When Congress authorized the Department of Education to overhaul the Free Application for Federal Student Aid in 2020, few could have predicted just how terribly the incoming Biden administration would botch it. Of course, few then could have known that the president would pack the agency with longtime loyalist bureaucrats or that those cronies would use their authority to force through their decadelong aspirations of massive student debt cancellation.
The FAFSA rewrite was meant to “streamline the application” and “make the student aid process more predictable for low-income students.” Instead, Biden’s Department of Education has done the opposite. Its failed rollout, which, even after being delayed a year, has been a slow-motion disaster, has prevented hundreds of thousands of high school graduates from committing to colleges or knowing whether they can afford it if they do.
So far, nearly 15% fewer students, or about 300,000 graduates, have applied for federal aid. Experts predict this could equate to as much as a 20% decline in college enrollment this fall. Sadly, minority and low-income families, the very students President Joe Biden professes to champion, are likely to be hurt the most. Many will be forced to table their college dreams indefinitely.
Worse, this colossal snafu owes to the Department of Education’s fanatical fever dream of mass student debt forgiveness — a nearly $500 billion agenda that voters, taxpayers, and the Supreme Court have rejected but that the Biden team won’t let go.
In October 2022, Inside Higher Ed reported that FAFSA came at a “busy time” for the department, which was preoccupied with “rolling out a debt-relief program for more than 40 million Americans, revamping the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and resuming student loan repayments.” In other words, it couldn’t be bothered with its real job until it had made good on its debt cancellation fantasy.
Now, for the first time, a new report by the American Accountability Foundation pulls back the curtain on how vast and all-consuming the Biden administration’s debt cancellation ambitions stretch. The findings reveal a secretive, yearslong campaign bankrolled by a billionaire mega-donor and advanced by costly litigation to achieve the department’s tunnel-visioned mission to deliver mass student loan forgiveness, prop up conventional colleges and universities, and wipe out successful higher education businesses that stand in the way.
It all started around 2016 when, following former President Donald Trump’s surprise election, a cadre of Obama-Biden idealogues flocked to and even launched several special interest organizations that disguised themselves as independent student advocates. Many of these individuals returned to helm the Biden Department of Education. Others remained in the nonprofit sector, providing political cover, faux policy validation, and even doing dirty work government officials could not. AAF’s interactive relationship map details the revolving door and shadowy associations between the department and its proxy organizations.
Notably, our map reveals how an “Activist Triad” emerged as the engines of the movement: the Student Borrowers Protection Center, the Project on Predatory Student Lending, and the National Student Legal Defense Network. Fueled by liberal billionaire benefactor John Arnold, the Arnold Foundation pumped more than $20 million into the three organizations above, elevating its tactics to a new level.
Together, these groups began quietly recruiting sympathetic attorneys general — influential elected offices that could provide the pretenses of grassroots support necessary to build public morale around student loan cancellation. Their efforts went as far as dictating closed-door meeting agendas, buying drinks for government officials, and even critiquing dinner menus — actions that were not publicly disclosed.
All told, the activists have perfected a strategy of “lawfare” — ensnaring career colleges and successful higher education vendors in costly, protracted lawsuits. Their strategy is simple: Harass and litigate these businesses with ginned-up charges, and, once sufficiently disgraced or bankrupted, discharge the federal debt of students allegedly defrauded. It is a backdoor path to Biden’s promise of mass student debt cancellation — one his Education Department has deliberately helped create.
Sadly, the losers in this game are students, especially minorities, women, low-income families, and first-generation college-goers. Not only are their higher education options being cut off — options that, by the way, are often most cost-effective, more flexible, and designed around their unique learning needs — but the department’s dogmatic agenda means many may never attend college at all.
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Ironically, the department’s utter failure to complete the FAFSA introduction on time may actually serve its mission of putting nonconventional colleges out of business. As a recent opinion piece points out, the expected drop in enrollment could “kill off” schools that lack the massive endowments and preferential treatment from policymakers that many name-brand universities enjoy.
Left unchecked, the Biden administration’s assault will continue to close off good, affordable options for post-secondary degrees that better meet students’ needs, particularly those that don’t fit the Ivy League profile. Stopping this higher education shakedown requires legislative oversight and guardrails to prevent further abuse and refocus the department on its real job: serving student interests. Maybe then it will finally get FAFSA right.
Thomas Jones is the president of the American Accountability Foundation.
