Biden-Harris education department’s financial aid form failures leave students, families in lurch

(The Daily Signal) – The U.S. Department of Education had millions of phone calls from families to its call center go unanswered and had technical glitches plague its student-aid application processing.

Nearly 75% of calls seeking help went unanswered more than five months, and understaffed call-center representatives told families to “try again later” in what was part of a series of glitches of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid program, according to a government watchdog agency.

Last week, Government Accountability Office experts Marisol Cruz Cain and Melissa Emrey-Arras offered devastating testimony before the House Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development. 

They exposed glaring failures in the Biden-Harris administration’s rollout of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid—a mess that could have been avoided had the Department of Education been focused on its core responsibilities instead of pushing for student loan cancellation.

The numbers speak for themselves: 4 million calls to the department’s call center went unanswered in the first five months of the rollout from January through May 2024 because officials didn’t anticipate the surge in inquiries or hire appropriate staff. Forty known technical issues plagued the application process, leaving families stranded without clear guidance or solutions. Some problems took months to fix, and worse yet, more than 20 issues remain unresolved as of this month.

For example, some parents can’t get past the first section of the form, parents’ signatures have disappeared after returning to their saved online applications, and graduate students are wrongly told they are eligible for Pell Grants.

This is not just a glitch; it’s a systemic failure. According to the GAO, the Education Department didn’t have a comprehensive plan to keep applicants informed about the status of their applications or provide updates on fixes, which is still the case.

Colleges, too, were blindsided. The department missed its promised deadlines to deliver essential Free Application for Federal Student Aid data to schools, leaving administrators in the lurch when crafting financial aid packages.

The delays have been staggering. It took the department 305 extra days to process paper forms, 197 extra days to allow students to make corrections to their submissions, and 161 days before the department began processing students’ electronic forms.

The form wasn’t available until 90 days after the initial release date, and even then, it was plagued with technical issues. The department also never bothered to inform more than 500,000 students that their aid eligibility was recalculated due to earlier errors. The result? At least 120,000 students received inflated aid offers and may now face reduced financial support in the next academic year—after likely choosing a college based on the false promise of more aid.

The GAO’s findings were clear: These issues were avoidable. Experts testified that the department’s leadership was in disarray with six different chief information officers since 2021, a critical position for managing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid system. Without consistent leadership or proper oversight, the new system was destined for failure.

In addition to all the problems that GAO discovered, experts revealed that it took them five months to receive any documents they requested from the Department of Education about the rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid program.

Congress finally had to step in and submit a subpoena to get the department to respond fully to GAO’s requests. This lack of accountability became even more evident in early June when senior staff from the GAO and the Department of Education had to shift their meetings from monthly to weekly to ensure the department adequately responded to information requests.

Yet, the Department of Education’s absolute failure lies in its misplaced priorities. While it bungled this critical task, it was preoccupied with the legally dubious push to cancel student loans. Meanwhile, students and families were left in the dark, unable to make informed decisions about their educational futures.

Millions of students and families wouldn’t have been caught in this disaster if the department had focused on its primary mission—ensuring access to higher education by properly administering financial aid programs.

The GAO’s recommendations for improvement are a step forward, but it’s clear that the department’s failures have already caused untold harm.

The Biden-Harris administration must be held accountable for this disaster. Instead of chasing political headlines, they should prioritize the everyday needs of students and families—starting with fixing this program.