WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥� An hours-long outage Wednesday on StudentAid.gov, the federal website for student loans and financial aid, underscored the risks in , as President Donald Trump .
Hundreds of users reported FAFSA outages to 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 .
鈥淲e鈥檝e been trying to get more clarity on why it鈥檚 down," said Allie Bidwell Arcese, a spokeswoman for NASFAA. The Education Department hadn't shared any information on the outage, she said. 鈥淭he maintenance and troubleshooting may be impacted by yesterday鈥檚 layoffs.鈥�
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 obtained and verified by AP shows more than 300 people cut from Federal Student Aid 鈥� 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. 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 鈥淧lanned Maintenance鈥� was underway, and login access was cut off.
The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment on the outage.
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 .
Advocates had feared would lead thousands of students to . But overall freshman enrollment at U.S. colleges .
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Editor's note: A previous version of this story said freshman enrollment at U.S. colleges had dropped in fall 2024. That data was corrected in January by the National Student Clearinghouse, which cited an error in its methodology. Freshman enrollment increased over the previous year.
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The Associated Press鈥� education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP鈥檚 for working with philanthropies, a of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Collin Binkley And Jocelyn Gecker, The Associated Press
