● U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, called for the Government Accountability Office on Thursday to investigate whether the Trump administration's dismantling of the Department of Education is hindering the department’s ability to combat waste, fraud and abuse of student financial aid.
● In a press release, Sen. Warren lamented what she described as a 46% cut in staff at the department’s Office of Federal of Student Aid, including workers who were responsible for overseeing Pell Grants and Direct Loans. She said the cuts potentially harm the department’s ability to “combat deceptive practices that steer students towards predatory programs, and deter bad actors from compromising the affordability and accessibility of higher education.”
● Warren said the prospect of a reduction in FSA’s enforcement activity is “especially concerning in light of recent Trump administration policies that are poised to boost the growth of for-profit colleges.”
The bigger picture:
Sen. Warren’s call for a probe into whether a scaled back Education Department has led to more waste, fraud and abuse of student aid is part of a longstanding and largely partisan conflict over whether and to what extent for-profit colleges need to be reined in to protect students.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren
Democratic-leaning think tanks such as the Roosevelt Institute see the paring down of the Department of Education as “reversing many of the crucial reforms that reined in the sectors that bled students and taxpayers dry for decades — what some might call an inefficiency.” Conservatives have long complained that Democrats are singling out for-profit institutions for regulation and enforcement actions while turning a blind eye toward public and nonprofit institutions.
The request for the GAO probe comes after the Trump administration has shifted many core responsibilities of the Education Department to other agencies, such as the Department of Labor and the Treasury Department. Sen. Warren and other Democratic lawmakers have called for the GAO to investigate the effects of those moves as well.
