The Education Department’s student-loan office is moving in the opposite direction of last year’s large job cuts, even as officials describe a broader effort to reorganize federal education responsibilities.
The Office of Federal Student Aid, or FSA, has been adding new employees following a reduction in force that eliminated roughly half of the department’s staff, according to internal documents NPR obtained. Those documents indicate the hiring is not limited to a small number of vacancies, but instead reflects a scale-up tied to administering the student loan system that reaches millions of borrowers. FSA is the unit that manages federal student aid communications, repayment options and the Free Application for Federal Student Aid process.
In an April internal all-staff meeting, the documents NPR reviewed say FSA told employees it had 731 full-time equivalent staff, about half the staffing level it had before the current administration’s changes. The materials also said FSA needed to hire an additional 334 full-time equivalent positions to meet its targets, while adding that it had already hired 52 new workers since September.
Rachel Gittleman, a former FSA staffer and now president of AFGE Local 252, which represents department employees, said the hiring reflects the continued need for the jobs. “What these job postings confirm is what we’ve known all along: Our jobs matter,” Gittleman said. “And [our jobs] are needed in order for our federal student loan system to function adequately for borrowers.”
Education Department press secretary for higher education Ellen Keast, asked to address how the hiring fits with last year’s firings, said the department’s approach does not mean programs will stop. Keast responded: “Returning education to the states and breaking up the federal education bureaucracy does not mean that critical programs won’t continue.”
Keast said none of the new FSA hires are former employees returning to positions they previously held. But Gittleman said the job openings resemble work that had already been terminated. She said “All of the jobs that we have seen postings for since September of last year can be traced to a job that was terminated or, in a certain few scenarios, a job that was subject to a deferred resignation or retirement program.”
NPR reported that the Office of Federal Student Aid’s hiring comes as the department advances interagency agreements meant to offload education responsibilities. The report said Education Secretary Linda McMahon has promoted 10 such interagency agreements, including efforts aimed at moving some student-aid work to the Treasury Department. In a March letter explaining the need for the partnerships, McMahon wrote that “For too long, Americans have shouldered the consequences of poor leadership and persistent mismanagement of our federal student aid portfolio. Today’s actions reclaim integrity and accountability for you, the American people.”
However, Keast said the Treasury agreement is not intended to remove FSA’s role in delivering programs. In her statement to NPR, Keast said FSA would continue “managing and improving delivery of these programs.” The department’s internal hiring plans also appear at odds with the idea that student-aid responsibilities would be transferred away from Education Department staff.
The report also described confusion at congressional hearings about who will be performing the work. In a recent Senate hearing, McMahon told lawmakers that, in the case of an agreement with the Labor Department, “it is the same people from the Department of Education that are at the Department of Labor. … It’s dealing with the same people that you’ve known at the Department of Education that are located somewhere else.” Sen. Tammy Baldwin said she was “incredulous” by what she viewed as sending Education Department employees to administer similar programs from other agencies.
NPR also spoke with another former FSA staffer who said they were laid off last year and did not want to be identified because they are applying for one of the new jobs. The former employee said they want to work again. “We just want our jobs. We took an oath to serve the public, and that’s what we want to do.”
The former employee said the current hiring process differs from last year’s layoffs-era experience, including questions about applicants’ commitment to the Constitution and improving government efficiency. They said one question has already led to a lawsuit, asking: “How would you help advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role?” The former staffer said, “I feel as though they want you to show loyalty to this administration.”
While the documents indicate FSA is expanding staffing levels, the report said it remains unclear what recruiting, hiring and training those employees will cost. It also pointed to other work that was slowed after prior cuts, including an investigation by the nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office that found FSA stopped reviewing the accuracy of loan servicers’ records and recordings of borrower calls before the reduction in force. The report also cited GAO investigations involving other parts of the department, including the Office for Civil Rights, where cuts were described as stalling civil-rights complaint processing before being reversed.
The episode underscores a central tension in federal operations: while officials describe broad structural changes meant to redistribute responsibilities, FSA’s internal plans show continued reliance on the same administrative workforce to keep the student-loan system functioning.