Dive Insight:
In a typical year, the FSA's primary focus has been overseeing the federal government’s student loan portfolio. But the relatively small office had even more added to its plate in 2020 when Congress ordered the department to make the notoriously difficult FAFSA easier for students and their families to fill out.
The Education Department released the simplified FAFSA in late December — about three months later than usual. The form continued to contend with technical glitches and submission errors for months, causing ripple effects across the higher education sector.
The FAFSA acts as a gateway to federal student aid, and colleges and states often use its data when making their own aid packages. In response to the delays, many institutions bumped back their commitment deadlines, and some states waived their FAFSA completion requirements for students.
But this year's form never fully recovered from its rocky debut. Submission rates have inched toward where they were last year, but higher ed experts say it’s unlikely to fully rebound to 2023 levels.
The FSA is now facing pressure to ensure the next college admissions season does not repeat the same mistakes, while balancing a change in leadership.
Rich Cordray, the office's chief operating officer, announced last month that he would be stepping down at the end of June. As the Education Department searches for Cordray's permanent replacement, it will simultaneously be restructuring the office's senior leader reporting protocols as a means of increasing accountability and transparency, Cardona said.
The FSA's review comes as the scope of what the office is expected to do has dramatically changed over time, the education secretary said.
"FSA has worked to accommodate those changes over the years, including fulfilling congressional directives under tight budgetary constraints and addressing ongoing management and operational challenges," Cardona said in a letter to colleagues Thursday. The agency did not provide a timeline for the review process.
The Education Department will also be seeking input from the Office of the Inspector General and Congress.
The federal legislature has been a source of added pressure on the FSA, as well as the department as a whole. House lawmakers, particularly Republicans, lambasted the Education Department's handling of the FAFSA rollout during a subcommittee hearing in April.
"We welcome the opportunity to work in bipartisan fashion with key congressional leaders," Cardona wrote Thursday. "Continuing engagement on planned improvements with congressional partners is critical to ensuring that initiatives will better serve the needs of the millions of constituents that FSA supports."
