Tag: FAFSA

  • Phoenix Education Partners, FAFSA Fraud, and the Familiar Dance of Blame

    Phoenix Education Partners, FAFSA Fraud, and the Familiar Dance of Blame

    When Phoenix Education Partners (PXED) CEO Chris Lynne publicly blamed the U.S. Department of Education for missing fraud in FAFSA applications—fraud that allowed the University of Phoenix to enroll individuals engaged in financial-aid misconduct—he likely hoped to redirect scrutiny away from his own shop. Instead, the maneuver sent up a flare. For many observers of the for-profit college sector, it felt like the return of a well-worn tactic: deflect, distract, and deny responsibility until the heat dies down.

    The pivot toward blaming the Department of Education does not merely look defensive; it echoes a pattern that helped bring down an entire generation of predatory schools. And it raises a simple question: why is PXED responding like institutions that have something to hide?


    The Old Script, Updated

    The University of Phoenix, under PXED’s ownership, carries not just a long memory of investigations and settlements but a structural DNA shaped by years of aggressive enrollment management, marketing overreach, and high-pressure tactics. When the industry was confronted with evidence of systemic abuses—lying about job placement, enrolling ineligible students, manipulating financial-aid rules—the typical industry defense was to claim that problems were caused by bad actors, by misinterpreted regulations, or by a sluggish and incompetent Department of Education.

    Those excuses were not convincing then, and they ring even more hollow now.

    If individuals involved in financial-aid fraud managed to slip into the system, an institution with PXED’s history should be the first to strengthen internal controls, not pass the buck. Schools are required under federal law to verify eligibility, prevent fraud, and monitor suspicious patterns. Pretending that ED is solely responsible ignores the compliance structure PXED is obligated—by statute—to maintain.

    Why Blame-Shifting Looks So Suspicious

    Instead of demonstrating transparency or releasing information about internal controls that failed, PXED’s leadership has opted for a public relations gambit: blame the regulator. This raises several concerns.

    First, shifting responsibility before releasing evidence suggests that PXED may be more focused on reputational management than on institutional accountability. If the organization’s processes were sound, those facts would speak louder—and more credibly—than an accusatory press statement.

    Second, the posture is déjà vu for people who have tracked the sector for decades. Corinthian Colleges, ITT Tech, Education Management Corp., and Career Education Corporation all blamed ED at various stages of their collapses. In each case, deflection became part of the pattern that preceded deeper revelations of systemic abuse.

    When PXED’s CEO adopts similar rhetoric, observers reasonably wonder whether history is repeating itself—again.

    Finally, PXED’s argument undermines trust at a moment when the University of Phoenix is already under skepticism from accreditors, policymakers, student-borrower advocates, and the public. Instead of strengthening compliance, PXED’s messaging signals defensiveness. Institutions with nothing to hide usually take a different approach.

    The Structural Issues PXED Doesn’t Want to Discuss

    PXED acquired the University of Phoenix with promises of modernization, stabilization, and responsible stewardship. But beneath the marketing, core challenges remain:

    A business model dependent on federal aid. The more a school relies on federal dollars, the stronger its responsibility to prevent fraud—not the weaker.

    A compliance culture shaped by profit pressure. For-profit education has repeatedly shown how financial incentives can distort admissions and oversight.

    A credibility deficit. PXED took over an institution known internationally for deceptive advertising and financial-aid abuses. Blaming ED only magnifies the perception that nothing has fundamentally changed.

    A fragile regulatory environment. With oversight tightening and student-protection rules returning, PXED cannot afford to gesture toward the old for-profit playbook. Doing so suggests they are trying to manage optics instead of outcomes.

    What Accountability Would Look Like

    If PXED wanted to demonstrate leadership rather than defensiveness, a different response was available:

    • Conduct and publish a full internal review of financial-aid intake processes
    • Outline steps to prevent enrollment of fraudulent actors
    • Acknowledge institutional lapses—and explain how they occurred
    • Invite independent audits rather than blaming federal partners
    • Demonstrate an understanding of fiduciary obligations to students and taxpayers

    This is the standard expected of Title IV institutions. It is also the standard PXED insists they meet.

    A Familiar Pattern at a Familiar Institution

    Every moment of pressure reveals something about institutional culture. PXED’s choice to immediately fault the Department of Education—without presenting evidence of its own vigilance—suggests that the company may still be operating according to the old Phoenix playbook: when in doubt, blame someone else.

    But in 2025, the public, regulators, and students have seen this movie before. And they know how it ends.

    Sources
    U.S. Department of Education, Federal Student Aid Handbook
    Senate HELP Committee, For-Profit Higher Education: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal Investment and Ensure Student Success
    Federal Trade Commission, University of Phoenix Settlement Documents
    U.S. Department of Education, Program Review and Compliance Requirements
    Higher Education Inquirer archives

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  • Trump’s Deportation Campaign Raises FAFSA Privacy Concerns

    Trump’s Deportation Campaign Raises FAFSA Privacy Concerns

    NCAN said mixed-status families must make their own decision regarding whether they feel comfortable filling out the FAFSA.

    College access organizations are raising concerns about students from mixed-status families—families with members who hold different immigration statuses—who are filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.

    “Although the Higher Education Act prohibits the use of data for any purpose other than determining and awarding federal financial assistance, [the National College Attainment Network] cannot assure mixed-status students and families that data submitted to US Department of Education (ED), as part of the FAFSA process, will continue to be protected,” NCAN, which represents college access organizations across the nation, wrote in new guidance.

    The organization added that the Office of Federal Student Aid has said the Education Department won’t share information that breaks the law.

    But “we understand many families’ confidence in this statement may not be as certain under the current administration,” the organization continued. The post advised families to consider whether to submit a FAFSA on a “case-by-case basis.”

    The organization had previously published similar guidance before President Donald Trump even took office but updated it after the 2026–27 FAFSA opened late last month. Zenia Henderson, chief program officer for NCAN, said the organization has received a slew of questions about the security of the personal information entered into the FAFSA, and many of its member organizations are reporting that some of the families they work with are forgoing the FAFSA out of fear.

    Previously, the Trump administration has sought to use personal data from other agencies to assist in its deportation efforts, including requesting state voter rolls, public housing data, tax information and records of who applied for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Federal courts have blocked some of these requests.

    The Trump administration has also attacked programs and initiatives that help undocumented students themselves access higher education. The administration has demanded states stop offering in-state tuition to undocumented students and has attempted to eliminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects from deportation certain undocumented individuals who were brought to the country as children and has opened the door to higher education for this group.

    Other experts and advocacy groups agreed that there is cause for concern among mixed-status families.

    “Concerns are very much warranted in light of how cross-agency collaboration has been weaponized against immigrant families in recent months—including but not limited to the ostensible collusion between the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security to vacate active asylum cases when parents and children are lawfully appearing in immigration court, so that they can be apprehended on the premises by immigration enforcement and placed in detention,” wrote Faisal Al-Juburi, chief external affairs officer for RAICES, a nonprofit immigrant law center in Texas, in an email to Inside Higher Ed. “There is simply no indication that the Trump administration will adhere to legal precedent.”

    Will Davies, director of policy and research for Breakthrough Central Texas, a college access organization, noted in an email to Inside Higher Ed that, even though the Trump administration’s immigration attacks have been especially worrying for mixed-status families, such families have long had to make difficult decisions about when to submit personal information to the government.

    He also noted that FAFSA data is protected by the Privacy Act of 1974 and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and said that, to his knowledge, no undocumented parent has ever been targeted using FAFSA data.

    Cutting Off Access

    For many families, the choice is not as clear-cut as simply not filling out the FAFSA. Most institutions and states calculate their financial aid offerings using the FAFSA’s formula and require students to fill out the FAFSA to take advantage of that aid. If mixed-status families do not complete the FAFSA, they are essentially cutting themselves off from almost all sources of assistance in paying for college.

    “It has the potential to close a lot of doors in terms of accessing aid that’s needed, from last-dollar scholarships to merit-based scholarships,” Henderson said. “There are so many folks that ask for FAFSA information and that [the] application be competed in order to check eligibility, because they may not have their own systems or processes in place. FAFSA really is the default way to prove need.”

    Three states—California, New York and Washington—have developed their own financial need calculation tools for individuals who want to be considered only for state and local aid. All three address privacy concerns, stating specifically that the data will not be provided to the federal government without a court order.

    “The opportunity to pursue an education is highly valued, and financial aid is the only way many students can afford college or training,” the Washington Student Achievement Council wrote in a message, released days after Trump entered office, about aid applicant privacy. WSAC administers Washington’s state aid calculator.

    “We sympathize deeply with anyone concerned about their privacy in applying for financial aid, and we support students and families in making decisions that best fit their educational goals and risk considerations. While WSAC cannot provide guidance on what a family should do in a specific situation, we do encourage students, families, educators, and advocates to review the following resources that may provide helpful information.”

    Alison De Lucca, executive director of the Southern California College Attainment Network, told Inside Higher Ed in an email that her organization is working with several families who are uncertain if they will fill out the FAFSA this year; an estimated one in every five individuals under the age of 18 in California comes from a mixed-status family.

    One SoCal CAN student opted to fill out just California’s state aid form, the California Dream Act Application, this year in order to protect her mother—even though she thought she might have benefited from federal aid.

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  • Education Department officially launches 2026-27 FAFSA form

    Education Department officially launches 2026-27 FAFSA form

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    Dive Brief: 

    • The U.S. Department of Education rolled out the 2026-27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid to all students Wednesday, about a week before the congressionally mandated deadline.  

    • Education Department officials billed the release as the “earliest launch in the program’s history.” The new form comes with several updates, including a redesigned process for inviting parents or other contributors to add information to the application and faster account verification for students and parents, according to the agency. 

    • The on-time FAFSA follows later than usual releases the past two years. In 2023, the Education Department didn’t roll out the FAFSA until the final days of December — nearly three months after students and their families usually can access the form. 

    Dive Insight: 

    Education Department officials praised the on-time release after two rocky financial aid cycles. 

    “No one would have thought this was possible after the Biden-Harris administration infamously botched FAFSA’s rollout two short years ago,” U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a Wednesday statement. 

    In 2023, the Biden administration was responsible for carrying out the first major redesign of the FAFSA in over four decades, including by paring down the number of questions applicants must answer. However, even after the Education Department released the FAFSA in December that year, many students and families struggled to complete the form due to glitches and other technical issues. 

    Moreover, the Education Department didn’t begin sending FAFSA applicant data to colleges that financial aid cycle until March 2024, even though that information is typically available shortly after the form rolls out in October. Scores of colleges pushed back their traditional May 1 decision deadline as a result. 

    In response, congressional lawmakers passed a law in November 2024 mandating that the Education Department release the form by Oct. 1 each year. The statute also requires the U.S. education secretary to testify before Congress if the agency anticipates it will miss the deadline. 

    This year, the Education Department began beta testing the form in early August. During that period, students started nearly 44,000 FAFSA forms and submitted roughly 27,000 of them, according to the department. The agency has processed almost 24,000 FAFSA forms without rejection. 

    However, this financial aid cycle hasn’t come without criticism. A report earlier this month from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog agency, raised questions about whether the Education Department was adequately overseeing contracted work on the new back-end system launched in 2023 for processing FAFSAs. 

    In September 2024, the Education Department told GAO officials that several functions required by a contract with a third-party vendor were not yet available, including the ability to make corrections to FAFSA applications and modify eligibility rules. At the time, the department said those functions would be available by 2026. 

    However, as of May 2025, the Education Department couldn’t provide an update on the system and said it was no longer tracking the contractual requirements, according to the GAO report. GAO recommended that Federal Student Aid’s chief operating officer take steps to improve contract monitoring. 

    The GAO’s report included a response from Aaron Lemon-Strauss, executive director of the FAFSA program, who pushed back on GAO’s framing. Lemon-Strauss wrote that some of its recommendations embrace a model that “assumes initial contracts can fully anticipate a system’s evolving needs.”

    Lemon-Strauss, who joined the department last year, said the agency has made changes to its FAFSA vendor contracts that allow it to adapt to user needs. For instance, after the 2024 FAFSA release, department officials identified that the FAFSA system still did not allow users to import their answers from the prior year to start their new forms — a contractually required feature. 

    “This is undoubtedly a helpful feature and one that should be included in the FAFSA,” Lemon-Strauss said to GAO. “Yet, rather than mechanically moving to implementing renewal capability, the team examined user data to determine where their next efforts would be maximally useful.”

    Internal data showed that some 5% of users were exiting the form and not returning once they needed to invite their parents or other contributors — such as a spouse or a parent’s spouse — to work on the application. In response, the Education Department decided to prioritize redesigning the process to invite outside contributors instead of focusing on the contractually required feature, Lemon-Strauss said.

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  • The 2026-27 FAFSA launches a week ahead of schedule

    The 2026-27 FAFSA launches a week ahead of schedule

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    Dive Brief: 

    • The U.S. Department of Education rolled out the 2026-27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid to all students Wednesday, about a week before the congressionally mandated deadline.  
    • Education Department officials billed the release as the “earliest launch in the program’s history.” The new form comes with several updates, including a redesigned process for inviting parents or other contributors to add information to the application and faster account verification for students and parents, according to the agency. 
    • The on-time FAFSA follows later than usual releases the past two years. In 2023, the Education Department didn’t roll out the FAFSA until the final days of December — nearly three months after students and their families usually can access the form. 

    Dive Insight: 

    Education Department officials praised the on-time release after two rocky financial aid cycles. 

    “No one would have thought this was possible after the Biden-Harris administration infamously botched FAFSA’s rollout two short years ago,” U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a Wednesday statement. 

    In 2023, the Biden administration was responsible for carrying out the first major redesign of the FAFSA in over four decades, including by paring down the number of questions applicants must answer. However, even after the Education Department released the FAFSA in December that year, many students and families struggled to complete the form due to glitches and other technical issues. 

    Moreover, the Education Department didn’t begin sending FAFSA applicant data to colleges that financial aid cycle until March 2024, even though that information is typically available shortly after the form rolls out in October. Scores of colleges pushed back their traditional May 1 decision deadline as a result. 

    In response, congressional lawmakers passed a law in November 2024 mandating that the Education Department release the form by Oct. 1 each year. The statute also requires the U.S. education secretary to testify before Congress if the agency anticipates it will miss the deadline. 

    This year, the Education Department began beta testing the form in early August. During that period, students started nearly 44,000 FAFSA forms and submitted roughly 27,000 of them, according to the department. The agency has processed almost 24,000 FAFSA forms without rejection. 

    However, this financial aid cycle hasn’t come without criticism. A report earlier this month from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog agency, raised questions about whether the Education Department was adequately overseeing contracted work on the new back-end system launched in 2023 for processing FAFSAs. 

    In September 2024, the Education Department told GAO officials that several functions required by a contract with a third-party vendor were not yet available, including the ability to make corrections to FAFSA applications and modify eligibility rules. At the time, the department said those functions would be available by 2026. 

    However, as of May 2025, the Education Department couldn’t provide an update on the system and said it was no longer tracking the contractual requirements, according to the GAO report. GAO recommended that Federal Student Aid’s chief operating officer take steps to improve contract monitoring. 

    The GAO’s report included a response from Aaron Lemon-Strauss, executive director of the FAFSA program, who pushed back on GAO’s framing. Lemon-Strauss wrote that some of its recommendations embrace a model that “assumes initial contracts can fully anticipate a system’s evolving needs.”

    Lemon-Strauss, who joined the department last year, said the agency has made changes to its FAFSA vendor contracts that allow it to adapt to user needs. For instance, after the 2024 FAFSA release, department officials identified that the FAFSA system still did not allow users to import their answers from the prior year to start their new forms — a contractually required feature. 

    “This is undoubtedly a helpful feature and one that should be included in the FAFSA,” Lemon-Strauss said to GAO. “Yet, rather than mechanically moving to implementing renewal capability, the team examined user data to determine where their next efforts would be maximally useful.”

    Internal data showed that some 5% of users were exiting the form and not returning once they needed to invite their parents or other contributors — such as a spouse or a parent’s spouse — to work on the application. In response, the Education Department decided to prioritize redesigning the process to invite outside contributors instead of focusing on the contractually required feature, Lemon-Strauss said.

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  • 2026–27 FAFSA Launched Ahead of Schedule

    2026–27 FAFSA Launched Ahead of Schedule

    The final version of this year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid was made available to all students Wednesday—eight days ahead of schedule. This marks the application’s earliest launch date since it first transitioned to an online platform nearly two decades ago, according to the Department of Education.

    Education Secretary Linda McMahon used the announcement as an opportunity to criticize the Biden administration for its “infamously botched” rollout of an extensive FAFSA overhaul two years prior. 

    “I am extremely proud to announce the earliest launch of the FAFSA form in history, which ensures American students and families have access to critical resources as they begin or continue their postsecondary education journey,” she said in a news release. “Under President Trump’s leadership, our talented team has redesigned and streamlined the process so all American students can now successfully complete the form in minutes.” 

    There were limited changes to this year’s form, but to test the changes that were made, a beta version was first made available to a select number of students and families in early August. Then, last week, all students could access the test form. Over the course of those two months, more than 40,000 applications have been started, about 27,000 have been submitted and roughly 24,000 have been processed without rejection.

    Updates to this year’s form include a redesigned process for inviting parents to contribute to the form and a faster verification process for new accounts. And over all, the students who have tested the form so far have had a good experience, with 97 percent of respondents reporting satisfaction and 90 percent saying it took a reasonable amount of time to complete.

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  • Education Dept. Opens Up FAFSA Beta Test to All

    Education Dept. Opens Up FAFSA Beta Test to All

    The full version of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid is scheduled to launch Oct. 1.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | SimoneN/iStock/Getty Images

    All students can now access a beta version of the 2026–27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the Department of Education announced Wednesday.

    The grant application platform won’t officially launch until Oct. 1, the congressionally mandated FAFSA launch deadline, but for the 12 days between now and then, students and families can start their application by participating in the test model.

    “We’re using this time to monitor a limited number of FAFSA submissions to ensure our systems are performing as expected,” the department’s Federal Student Aid website explains. “This is a common practice in website and software development.”

    The first round of beta testing was opened to a limited number of students in early August. Students who submit their form during the test will only have to submit it once, the department website states.    

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  • FSA Launches Beta Version of FAFSA

    FSA Launches Beta Version of FAFSA

    The beta version of the financial aid application portal was released Monday, Aug. 4.

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | SimoneN/iStock/Getty Images

    The Office for Federal Student Aid made history this week, launching the test version of this year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid earlier than ever before, Aaron Lemon-Strauss, executive director of the FAFSA program, announced in a LinkedIn post Monday. 

    It marks the beginning of “the next chapter in making higher ed more accessible,” he wrote.

    This comes less than two years after the botched rollout of what was supposed to be a simpler FAFSA form for the 2024–25 academic year. The opening of that year’s application platform, which typically occurs in October, was delayed until the very end of the year. And even when it launched in late December 2023, it had a myriad of glitches, significantly delaying financial aid award processing for colleges and students.

    For the next FAFSA cycle, the Education Department revamped its planning processing, bringing in an outsider to lead the effort. The launch of the 2025–26 FAFSA was slightly delayed, but the agency spent months testing the form before opening it up to all students. Now, for the 2026–27 FAFSA, the application is set to open on time on Oct. 1.

    To meet that deadline, the department kicked off several weeks of selective beta testing this week, starting with a small number of students and families. The plan is for the beta version to become public in early September. By launching ahead of schedule, the department hopes to boost application completion rates, improve troubleshooting tools for financial aid advisers and increase overall speed of the process, Lemon-Strauss explained.

    “As we celebrate this milestone, we also push forward,” he said, “building a FAFSA that truly meets the evolving needs of students, families, and schools.”

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  • Ed Department Announces FAFSA Changes, Oct. 1 Launch Date

    Ed Department Announces FAFSA Changes, Oct. 1 Launch Date

    The Education Department said it would aim to launch this year’s FAFSA on Oct. 1, the traditional deadline, for the first time since 2022.

    Richard Stephen/iStock/Getty Images Plus 

    The Department of Education plans to launch this year’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid on Oct. 1, the agency announced Monday.

    It would be the first time since 2022 that the form is released by the traditional deadline date, after a major overhaul and technical issues pushed back the 2023–24 launch to January and the 2024–25 launch to late November.

    The department will also repeat a new beta-testing period that was piloted last fall. Officials plan to gradually roll out the FAFSA to a limited number of school districts and college-access organizations starting in August and will begin sending test Institutional Student Information Records to colleges at the same time.

    They’re also introducing a simplified process for inviting contributors to the form, a step that frustrated many families over the past two years and stymied completion of the new FAFSA. Instead of requiring a unique Contributor ID code, this year students can invite a parent or guardian to contribute to the form by entering their email, and contributors don’t have to be registered on StudentAid.gov beforehand.

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  • How an early alert system raised one college’s FAFSA completion

    How an early alert system raised one college’s FAFSA completion

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    NASHVILLE — College leaders understand the value of a completed financial aid application, but they often face hurdles helping students navigate the slog of paperwork.

    Holyoke Community College, in Massachusetts, encountered this problem in spring 2023. That semester, 47% of attendees at the college’s new-student orientation had not completed their Free Application for Federal Student Aid, institutional leaders said Monday at the American Association of Community Colleges′ annual conference.

    Along with low levels of FAFSA completion, they also noted that dozens of students who had otherwise completed their financial aid applications were missing one crucial piece of paperwork — which became the deciding factor between the state completely covering their tuition or not.

    Holyoke implemented an early alert system to address challenges among both groups. By proactively reaching out to new students and inviting them to one-on-one advising sessions, officials raised FAFSA completion rates among that cohort by 14% for fall 2023 and got the appropriate state aid to those who were eligible.

    Missing paperwork

    Enrolling some 3,700 credit-bearing students, Holyoke is located in a college-dense area with about 20 other higher education institutions, according to Lauren LeClair, the community college’s associate director of admissions technology and operations.

    “We fight for our students. We wanted to make sure that we were doing right by our students and getting them aid,” she told conference attendees. “New students probably had no idea that they didn’t have paperwork that was needed.”

    Many also didn’t know where to go to learn more about financial aid, said Kim Straceski, Holyoke’s associate director of financial aid compliance and customer service.

    “They’re getting different information from different offices, and not always coming to meet one of the experts in financial aid,” she said.

    In spring 2023, the college lacked a way to alert students or financial aid staff about missing financial aid documents, according to education consultancy EAB. Holyoke employed the group to establish a new customer relationship management system to address these issues. 

    The new system pinged students to alert them about the missing paperwork and prompted them to schedule an advising appointment to fix the error. An adviser also followed up with a more detailed email, highlighting that they could help students hunt down the needed documents.

    “Students do open emails — if it’s important enough,” LeClair said.

    On the back end, the system allowed both financial aid staff and academic advisers to see notifications to students and any progress they made completing their forms. Before, the two offices were disconnected from one another in this process.

    By fall 2023, 67% of students who received early alerts had completed their outstanding aid requirements.

    The early alert system also helped new students learn where to seek help for any potential financial aid issues that arise in the future.

    MassReconnect 

    At Holyoke, almost 600 students are enrolled in MassReconnect, a state-run free community college program for nontraditional students. Since 2023, state residents ages 25 and older who do not have a degree have been eligible to attend community college for free, so long as they complete the FAFSA.

    Early results indicate the program has boosted the number of adult learners enrolled at Massachusetts community colleges, especially those from households earning below the state’s median income.

    But Holyoke identified a problem for about 40 of its MassReconnect students — they were missing one key document.

    “All of these students need to sign an affidavit attesting to the fact that they have not earned a prior degree,” said Straceski. 

    But for many, that requirement was not made clear in the MassReconnect program’s promotional materials.

    “When students are reading about it on the state’s website and they’re hearing about it in the news — nothing about this affidavit was ever mentioned,” Straceski said.

    Holyoke couldn’t distribute state funding to cover the students’ costs without this documentation. But thanks to the early alert system, Straceski said the college received all 40 affidavits by deadline.

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  • Education Department mulls using AI chat bot for FAFSA help

    Education Department mulls using AI chat bot for FAFSA help

    The Education Department is considering terminating its contracts for thousands of call center employees hired to answer families’ questions about federal student aid, and may replace them with an artificial intelligence–powered chat bot, The New York Times reported Thursday.

    Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency apparently suggested the move, the Times reported, as part of a broader effort to reduce federal spending—which has already led to dozens if not hundreds of layoffs at the Education Department and the cancellation of hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts at the Institute for Education Sciences.

    The call centers employ 1,625 people who answer more than 15,000 calls per day, according to an Education Department report. The department greatly increased staffing at their call centers after last year’s bungled launch of the new FAFSA led to an overwhelming influx of calls. 

    Last September, a Government Accountability Office investigation found that in the first five months of the rollout, three-quarters of calls went unanswered. Last summer, the department hired 700 new agents to staff the lines and had planned to add another 225 after the launch of the 2024–25 FAFSA in November.

    One of the helplines DOGE is closely scrutinizing, according to the Times, is operated by the consulting firm Accenture. Accenture also operates the studentaid.gov website, which houses the online platform for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The department’s contract with the firm expires Feb. 19. According to sources in the Education Department who spoke with Inside Higher Ed, the department is considering significant reductions to its Accenture contract ahead of its renewal.

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