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A Wednesday House hearing examining the botched rollout of new Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) forms offered the Department of Education an earful as witnesses and lawmakers from both parties lamented on the “crisis of credibility” the department is facing over the process.  The hearing dug into the months of delays the updated FAFSA launch has caused, including incorrect financial aid information sent out by the agency to colleges.   

Sixteen Republican attorneys general urged the U.S. Department of Education in a letter this week to reconsider recent guidance allowing college students to get paid for nonpartisan voter registration efforts under the Federal Work-Study program.  The Education Department issued guidance in late February saying that Federal Work-Study funding could support students working for public agencies on election-related activities if they are “not associated with a particular interest or group.” The department said eligible duties include get-out-the-vote drives, voter registration, assisting voters at polling places or on voter hotlines, or serving as poll workers.  

In a typical year at LEAD Academy High School in Nashville, a college prep–focused charter school where Kelly Pietkiewicz used to work as a counselor, about 80 percent of students fill out a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FASFA). This year, with only a few weeks until graduation, that number has dropped to 20 percent.

In a reversal, the Education Department will now reprocess student aid applications that were affected by a recent calculation error and issues with incorrect tax data. The decision, announced Thursday, will affect roughly 20 percent of the 6.6 million applications processed thus far and could further delay when affected students hear from colleges about their financial aid eligibility. The department had previously only planned to reprocess the Institutional Student Information Records, or ISIRs, when students would receive less financial aid because of the error, which was about 5 percent of the processed applications. Colleges use the ISIRs to determine aid eligibility and to package financial aid awards.

The Biden administration is poised to issue a proposal aimed at reducing or eliminating student loan balances for millions of borrowers, according to people familiar with the matter, marking President Biden’s second attempt at large-scale loan forgiveness.  The regulations, which are set to be issued as soon as next week, come after the Supreme Court last year overturned the administration’s first debt cancellation plan, which would have wiped away up to $20,000 in student debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 a year.