Federal student loan site down Wednesday, a day after layoffs gutted Education Department

WASHINGTON (AP) — An hours-long outage Wednesday on StudentAid.gov, the federal web site for student loans and monetary assist, underscored the dangers in quickly gutting the Department of Education, as President Donald Trump goals to dismantle the company.

Starting noon Wednesday, dozens of holiday makers to StudentAid.gov reported outages to Downdetector. The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, a group of people that deal with schools’ monetary assist awards, mentioned it had acquired reviews of customers experiencing technical points and having bother finishing the FAFSA, a type that is required for monetary assist at schools nationwide.

“NASFAA is seeking clarity on why the form is down and when issues will be resolved, though troubleshooting could be complicated by yesterday’s staff reductions,” the group mentioned on X.

The builders and IT assist workers who labored on the FAFSA type have been onerous hit within the Education Department’s layoffs Tuesday, together with workers buyouts and the termination of probationary workers. In all, the Education Department has decreased its workers by half, to roughly 2,000, since Trump took workplace.

A listing of laid-off workers obtained and verified by AP reveals greater than 300 folks minimize from Federal Student Aid — two dozen of them from Federal Student Aid’s know-how division. That included your entire workforce chargeable for methods supporting the FAFSA type, a particular person with information of the outage informed The Associated Press, talking anonymously for concern of retaliation. While laid-off staffers are nonetheless technically employed till March 21, they’d restricted entry to their electronic mail, telephones and computer systems, making a response to the outage tough, the particular person mentioned. At one level Wednesday, about 70 folks had joined a Teams name to attempt to pinpoint the reason for the outage.

The name continued for hours. By Wednesday night, the web site carried a banner claiming “Planned Maintenance” was underway, and login entry was minimize off.

The Education Department didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon the outage.

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