Federal student loan site down Wednesday, a day after layoffs gutted
Education Department
[March 13, 2025]
By COLLIN BINKLEY and JOCELYN GECKER
WASHINGTON (AP) — An hours-long outage Wednesday on StudentAid.gov, the
federal website for student loans and financial aid, underscored the
risks in rapidly gutting the Department of Education, as President
Donald Trump aims to dismantle the agency.
Hundreds of users reported FAFSA outages to Downdetector starting midday
Wednesday, saying they were having trouble completing the form, which is
required for financial aid at colleges nationwide. The National
Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, a group of people
who handle colleges' financial aid awards, also received reports of
users experiencing technical issues and having trouble completing the
FAFSA.
“We’ve been trying to get more clarity on why it’s down," said Allie
Bidwell Arcese, a spokeswoman for NASFAA. The Education Department
hadn't shared any information on the outage, she said. “The maintenance
and troubleshooting may be impacted by yesterday’s layoffs.”
The developers and IT support staff who worked on the FAFSA form were
hard hit in the Education Department's layoffs Tuesday, along with staff
buyouts and the termination of probationary employees. In all, the
Education Department has reduced its staff by half, to roughly 2,000,
since Trump took office.
A list of laid-off staff obtained and verified by AP shows more than 300
people cut from Federal Student Aid — two dozen of them from Federal
Student Aid's technology division. That included the entire team
responsible for systems supporting the FAFSA form, a person with
knowledge of the outage told The Associated Press, speaking anonymously
for fear of retaliation.
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A commuter walks past the headquarters of the U.S. Department of
Eduction, which were ordered closed for the day for what officials
described as security reasons amid large-scale layoffs, Wednesday,
March 12, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
While laid-off staffers are still technically employed until March
21, they had limited access to their email, phones and computers,
making a response to the outage difficult, the person said. At one
point Wednesday, about 70 people had joined a Teams call to try to
pinpoint the cause of the outage.
The call continued for hours. By Wednesday evening, the website
carried a banner claiming “Planned Maintenance” was underway, and
login access was cut off.
The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment on
the outage.
Problems with the FAFSA had vexed the administration of former
President Joe Biden, drawing rebuke from Republicans. The form was
overhauled last year in an attempt to simplify it, but technical
problems blocked students from submitting forms or bungled financial
aid calculations.
Advocates had feared frustration would lead thousands of students to
give up on going to college at all. But overall freshman enrollment
at U.S. colleges increased over the previous year.
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