How Education Department Layoffs Could Impact Student Loan Borrowers
With Education Department resources limited, borrowers need to be more proactive than ever. Keep records of your payments and monitor your credit report.
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Editor's note: This article was updated on Mar. 13 with new information about Education Department layoffs.
On Mar. 11, the Education Department announced plans to fire roughly 1,300 employees. Including voluntary departures, the department has now halved its workforce in the six weeks since President Donald Trump took office, from 4,133 employees down to 2,183.
Though the department says it will continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under its purview, including federal student loans and need-based Pell Grants, the layoffs bring into question how effectively the department’s Federal Student Aid office can operate.
“We’re particularly concerned with how this move could threaten college students and student loan borrowers,” said Sameer Gadkaree, President of The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS) in a public statement. “Core functions of the Department could experience outages or breakages, leaving students struggling to get or renew financial aid or campus-based aid. Student loan borrowers, meanwhile, will struggle to access the benefits current law provides. And they can’t be sure they will get reliable, accurate advice on student loan repayment.”
The mass layoffs underscore the continuing turbulence within the Education Department under the new Trump administration. Last month, members of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team reportedly accessed financial aid data containing the personal information of millions of students enrolled in the federal student aid program. The White House has also targeted certain PSLF-eligible borrowers via executive order and suspended IDR applications.
These developments may sound the alarm for student loan borrowers. But for now, there’s no need to make dramatic changes to your student loans. Student loan payments are still due as usual for all borrowers except those currently enrolled in the SAVE plan.
“We have to engage in the process that currently exists…we don't have any guidance that suggests we should be doing things in different ways,” says Wil Del Pilar, senior vice president at EdTrust, an advocacy and research organization that works to dismantle racial and economic barriers in the American education system.
Borrowers can’t control the future of student loans, but you can take these steps to protect yourself.
Download your student loan information
Take a few minutes to screenshot or download every bit of information from your studentaid.gov account. Having a paper trail of your payments and loan status can protect you if issues arise with the Education Department’s website or if your servicer makes an error.
“We have seen some data disappear from different [government] sites, and entire web pages kind of no longer exist,” Del Pilar says.
For borrowers, this is “always a good practice anyway,” says Daniel Zibel, chief counsel and cofounder of Student Defense, a policy research, litigation and advocacy group that aims to protect students and promote higher education access. “Just to play it safe and make sure that they have the documentation they may need down the road….there's really no downside to going in and just making sure that you have sort of archived all of your information from the department.”
Take screen grabs of anything that verifies your past payments, including the number of eligible payments made toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) or Income Driven Repayment (IDR) forgiveness, says Del Pilar. Print these records out, if possible. You can use them to file a student loan complaint if any issues arise that your servicer fails to resolve.
Borrowers should also download their complete repayment history. To do so, click “My Aid” on the bottom-right of your studentaid.gov dashboard. Next, click the blue “Download My Aid Data” button in the top-right corner.
Here’s what else you should download:
If you are enrolled in an IDR plan. A new payment count tracker will appear on the right-side of your dashboard in a module called “IDR End of Payment Term.” From here, click “View IDR Progress” for more details.
If you are not currently enrolled in an IDR plan. Click the “view details” button in the middle of your dashboard. This will take you to a page with your loan details. On the right-hand side, you’ll see a module labeled “Interested in IDR Plans?” Click “Learn More” and scroll down. You’ll see tracker modules explaining how many qualifying payments you’ve made so far and how many payments you’d have left under various IDR plans.
If you are on track for PSLF. Screenshot any information about your payment history progress toward forgiveness through the government’s PSLF help tool.
“Just as a consumer of any sort of financial product, you should be as informed as possible. Keeping your own records and cross-referencing that with what you can find on the online portal through your servicer is probably your best bet,” says Beth Akers, senior fellow focused on the economics of higher education at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank.
“That's not necessarily because I believe that there's any reason to think that this intervention that's happening now is going to corrupt any data, but rather, just because I think that that's good practice at any time,” she says.
Change your passwords and monitor your credit
The nature of DOGE’s reported access to financial aid datasets remains unclear, but you can still be cautious. On Feb. 17, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit that sought to block Musk’s team from accessing the Education Department’s data systems.
“We don't know what data has been accessed, and we don't know with what intent,” says Del Pilar. “I would suggest taking the steps you would take if there was a data breach that occurred for any account that you have.”
(Education Department spokesperson Madison Biedermann declined to comment on whether Musk and DOGE had accessed a financial aid dataset, as reported by the Washington Post. She directed NerdWallet to a Jan. 20 executive order that allows DOGE teams to install in federal agencies within 30 days. Biedermann said there was no “data breach” nor any concern of a data breach.)
Akers says previous presidential administrations have appointed temporary government workers like Musk and DOGE, and she says she is not concerned about any additional security concerns to student aid data from DOGE.
“The idea of government employees having access to this data seems appropriate to me,” Akers says.
But to be safe, Del Pilar suggests changing your passwords on studentaid.gov and your student loan servicer account, and monitoring your credit report and other financial accounts for any suspicious activities or credit inquiries. If anything looks amiss, “I would strongly recommend placing a security freeze or fraud alert on your credit reports,” he says.
» MORE: How to freeze your credit
Make payments as usual
If your loans are in good standing, continue making your monthly payments when they’re due and follow existing regulations.
Don’t try to undertake a new student loan repayment process, because we don't have a new process defined, Del Pilar says.
Student loan forgiveness programs like PSLF and IDR forgiveness are written into law, and changing or eliminating them would require an act of Congress. Although Trump has spoken out against loan forgiveness – and signed an executive order that seeks to limit PSLF – these programs have historically had bipartisan support.
However, new relief programs implemented by former President Joe Biden are likely off the table going forward, Akers says. These include the SAVE repayment plan, the temporary PSLF waiver and the one-time IDR waiver.
“I would sort of rewind to when you took out the loan and what you anticipated repaying at that time. And that's probably where we're going back to,” she says.
Stay informed and get help if you need it
Your servicer must inform you of any concrete changes to your student loan situation. Make sure your contact information is up to date in your student loan servicer account.
If you need student loan help, start by calling your servicer. If that doesn’t resolve your issue, Del Pilar suggests contacting the student loan ombudsman's office or attorney general in your state.
Borrower advocacy nonprofits such as The National Consumer Law Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project, the Student Borrower Protection Center and The Institute of Student Loan Advisors also provide reliable information and assistance to borrowers.
Historically, if you had a serious student loan complaint or issue, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Education Department’s student loan ombudsman office were two other key resources. But both of those government agencies are now under threat.
