Shutting Down the Department of Education Threatens Students and Working Families Who Rely on Federal Student Aid

March 20, 2025 — Press Release

Move threatens chaos for 40 million student loan borrowers and jeopardizes access to education

BOSTON – Today, President Trump is expected to issue an executive order to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. The Department of Education’s responsibilities include managing the federal student aid program relied on by over half of all undergraduate students to access postsecondary education, including trade schools and community colleges. Over 40 million people currently have federal student loans.

“Tens of millions of students and families rely on the functioning of federal student aid programs to pay for college and job training programs and to manage their federal student loans,” said Abby Shafroth, co-director of advocacy at the National Consumer Law Center. “Recent actions by the Trump Administration to block access to affordable student loan repayment plans and terminate staff in the Student Aid Ombudsman office and offices that oversee student loan servicers are already causing chaos for people trying to pay their student loans. Dismantling the Department of Education will make things much worse, creating new disruptions and costly and frustrating problems for students, borrowers, and their families in every state.” 

Congress established the Department of Education because “education is fundamental” to “the progress of the Nation.” It found that past “dispersion of education programs” across multiple federal agencies had led to inefficient, fragmented, and inconsistent policies and that the country needed “a single, full-time Federal education official directly accountable to the … people.” 20 U.S. Code § 3401. The president cannot eliminate the Department of Education, or transfer control over the federal student aid program to a different agency, without Congressional repeal of longstanding law. 

“We can’t afford to cut education. History tells us that dismantling the Department of Education, ending programs that help students learn, and shuffling the remaining programs among other agencies won’t fix anything. What it will do is eliminate education as a national priority; create inefficiency and disorder in federal educational programs; and make it harder for citizens to hold the federal government accountable for how it supports—or fails to support—access to education and educational excellence in the United States,” said Shafroth.