Senator Elizabeth Warren is asking the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether staffing cuts at the U.S. Department of Education by the Trump administration have affected the agency’s ability to prevent fraud, waste and abuse of federal student aid funds.
why it matters: Federal Student Aid (FSA) is the office responsible for overseeing colleges that receive Title IV funds: the money that finances Pell Grants, federal student loans, and work-study. If oversight is weakened, both taxpayers and students are left on the hook when colleges misuse aid or misrepresent their programs to potential enrollees.
While there are headlines about cracking down on ghost students, financial aid fraud and other forms of waste can still occur.
by numbers
- From January 2025, ED has fired almost half of its employees.
- The FSA alone lost approximately 46% of its staff. March 2026 GAO report (PDF file).
- Most of the FSA regional offices that reviewed the college program were eliminated.
- However, it appears that the FSA is re-recruiting more than the required 380 posts.
What Warren is asking: one in Letter dated May 20 to Acting Comptroller General Oris Williams Brown (PDF file), Warren requested that GAO quantify the potential dollar costs to the government from reduced monitoring, including a reduction in financial penalties on schools and a reduction in outstanding repayment by colleges. It also wants data on how many program reviews, investigations and enforcement actions the ED has initiated since the cuts, broken down by type of institution.
Concerns over for-profit schools: Warren cited for-profit colleges as a particular concern. Under the Biden administration, for-profit colleges saw the majority of FSA enforcement actions. He argued that less oversight is more troubling given recent Trump administration policies poised to expand the for-profit sector, including the upcoming rollout of Workforce Pell (which expands Pell Grant eligibility to short-term programs) and rolling back financial accountability rules for corporate college owners.
How it connects: Federal Student Aid distributes more than $120 billion in aid each year in Pell grants, federal student loans, and other aid programs. Borrower Defense for Repayment (the program that erases debt for students defrauded by their colleges) has already cost the government billions in discharges associated with the collapse of previous for-profits like Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech. When inspection gaps leave misconduct ignored for long enough, the ultimate bill for redemption and recovery actions falls on taxpayers and, in many cases, the borrowers who were misled in the first place.
what happens next: GAO will decide whether to launch an investigation. Even if it grants the request, a full audit usually takes 12 to 18 months. The Workforce Payroll is on track to take effect this summer, opening up a new federal revenue stream for short-term benefit programs while reducing ED’s enforcement capabilities.
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