Republican senators excoriated the Biden administration Tuesday for wasting time on legally dubious student-loan forgiveness schemes while ignoring the mismanaged college financial aid process, which has left hundreds of thousands of students in the lurch this year.
The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, is used to decide how much families can pay toward college, and to help schools decide how much financial assistance to offer. It’s often the difference between a poor or middle-class student attending college or staying home.
The administration rolled out what was supposed to be a new simplified system for this year, but it has been a debacle, with students struggling to complete applications and schools complaining that they’re getting junk data back from the feds.
Completed applications are running about 30% behind last year and schools are way off schedule in telling students what sort of help they can expect. Many schools have pushed back their traditional Decision Day, when students commit, by as much as a month.
“This has been an unmitigated disaster caused by an inexcusable failure of leadership,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia Republican, told Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on Tuesday.
Democrats also proclaimed themselves “troubled” and “deeply concerned” with the administration’s handling.
“The department has to get this right, and fast,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsin Democrat.
Mr. Cardona insisted he is working hard.
“We’re doing everything every day to make it right,” he said. He said the department is in constant communication with colleges, is sponsoring clinics around the country for families to get assistance, and is offering webinars.
The FAFSA bungle could have political implications. It hurts the very same young voters that Mr. Biden was hoping to win over with his repeated attempts at student loan forgiveness.
One head has already rolled.
Richard Cordray, who has been chief operating officer of FAFSA, has said he will step down in June.
Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, said Mr. Cardona and his department owed students an apology.
“This was inexcusable,” she said. “This wasn’t something that was dropped on the department at the last moment. It goes back four years, so there was plenty of time to get this right.”
Mr. Cardona tepidly acknowledged the bungles, blaming “coding” problems. He told lawmakers they did testing beforehand, but when the new system went live, it was riddled with errors.
“There’s no excuse, our students deserve better,” he said. “This is going to have an impact for generations.”
Senators were not mollified.
“The problem is that the ineptitude here has real-life consequences,” Ms. Collins said.
Republicans said the department spent too much time focusing on the loans while allowing the problems within the financial aid system to fester.
“Instead of prioritizing this important work, the political leadership of the Department of Ed chose to spend time, resources and personnel to advance the administration’s priorities around canceling student debt,” said Ms. Capito. “That is indefensible.”
Congress ordered the Education Department to streamline FAFSA in a December 2020 law.
Lawmakers said it was so complicated and time-consuming that some eligible students never applied. Mr. Cardona on Tuesday admitted he was likely one of those during his college days.
But despite three years of preparation time, the rollout has been rough.
For one thing, it went live months later than planned. And when it was up and running, it struggled to handle some types of applications, such as those from students whose parents are in the country illegally.
In March, the program acknowledged it was spitting out bad data from a vendor and would need to reprocess a large chunk of applications. A week later, the Education Department said it discovered another error involving IRS data and would have to reprocess some applications.
The National College Attainment Network said that as of April 19, FAFSA submissions were running 23% behind last year and FAFSA completions were 29% off the pace.
The FAFSA snafu is the latest in a string of high-profile setbacks for Mr. Cordray.
He used to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the controversial “Wall Street cop” set up after the 2008 financial collapse. He created a constitutional showdown with the Trump administration when he tried to pick his successor, defying then-President Trump. The courts sided with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Cordray went on to be the Democrats’ nominee for governor in Ohio. He lost to Republican Mike DeWine.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.