GOP committee orders Biden administration to hand over documents on FAFSA rollout
The move intensifies a federal oversight effort to discover what went wrong this year with college financial aid, as many in the GOP push to cut funding for the critical office that oversees it.
Congressional Republicans are escalating their inquiry into what caused a college financial aid crisis that hurt students nationwide.
The education committee in the House of Representatives issued a subpoena Thursday that legally compels the Biden administration to hand over troves of documents by Aug. 8, according to a copy of the order shared with Paste BN.
Virginia Foxx, a Republican congresswoman from North Carolina who leads the committee, criticized the Department of Education for not fully cooperating with federal investigations into changes to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
Millions of students each year rely on the form, commonly known as the FAFSA, to get help paying for college. A cascade of glitches with the application this spring led to delays that prevented many students from estimating their college costs. The bureaucratic logjam forced many high school seniors to make one of the most important decisions of their lives on a far tighter deadline than usual.
Earlier this year, an independent government watchdog agreed to review how the process went haywire. That agency, the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, has launched two separate investigations.
Click here for a detailed timeline: How did the FAFSA rollout go so wrong? A look at the key events
The GAO confirmed to Paste BN that its staff attended a summer conference for college financial aid workers. The agency did not say whether its visit was part of those inquiries. A featured speaker at that conference was Richard Cordray, a top Education Department official who stepped down amid the disastrous FAFSA rollout.
Read more on Cordray's departure: Top Education Department official steps down amid crisis over college financial aid
Many of the congressional Republicans who have criticized the Biden administration's FAFSA rollout also support cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from the budget of the office that oversees the form.
The Education Department said its staffers have spent many hours preparing and providing hundreds of documents to comply with oversight requests from Congress and the GAO. The agency said it is working to produce more information as part of those inquiries.
College advocates push Dec. 1 launch for next FAFSA
The escalation comes as Congress considers a Republican-sponsored bill to require the Education Department to release the next version of the FAFSA, for financial aid for the 2025-26 school year, by Oct. 1.
The government usually puts out the form by that date, but last year it wasn’t available until after Christmas. Federal law requires the department to release the application to students nationwide by Jan. 1.
Influential Democrats oppose the legislation. In a letter to the education secretary Tuesday, several prominent college advocacy groups also resisted the bill. The Education Department still has a lot of work to do, they said, to ensure the next enrollment cycle isn’t another mess.
A thoroughly vetted FAFSA by Dec. 1 would be far better than an on-time form filled with more errors, they said.
Zachary Schermele covers education and breaking news for Paste BN. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele.