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e e e e e e e [Music] the subcommittee on the higher education Workforce Development will come to order
I know that a quorum is present without objections the chair is recognized to to call recess at any time welcome to today's hearing titled Jo's uncovers Biden haris FASA failures thank you for being here today
frankly I wish this hearing had not been necessary once again the committee is addressing ongoing failures of the Biden Harris administration's attempt to implement the free appli ation for federal students Aid or FASA the road to today's hearing has been a long and
bumpy one for years completing the fasta form has been a challenge the form was deemed too complex and confusing so Congress passed the fasta simplification act in 2020 the Biden uh Harris administration had plenty of time to accomplish this
with a very clear goal to make the faster process easier and more efficient the idea was simple reduce the number number of questions streamline the process and make it easier for families to determine the financial aid eligibility the law was set to take full
effect in 2023 but here we are in late 2024 and the situation is far from resolved implemented over 30 years ago and once considered the doorway to education opportunity the FASA has become a headache and Nightmare for millions of students and their parents
thanks to this Administration since day one the Biden Harris administration had time and resources to get this right yet the Department of Education failed to deliver and instead knowingly released a failed fastel it reallocated valuable time and resources to push a radical
political agenda the unconstitutional student long forgiveness scheme instead of focusing on implementing the simplified FASA they Justified cutting FASA support staff and leaving three4 of calls unanswered for months for panicked
parents and students who waited for hours for someone not to pick up their phone call now you know why the fast roll out was mired in delays errors frustration for some of our most vulnerable students the loss of their dreams on higher education the impact of
the Biden administration's failure on real lives has been devastating over 430,000 fewer students submitted a fast for last year leaving them in countless others unsure of they if they could afford post postsecondary
education unfortunately it has been the lowincome students who were hit the hardest some college campuses or uh some community colleges are now dealing with significant declines in enrollment and institutions across the country are struggling to finalize financial aid
packages due to the Department's incompetence incompetence this committee bipartisan lawmakers and the public have all demanded uh answers and yet the department has largely has been largely unresponsive to for information even
going so far as to Stonewall a nonpartisan GAO the government accountability offices an investigation into fastor failures it's taken a subpoena from this body for the Department to finally respond to gao's request this lack of uncountability is
unacceptable as students and taxpayers pay the price this committee refused to sit idle while the department mismanages the futures of millions of prospective students thanks to Republicans who have made of priority the Geo has released
Prim preliminary findings from his uh investigation we will discuss those findings at lent to day um some of them are horrific and inexplicable the Biden Administration the Biden Harris Administration has left millions of students and families
scrambling in the dark its response to its failures has been to demand an additional $400 million to do what they've already been given time and financial resources to do by the way that's $900 per every student who could
not complete the FASA the BR broken FASA this Administration has a lot of explaining to do to regain the trust of American families before the nest FASA hopefully is released with a full and accurate functionality in December this committee has committee has comp
continued to work to deliver transparency and accountability to American families throughout this process at the end of the day it's really not about the form it's about keeping a promise a promise if you work hard and honest and get an education you can obtain your dreams and
hopes and dreams no Administration has a right to stand in the way for that promise with that I yield uh to the ranking member for her opening statement M Wilson thank you uh chairman Owens and thank you to our Witnesses for joining
us here today we know that a college degree is the shest pathway to success in America and for years the pal Grant has helped millions of students go to
college who otherwise may not have been able to go that is why four years ago we came together and passed the FASA simplication act which aimed to
streamline the free application for federal student aid form and expand student aid eligibility regrettably implementation of the law has been derailed by a series of
mistakes made by the Department of Education leading to delays and ongoing setbacks in the roll out of the new application it's frustrating because aside from the
dozens of letters Congress has said this is not the first hearing we've had this year about this same issue nor is this the first application cycle with these issues I'm a school teacher and
principal by trade and I served on the Miami Dade County school board I continue to dedicate myself to education by sending thousands of black board boys to College building a new
generation of husbands and fathers so I know how stressful the college application process is parents are frustrated at the fast for process and college presidents alike are complaining to
me I want to be somebody's students along with their families have spent hours trying to reach someone at the federal student aid office only to have their calls go unanswered or for those who have finally
gotten through to an agent many have received incorrect information I empathize with the frustration of college advisors who want to help students enroll in the this school year but they too have been left
in the dark about what Aid students are entitled to and most of all I'm most upset that the delays and ongoing setbacks with voser have meant that some of our want to be somebody's students
have just decided not to go to college at all they have just given up today's hearing isn't just about who knew what and what did they know although we do need to get to the bottom of all all of
that this hearing at its core is about the students who have been denied an opportunity because of the Department's mistakes and how can we make sure that the department does not repeat those
mistakes for the upcoming school year time is of the essence and students need answers now I'm encouraged by some of the progress that department has made to improve the phosphor uh process but much
more is needed to get this process back on track with that I yeld forward with that I look forward to hearing from the witnesses and I yeld back thank you M Wilson uh persu to
committee rule 8C all members who wish to insert written statements into the record may do so by submitting them to the committee clerk electronically and Microsoft Word format by 5:00 p.m. 14 days after this hearing which is October 8th 20124 and without OB objections the
hearing record will remain open for 14 days to allow such statements and other IM material reference during this hearing to be submitted to for the official uh hearing record uh I now turn to introduction of our two w distinguished Witnesses the first is
Miss Melissa IMR Aries who is the director of Education Workforce income security issues with GAO in Washington DC thank you the second witness is moressa maresso moreso okay Cruz Kaine
who is director of Go's information technology and cyber security team in Washington DC thank you so much uh we thank the witnesses for being here today and look forward to your toast testimony pursuant to community rules one I would ask that you each limit your oral presentation to 5 minute summary of your
written statement I would also like to remind the witnesses to be aware of their responsibilties to provide accurate information to the subcommittees I will first recognize Miss Emory Aries thank you chairman Owens ranking member Wilson ranking member Scott and members of the
subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to be here today to discuss gao's work on the impact of the new fasta roll out our findings focus on how the roll out affected students and examine how educ communicated with both students and colleges during the roll
out we are making a total of seven recommendations in the study to help ensure that education is prepared for the start of the next fasta cycle I will highlight several of these in my oral statement and all seven of them are included in my Ren
statement in terms of our findings we found that fasta delays and technical issues contributed to fewer students applying for aid about 4 432,000 fewer students have submitted a fast for this cycle compared to last
year representing an overall decrease of 3% most of this decrease came from high school seniors and other firsttime applicants who had a 9% decline in submissions declines and submissions were particularly pronounced among lower
income students and families for example among independent applicants the percent decline in submissions was largest for those with incomes of $30,000 or less for dependent applicants the drop in submissions was largest for families
with incomes between 30 and $48,000 students who did not complete a fastf this cycle could continue to miss out on financial aid they need to pursue College given this we are recommending that education develop an Outreach St
strategy to connect with students who did not submit a FASA and encourage them to apply during the upcoming cycle turning now to our findings on education's Communications with students we found that education did not consistently provide students with
timely information or support for example nearly three quarters of calls to education's call center went unanswered during the first five months of the rollout due to understaffing education had underestimated call center demand as a
result there were fewer staff to answer calls during the first five months of the roll out compared to the last year despite there being twice the call volume we are recommending that education plan forward ensure hiring of sufficient staff to meet call demand
going forwards education also used the call center as its method of providing FASA translation services for other languages since the FASA is only currently available in English and Spanish however education provid provided confusing
guidance on how families could obtain translation services education's website tells users to contact the call center and press the number seven for translation services but the number seven is not a phone tree option the only two language options
that callers can easily access through the phone tree are either English or Spanish therefore callers would likely struggle to figure out how to request translation services for other languages we are recommending that education improveed translation services
by providing a clear path through the call center menu education also did not provide timely information to students about processing delays for example education did not provide any confirmation that it had received applications from about
34,000 students who applied solely using paper forms nor did it notify these students directly that it was delaying processing of their forms until at least a August accordingly we are recommending that education develop a comprehensive plan for providing applicants with
timely updates I will now turn to our findings on education's Communications with colleges we found that education consistently failed to meet promised deadlines for example the department was late in sending fastest Student Records to colleges which are typically sent
within days of the rollout education initially told colleges they would send records at the end of January but the day before College were expecting them the department announced a further delay to mid-march we are recommending that education develop policies to communicate key Milestones of future
fasta Cycles to colleges in a timely and reliable manner in conclusion students and their families deserve a fastf process that works education has an opportunity to learn from its recent struggles and make the financial aid process easier for everyone however
education needs to move quickly to address these issues and rebuild trust in the fast foot process thank you thank you I'd like to next recognize Mrs Cruz Kane chairman Owens ranking member Wilson ranking member Scott and members
of the subcommittee thank you for inviting GAO to contribute to this important discussion about the modernization of the new fasta system as you know in late December 2023 FASA deployed a new system to process the 2024 2025 form
subsequently applicants reported availability issues submission errors and significant load times according to FSA processing and data errors affected approximately 30% of fasta forms these issues left student in colleges without
the information they needed to make important financial decisions about the upcoming school year today I will focus on issues affecting the development and oversight of the new fasta system in particular I will discuss preliminary results of our ongoing work on system delays and defects and our completed
audit results on system oversight education has been working to replace fsa's Legacy system with the new Fast for processing System since early 2021 in March 2022 the agency awarded the development contract for the new system this contract required three
major capabilities and 25 Associated contractual requirements each to be deployed by October 1st 2023 the three major capabilities were first the ability of student and parents to complete the fasta application and submit Corrections
and updated information second the use of that data to determine a student's initial and ongoing eligibility for federal aid and last the ability to generate and distribute eligibility results for applicants School partners and other authorized
recipients however in early 2023 FSA moved the delivery of these three capabilities to December 2023 FSA officials told us this decision was because of the complexity of implementing new legal requirements while modernizing a process that had not
been altered in 40 years ultimately FSA decided to deploy only seven of the 25 contractual requirements in its initial release with the remaining 18 delayed to a later date in March 2024 FSA deployed nine of the remaining requirements with
additional functionality being deployed between March and August of this year agency officials told us that the the remaining requirements will be deployed across several releases starting in Fall 2024 and ending in calendar year 26 however FSA has not yet told us which
requirements will be addressed in each subsequent release contributing to these delays we found that FSA did not always effectively manage the system development first FSA did not fully test the system leading to numerous performance problems after the initial
deployment FSA identified 55 defects which was almost twice as many as were identified when they're testing the system as a whole prior to launch as of March 2024 35 of those defects have been resolved but 20 remain unresolved the majority of which were categorized as
critical or high severity for example one unresolved issue resulted in FSA initially overestimating some students eligibility by incorrectly excluding their family's assets from the calculations secondly FSA did not always
follow its own guidance for defining and managing contractual requirements or testing the system this made it harder to ensure that all the requirements were being fully addressed by the resulting system functionality in addition FSA did not conduct an independent review of the
Project's processes products and risks throughout its life cycle this limited the agency's ability to identify and address cost schedule and performance risks finally key to these shortcomings is education lack of consistent and effective leadership the Chief
Information officers from both education and FSA were not involved in key governance and oversight activities for the system such involvement is essential for successful it modernizations such as this one in summary because FSA did not effectively manage the project the
system was plagued with delays and defects it's critical for education to expeditiously implement the six recommendations highlighted in my written statement this will ensure that the system's issues do not repeat themselves in future releases this concludes my
remarks and I look forward to answering any questions you may have thank you thank you under committee rule 9 we'll now uh question Witnesses under five minute rule I'll begin the process uh Miss Emory Aris the uh fast is
usually released with a fully functional full functionality by October 1st uh for the 2024 F Foster cycle Department Department of Education missed the October 1st 2023 deadline completely and then uh when the
fast was finally released at the end of December several elements were delayed can you talk about what elements were delayed and how long they will be delayed sure the to begin with as you mentioned there was the 90-day delay in the availability of the form subsequent
to that there was a delay in the Department's processing of the form that was 161 days late after that the department provided students the functionality to make Corrections late as well that was 197 days late education
then finally began processing paper fasta in August which was 305 days late and we know that the function of doing batch Corrections for colleges has yet to be instituted and we expect it to be at least a year late maybe more at this
point okay um as you guys do your your uh investigation can you identify who it is that is failing the system are there individuals that we can identify or is
it just the system that is failing us overall how does that work I mean normally if somebody is this incompetent they're fired is there any way that we can figure out where this is happening within the system although I wouldn't be able to
speak to that particular issue I know that there have been leadership changes at the department and I would say that we've had senior leaders very involved in this study we've had gao's Chief Operating Officer and general counsel meeting regularly with the chief of
staff and general council at the Department of Education okay uh I've been Amazed by the number of press release produced by the Biden Harris uh Administration by this illegal student debt scheme it seems like every other month we had something with that was the department clear and timely when it came
down to communicating with students and colleges regarding the fastfood delays and problems it was not okay um Miss uh Cruz Kane when did the federal student aid first realize it was likely to miss
the October 2023 uh 23 release deadline deadline they first realized it in August of 2022 uh so it's a year year prior almost yeah um how long did it take for the federal
student aid to finally tell the public they knew about a year early when do they finally tell the public they made their final decision in early 2023 and that decision was made after briefing leadership from education and also the Executive Office of the President and the public was notified about the shift
from October to December on March 21st of 2023 so that was about seven months later after they began the discussions and then finally in November 15th 2023 the public was notified that the application would be available on December 31st and that was about eight
months after the initial notification of the delay okay uh has the federal student aid fin uh finalized a detailed plan for the upcoming years FASA to avoid a repeat of lashes disaster they've verbally given us
promises that they're going to continue to do better testing have better plans to address system defects but we have not seen any documents that involve what the test plans would look like if they plan on conducting any independent reviews so we've heard a lot of
testimonial evidence about their plans but haven't received any documentation to back those up okay um so the simplification laws has been uh has been in effect beginning of this Administration four years later we still do not have a sure if the F will be
fully functional by for a second year in a row uh which is totally unacceptable um um it is amazing that this has been going this has been around for 30 years and it only took three and a half to just blow it up totally and here we are still trying to figure it out so thank you so much uh i' like now like to
recognize the ranking member uh for purpose of ask the question thank you miss emry Iris in March there were 40% fewer students submitting the fast for
compared to last year as of September the fast for completion Gap has decreased to just 2% the student support strategy established by the department and key Partners enable hundreds of on the
ground organizations across the country to reach 750,000 additional students during the summer and submit roughly 4 million fasta applications to what extent did GAO look
into the impact of this strategy and why was it so effective in closing the completion Gap and how can the department build off of this strategy to engage with students who did not complete the FASA this year and
encourage them to submit for the upcoming year in our work we did find that education partnered with many individuals States school districts nonprofits did extensive email and text
message campaigns as well as social media outreach to try to reach those students and they did in fact close the gap significantly in our report we mentioned that there were 1.4 fewer applicants in miday and by late August
that had dropped to 430,000 so the department has significantly close the gap due to those Partnerships with those groups and we think that the department needs to continue Community Partnerships needs to continue to engage with the students that have not submitted fast
fuz so that they are not left behind and lost okay in May secretary Cardona announced robust plans to modernize the office of federal student aid and it processes and
structures moving forward for example FSA plans to review its contract and acquisition procedures to hold vendors accountable for meeting key deadlines achieving desired outcomes and providing
the best value to the agency in protecting taxpayers resources the plan would also develop a new it Innovation team that would bring in critical it expertise to strengthen fsa's it
capabilities did GAO look into any of these efforts for its study if not can you provide more context into the decision not to do so this is for Miss Cruz
game sure we have not looked at the um items that you mentioned we do have a larger ongoing study and that is something that we plan on looking at um what surprised me was the contract that they're currently using is firm fixed price so there's really no incentive
structure in the contract to hold that contractor accountable for being on time delivering functionality so that was a bit of a surprise for us but part of our ongoing work will look at the changes that they're going to make whether it's in the contract structure or their policies and procedures to make sure
that they're overseeing the contract better moving forward okay uh in your testimony you made clear that the findings and recommendations are still preliminary can you please share what additional items gso still
intends to study within this engagement yes so we plan to deliver or study when FSA plans to deliver the remaining functionality and what the status of those plans are we want to look further into the level that the
system was tested prior to launch what testing has been done since the launch and what testing will be done as additional functionality is rolled out including for the next fasta cycle um we're going to look a little bit more into the extent to which FSA and the Department of Education were overseeing
the contractor during the development of the system and then whether FSA had the appropriate skill sets to effectively manage the contractor and perform oversight uh do you have any can you anticipate when do you anticipate
finalizing the findings and the recommendations right now we're just saying 2025 okay thank you you back thank you like to now recognize Mr grman from aess relas in a press release yesterday the
department said that the 2425 F form was available on December 30th 20123 for all students to complete for short periods of time can you describe that what that vague phrase short periods of time actually looked like for
students meant less than an hour on the 30th and 31st of December you for an hour okay less than an hour each day would you agree with the statement that all students were able to complete the form when it was launched in December on
December 30th no no no the department s said that it was not consistently available until January 7th and we know further that there were many technical problems with the form when it was made available and there were some students that were not able to submit forms until
many months later okay in your press release was it yesterday the department said that some quote some students encountered technical difficulties that made completing the completing the form difficult or impossible after the 2425
fast for form open fully in January 7th the word sum in that statement suggest problems were not widespread what percentage of students do you think face technical difficulties after January 7th although we don't have an exact number
from the Department we know that many many students were affected the Department of Education acknowledges that there were over 40 technical issues with the initial rollout and there were large groups of students that were not able to complete applications for example we know of one particular
technical issue that affected hundreds of thousands of students okay can you give us a wild guess 5% 55% 80% we could do that for the record you could do it in the future we we could look into it for the record in terms of
an estimate yeah I'd like to know um can you provide technical problem examples of technical problems that made it hard for students and their family to complete the new FASA and do you think these are fixed by this year right there are a wide variety of problems for
example if you were born in the year 2000 you simply couldn't proceed you could not complete the FASA if you were happen to be born in the year 2000 um that that was fixed but that was not fixed until March there are other issues in terms of signatures disappearing if
you go back to a saved application the students or the parents signature could disappear rendering it then incomplete um and that has still not been resolved there are other issues with parents not being able to contribute information parents not being
able to move past turn screens there are also issues with incorrect information being provided um graduate students are falsely told that they are eligible for pel Grants this is not true and this is not resolved okay what Technical Support
options did you offer students when they encountered a problem education's main support was its call center however most people could not reach call center Representatives about 34s of calls went
unanswered okay in your press release yesterday the department said their call center received a quote unprecedented number of calls after the fast f was launched on December 30th uh given that the department knew families would be filling out the updated fasta for the
first time did you prepare your call center uh to answer these questions or did they maintain at least the same number of Staff as the last year did you bring in extra staff for the end of the year the Department of Education vastly
underestimated the need for call center staff and as a result they vastly understaffed the call centers okay uh as students continue to encounter significant technical issues
were the Department's proposed workarounds for the Litany of bugs effective would you say although we didn't assess the effectiveness of the workarounds I can tell you that students weren't always told about their workarounds often times students were
told you know exit try again later but they were never then told when a workaround was developed and it might have taken several months for a workaround to be developed and in the meantime students could have been going into the application and just trying and
coming across the same barriers it was not helpful for students okay are there any of your proposed workarounds you'd like to highlight for the benefit of the committee there was one workaround in particular that instructed Stu uh students with a parent who lived abroad
to falsely put in a US address in order to contribute information to the FASA okay thank you very much thank you I would like to recognize Mr marichi uh thank you Mr chairman and ranking member and thank you to the
witnesses sorry for the Acoustics in here it's kind of hard to hear um we're on this committee we we're all excited to pass fasta simplification it's something we talked about for many years so needless to say we are all aware of the TR troubled implementation of that
act I don't think there's any question that the roll out um has been problematic we know that thank you for your work and your recommendations I hope that this hearing will focus on understanding why it happened and preventing it in the future and not become more of a of political
Administration bashing that's not our purpose here today we must and we should focus on improving the student aid process last week I let a letter to house leadership supporting the White House's $ 2.4 billion budget anomaly request for the student aid Administration this funding will be
vital for sustaining a timely fast through roll out in the future and providing the necessary support for students families and institutions one of the recommendations GAO provided to support students during the FAFSA process is to increase capacity at the
FAA call center and you were just talking about the number of calls that went unanswered and I can understand how frustrating that is for families in the process it's my understanding that since January the department has added more than 700 new agents as an 80% increase
to handle the increased call volumes As It prepares for the 2025 26 Fafa um season so miss Emy erist I didn't see this information included in your in your testimony is there a reason why this information was not included in the
gao's findings we looked at uh Call Center capacity during the first five months which is when people would typically call with questions um I would say that we are encouraged that the call center staffing has gone up since that time um I would note however that that
addition pretty much brings up the call center Staffing to the level that it was for the prior cycle um and again the call demand this past year was more than double for that prior cycle so while it's encouraging it doesn't necessarily guarantee that there will be enough
people to answer the phones this coming year understood and you said it's encouraging but has the increased call Center capacity improved customer service for students and their families navigating this process it it it's encouraging to know that they have um hired additional folks
Our concern though is that during the first five months of the roll out when most people were struggling to figure out what was going on with the FASA that they couldn't get some someone to answer the phone understood and we appreciate that so in May secretary Cardona announced some robust plans to modernize
the office of federal student aid and its processes and structures for example FSA plans to develop a new it Innovation team to bring in critical expertise so Mrs Cruz Kane did GAO look into any of the modern modernization efforts for its
study we do have plans to look into those new processes and procedures in our ongoing work we have much more to do um our preliminary findings were just those that we were able to look at in the short time that we've been doing the work and we're any suggestions for FSA
leadership as they embark on this modernization included in your recommendations yes we do have a recommendation for the Department of Education CIO to have a more defined role in the rollout um and also fsa's
CIO to have more insight into the requirements the testing and the independent verification D you look at it's my understanding there were six C cios uh in the Department of Education recently did you look into any um
implications of that what seems to be a pretty high turnover rate in that position in your report we did not look into specific impacts but recent GAO work that we've done um it Executives say that a CIO needs to be in place for
3 to five years to be effective right but also five to seven years to implement a large scale change such as this one and and I'll ask both of you kind of a big picture question obviously there were technological complications would the was it the technological
complications that added to this or was it the turnover of Staff or just the size of the project when in the big picture what all add added up to to make this um this you know what we all agree was a pretty colossal fail out of the roll out happen and with the focus on
how we can improve it going forward I think one of the big things was FASA underestimated the need for skilled workers so they told us that the skilled workers that were needed to do the development were also deployed to different High um scale projects so I
really think they need to start hiring and estimating the amount of resources it's going to take to implement some of these new requirements that they're going to release in the subsequent cycles and also just stick to the best practices for systems acquisition and make sure that there CIO are more
involved in the roll out thank you and I'm almost out of time or I am out of time but maybe U if you could submit your response to the to the record so I can can y back the balance of my time thank you Mr chairman thank you I'd like now to recognize Mr good thank you Mr chairman
thank you for both of our Witnesses for being here uh Miss Cruz Kane one of the most concerning facts about the FAFSA simplification roll out that the debacle that was that is that or that continues to be that is that the Biden Harris Administration knew that the release
would be delayed and broken and your investigation found that found that over a year in advance in August of 22 the Department of Education began preparing for this delayed release of the form and adjusting deadlines from October 23 to December of 23 but the public wasn't
notified until March 23 my understanding is that the Department's contract to create the form named 25 key system requirements uh that would define what a fully functioning FAFSA would entail can you briefly discuss some of those
requirements sure so the 25 requirements were broken out eight of them related to the input and the development of the form 10 of them eligibility determination calculations and seven of them were related to results distribution and
availability and seven of those 25 were released in the initial release um and then March 2024 nine more were deployed and in December the ones that were deployed were mainly focused on input and then in March with the nine more
that were deployed they were focused on the eligibility calculations and then we are unsure of when the rest of them are going to be released um FSA told us that they were going to release them in the subsequent Cycles beginning this next cycle and
ending in the 2027 2028 fastf cycle so they initially failed to fulfill the 18 contractual obligations 7 out of 25 but they released the form anyway correct correct yeah and they waited a year after that to conduct a requirements
oversight review to ensure that it was ready didn't they yes yeah it's obviously very concerning in your testimony you also mentioned the importance of having effective it leadership uh particularly from the CIO uh have the cios conducted frequent
progress reviews of FAFSA so we do know know that the education CIO um normally a project of this scale would be talked at high level annual and quarter reviews but this particular project was never discussed at any of them um also education applies
risk ratings to it systems and this one received a risk rating of three in September 2021 and then the risk rating was never updated again until 5 months after the deployment so that's pretty concerning that they weren't monitoring the contract monitoring the status of
the system and updating the risk rating because three is sort of moderate at this point five would be more appropriate so it's a one to five scale and they got a three uh last week well as you know education department had six
cios since the enactment of the fastest simplification again I put that in quotes uh just three years ago and last week they announced that there's hiring yet another CIO I'm guessing that you might agree that another ch CH in leadership is
needed or warranted but again with this turnover um it I think illustrates the chaos that's marked this process how would you say this constant turnover in CI CIO six and about three years has
impacted the faster development we didn't look at the turnover more as just the role that that person would play in the process so education CIO did not have a defined role in the FPS roll out they delegated
their authority to the FSA CIO which we find also found that they did not have a big role or a defined role in what they were supposed to do during significant Milestones during the rollout so at the education level they were delegating to FSA so the turnover there it was six
people but if they weren't discussing it with the CIO then the effect we are unsure what that would be I've heard from several universities in my district about not just the FAFSA challenges but the continued additional requirements
from the Department you know that's the financial aid administrators who bear the burden uh of the mistakes made by the education department when Department wasn't answering their phones the financial aid administrators at the colleges across the country are the ones having to talk to the parents and the
students uh but they're in the dark in terms of the answers that they can provide from the Department because of their failures um and so we need to keep remembering that it's the students it's the parents and it's the institutions that suffer and the American people suffer as a result thank you again to
both of our Witnesses and I yield back Mr chairman thank you I'd like to now recognize Dr Adams thank you Mr chairman and thank you uh for joining us today and for testifying before the committee and sharing your thoughts um as
mentioned in the testimony students who have parents or spouses with social security numbers uh significant unique challenges when attempting to complete the fosa application uh it is a cumbersome application it always has
been uh I am a former Professor uh and uh of course I was a student before I was a professor and I have grandchildren and because I understand this form a little bit but the department released an update yesterday that the fosa applications submitted by students with
undocumented parents are up by about 5% since last year and that is a good step in the right direction let me just say that Miss um emry Aris did I did that right uh one of the recommendations is
to overhaul the submission process uh for this population of students to address the current barriers and I think you've suggested um some things that you would have f for leadership do uh as they Embark upon this modernization if you
could just uh mention those again happy to um there are two key components that are still not fixed for this population um one is the ability to do ID verification that has been something that has been plagued with multiple
problems and has been temporarily suspended but the department needs to eventually do it to comply with statutory requirements the other issue is that unlike their peers students from mixed status families where a parent doesn't have a social security number
those parents cannot automatically bring in their tax information from the IRS which means that they have to manually input their tax information which is a burden on those families okay so you know I I mention you mentioned that there were certain things that you
all didn't include I'm a little disappointed about that but let me move on the um uh as we continue to work uh to address these issues and we clearly need to do that it certainly was not a great roll out I am particularly interested in better understanding how
the department is working to remedy the challenges uh detailed in the gao's findings so I was pleased to see that that in August the department announced a robust framework for improving the
2025 26 SP for form you know we do have to look ahead and try to avoid some of the problems but specifically the department established a series of beta test uh to find and and address issues with the form before it becomes available to
all students and that they of course will ensure that as you said mixed status families are able to navigate these systems successfully so uh despite the the work of Miss Cruz Kane despite this framework serving as a key part of
the Department's commitment uh to addressing the eras of the previous cycle uh it is not recommended in either testimony so can you provide more context into jao's decision not to discuss uh or include this in this
framework so my written statement mentions that they are going to plan to do testing with actual users which is what you're talking about the beta testing um we did get updated by the department a little bit later than it was allowed to be included in our written statement that they would be
performing the beta testing however we don't have any details on what that entails um we know what was in the press that October 1st will be the beginning of the beta testing and it'll be available for hundreds of students at the beginning and they hope to scale that up to a thousand students but we
have not seen the test plans we're not sure what functionalities are going to be tested so that is part of our ongoing work to take a look at those test plans hopefully to see if they're thorough and to see if if they were able to use those plans to better theun that is the
information uh that GAO collected in terms of of how the department is adjusting they did tell us that they planned on doing the beta testing but we didn't have any more details other than just a simple statement that they were planning to do testing with actual users
okay let me let me move quickly uh and say that this this question is for both of you if we get time to answer it but uh in 2024 25 uh there there's been an issue with promptly identifying errors uh after system deployment an issue with
escalating the problem through a clear reporting mechanism and chain of command so based on the investigation why do you believe that this disconnect is happening what are go gao's recommendations to ensure that when errors happen in this next cycle that
they're dealt with in a timely manner that's just to each of you I only have five six seconds you may have this ended to me I think we can get it in the record but our recommendation is to do more thorough testing make sure all the functionality is tested thoroughly to make sure it's functioning as it's
intended and to actually Implement that user and user testing thank you very much you can submit that to me in writing if you if you'd like it appreciate thank you Mr chair I'm out of time thank you and I'd like to recognize uh Mr Thompson well thank you Mr chairman and
uh and thank you for uh holding this hearing critically important there's no doubt and in clear bipartisan agreement that the 2425 uh fast for roll out was an unmitigated disaster at a time when there's significant skills Gap and
Workforce shortages across the country families across my congressional district were left high and dry as they attempted to budget and plan for post-secondary Education despite years of preparation and millions of taxpayer dollars spent in getting the new fasta up and running Department of Education
under this Administration once again failed to deliver for American students as we approached the release of the 2025 26 fast reform nothing I've seen or heard from federal student aid uh inspires confidence that the
system is fixed my first question is for uh uh Miss Emory Aris uh in your testimony you noted how the department did not notify fast for applicants when changes occurred to their aid eligibility after they submitted their
their form can you discuss the impact of this lack of transparency and communic uh that the department had on students happy to it's important for students to know how much federal aid they can expect to go to college college is
expensive and because of that pel grants and federal student loans are often the key to enabling students to go to college if students get an inaccurate estimate then they are left high and dry they don't know how much they can expect to get from the federal government for
support and it makes it very difficult ult to know which college they can afford and unfortunately in this situation offers financial aid offers from colleges ended up being delayed because of the Department's delays in processing as I had mentioned earlier
the department was very late in processing financial aid forms and as a result colleges were not able to provide financial aid information to students when they would typically when they would accept a student they would typically tell the student how much Aid they could get
that did not typically happen in the situation and unfortunately some students were in the position of having to commit to college by May 1st which is the typical National College decision date without getting financial aid offers in advance which was just very
very challenging for students especially those who are lowincome and need support from the federal government and this will be a problem any time but obviously right now when real wages are down about 4% and inflation AR pressures on families I couldn't think of a worse
time uh for for this resource to to not be uh readily available were there students who received a financial package uh that inflated their aid eligibility and therefore will'll see less Aid this upcoming year that was
true for a number of students and our concern is that they may not know that their aid will fall off in future years because of that error this year um uh Mr Marisol Cruz Kaine uh uh I want to quickly discuss an issue that I
hear about consistently from America's Farmers as chairman of the house agriculture committee which is the the new asset calculations and the simplified FASA while my position on this issue is well known and I continue to push for a fix to this misguided policy I wanted to ask you about how
these changes specifically have complicated the Department's roll out of the new uh fast uh you indicated in your testimony that initially uh uh FSA excluded fam's assets from the student a calculations
which is how it it used to be in your investigation report Did You observe or find the department had difficulties recalculating the formula by including fam's assets and how did how did that contribute to further delays in the fast for roll out so that was one of the
initial um defects that they found uh our work did not look at the underlying calculations or how that delay in education how that had a delay in education's processing I will defer to Melissa in case her testimony did but I
think the bigger problem is um the department noted that the legal complexities of the new fasta simplification law were a challenge for them um the process hadn't been touched in over 40 years so it was a big undertaking for them to update the
system but also with those requirements I would just add that GAO will be beginning shortly a new study looking at the effects of the statutory changes in terms of who benefited from the um formula changes and who lost out and we'll be looking at the Family Farm
issue in that work yeah Family Farm uh our our farm kids are are big losers under this change where they went from revenue to assets because uh farmers are asset rich and cash poor and I always wonder what the expectation which asset would the government would expect them
to liquidate uh in order to be able to help pay for their child's higher education and still have a farm at the end of the day so thank you so much chairman thank you now like recognize Miss Manning thank you Mr chairman I'd like
to start by thanking the witnesses for their testimony the fasta form is critical for students from all backgrounds to access federal financial aid and a great college education my district is home to I believe 10 great
colleges universities and community colleges and thousands of students who rely on FASA every year so that they can attend school graduate and help grow our economy unfortunately it's very clear that the Department of Education failed
these students last year um as well as parents financial aid administrators all over the country and I hope that this committee uses this um oversight capacity in a bipartisan manner uh to ensure that the education department
does this year uh we need to be helping solve the problems not using this to condemn a department that I suspect was trying its best um with that said I'd like to ask you both uh with regard to
the fasta delays in the 2024 2025 school year was the problem fundamentally a technology issue a leadership issue or a funding issue I understand that all three uh contributed to the problem but which would you say was the biggest
problem and Mi um Miss emry Arias you could go ahead and take that first I would say that many of the delays that we identified were due to technical issues people simply couldn't enter the FASA they couldn't complete it um and then they couldn't get correct
estimates so there were definitely technical issues I would also say that there were planning issues the Department of Education underestimated its needs in several areas including for call center support So when there were
what when there let me let me follow up with you and then I'll go on to other witness when there were such difficulties techn technological issues people couldn't enter the information is it fair to assume that that they then would pick up the phone and call the
call center for help many did unfortunately many got nowhere with that we had 4 million calls that were unanswered and people were not able to get the help that they needed 4 million out of 5.4 million calls went unanswered
and apparently Department of Education only anticipated 2 million calls why why was there such a an underestimating of the of the call center needs we don't know but think that the department needs to plan better going forward so one of
the things I also noticed in the testimony is that there was a dramatic underestimate of the number of students that would have to be manually verified that the estimate was 3500 individuals would have to be manually estimated or
manually verified when in fact there were 219,000 students that needed to be manually verified so the estimate was off 98% how did this happen the department
simply neglected to include estimates for students in mixed status families and because of that they didn't provide enough Staffing to do the manual verification which was incredibly burdensome and difficult for mixed status families in Prior years have
there been students with mixed status families who've applied for um for the tried to fill out the fasta forms there's a new requirement in um due to the Future act and fasta simplification for ID verification and because of that
this was a new um process that needed to be done and the department did not account for that new process or new requirement that those individuals would need to go through verification and because of that they vastly underestimated how many people would be needed to process verifications and
because of that people suffered so this was a new requirement this is the this last year was the first year that would have had to be taken into consideration so there wasn't a historical model that the education department could have gone back to see uh correct it was a new
requirement and when it was determined that things were not working properly why did and there were not enough staff to handle the calls to handle all the other issues why did the department not hire more people I don't know why they didn't hire
more people I know that at a certain point they just decided to shut it down they shut down the verification process and suspended it for the current cycle was there funding to hire those additional people they needed that's not something that the department raised
with us so you don't know whether there was funding available I do not know I know that it was a very cumbersome process even when they had people doing it it was very difficult they were sending uh information to emails and then having challenges with the quality of the documents
the whole process was um was problematic do you have any idea whether there you whether there were people out there who they could have hired who had the skills they would have needed to help deal with the issues that the students and Par and parents were facing I would think that they would be
able to hire people to look at documents and determine whether they met the qualifications however again their poor planning didn't set them up to do that their poor planning put them in a position where they didn't have enough people to do that process and in the end they had to abandon it M Cruz Kane
anything you'd like am I over my time I apologize I was so uh engrossed in the answers that I did not watch the clock totally understand thank you and I yield back thank you so much I'd like now to recognize mrani thank you very much Mr chairman the Biden Harris Department of
Education FAFSA disaster has harmed students and families in many cases irreparably across the country we've spoken my office has spoken with many families in Northern New York they are concerned about the Fallout and downstream Ripple effects of the FAFSA
delay including talking with parents worrying that their child's scholarship will be revoked as they try to afford College this is on top of the historic inflation crisis that is painful for families with an average median income in my district of about $45 to
$50,000 and we know this problem was avoidable and this misstep has led to the largest declines in applications coming from lowincome students in some cases moving the opportunity for those kids to go to college so I want to focus
on the GAO investigation and just to verify some of the findings here while the department claimed that it took an average 15 to 20 minutes to fill out the FAFSA application the investigation found that it took a two parent
household an average of 9 and 1 half days to complete is that correct that is correct for parents that filed their taxes separately it took 9 and half days nine and a half days um nearly three qus of calls to the Department's call center went unanswered
in the first 5 months of the roll out is that correct unfortunately it is and the department inexplicably cut its call center staff compared to the previous year and they in fact ended up receiving twice as many total calls is that
correct that is correct um the department also refused to provide students information on the status of their application or solutions to technical problems for months telling many to just quote try again later is that correct that is
correct this obviously is very very frustrating for families my question is what students and families were hurt the most by these FAFSA delays it was the lower income and middle income families families that have wealth that do not
need federal aid could care less about the FASA it didn't affect them they could pick whatever College they wanted to but for everyone else which is most Americans it was extremely difficult and the folks that were hurt the most were the most low income for the independent
students that was individuals making $30,000 or less had the steepest declines in fasta submissions for dependent applicants thinking like high school seniors it was for families with incomes between 30 and
$48,000 so these are the families that are being affected these are the families that need educ a to help achieve an economic future thank you I yield back thank you I like to now recognize Mr wah thank you Mr chair and I thank the
panel for being here I just got off a um Zoom round table with a number of Michigan colleges community colleges and you might guess this was one of the topics they talked about very frustrated with what it's doing and the
impact it has on the institutions themselves as well as the students um I'm pleased to see the bipartisan agreement in this subcommittee recognizing that the Department of Education roll out of FAFSA has been nothing short of an embarrassment which has negatively
impaired uh students across the country especially those who need financial assistance the most as was just mentioned I was proud to be part of the bipartisan effort to overh Hall FAFSA and make it simpler of all things but after 3 years the department dropped the
ball over a year before the usual deadline they knew they wouldn't have a working product and went ahead anyway failing students across the country the result over 430,000 fewer students submitted a FAFSA this
is unacceptable since it should have been unavoidable and I look forward to continuing to hold the department accountable but more importantly ensuring our students have a system that works there have been numerous reports from across the country about how
dispatched rollout had deeply affected both students and institutions for example in June inside higher education published a piece FAFSA Fiasco forces cuts at small colleges many small private colleges are
surviving quarter to quarter narrowly avoiding sweeping budget cuts the bun go FAFSA roll out pushed some of those over the edge and we read about them almost every week we also have a letter from the American Council on education on
behalf of 36 associations and organizations highlighting the impacts of the rollout noting most institutions were unable to properly package Aid offers in a timely fashion Miss Emory Aris um given your
expertise expertise how how did FAFSA delays affect the timing of College financial aid offers Aid offers were significantly late they did not come out when students were admitted to school and instead in some cases came out after students were
required to decide which college to go to how did the uh delays then affect students ability to choose a college they could afford it s it significantly hindered their ability to choose a college thinking wisely about their finances and
whether they could afford a school can you imagine it's like buying a house but not knowing how much Aid you're going to get and having to make a commitment right then and there buying a house where you had looked at numbers of neighborhoods and
now you had one block that you could potentially choose from uh What uh what students and schools were hurt the most by the FAFSA delays there is Broad pain across the College Community there was a lot of um uncertainty around
enrollment numbers which affected School finances and students that were who were affected the most were students that were lower income lower income students as as we heard just wanted to wanted to have that restated but also the
colleges that were already on life support uh due to all sorts of things including covid change in perspective on what makes a future and the rest so um thanks for the
information um i y back thank you I'd like to now recognize Mr Scott thank you thank you Mr chairman I thank our Witnesses they've outlined a total mess and we didn't need to he that
I think all of us have heard that from our colleges and our districts but you've also pointed out exactly uh what the cause of the mess is so that we can actually take some corrective action um Mr Cruz Kane I
understood your testimony to say you had a list of deficiencies some had been corrected some not corrected is that right that is correct is that do you think that list is
um is exhaustive is complete that you don't expect to find other problems if we can get those solved will be straight well they have to solve those problems first but with each different cycle the department intends to include
nuke requirements so the requirements they did not include in the initial release and each one of those has to be thoroughly tested so we do expect them to find a number of defects you do find defects anytime you test they really need to focus on solving those defects
before the functionality is deployed for the students no they have a contract with with it um experts do you have confidence that the IT people they've contracted
with can actually perform what they're supposed to do I think if FSA oversees the contract and follows the best practices for systems development and testing they could deliver the functionality but from what we've seen the oversight
the testing issues if they keep managing it the way they are I don't have confidence that they'll be able to deliver the functionality is that a problem with the contractor or the department we didn't look into that but it the department did tell us that the contractor did caused the delays they
had delivered the functionality later than expected but that is something that you should be ongoing having discussions with with your contractor when you're doing your oversight so I think there's blame on both parts you mentioned the um call centers
several that's come up several times has that problem been solved we'll see what happens when the new FASA rolls out translation services were mentioned have they been fixed those have not been fixed I think the the we'll see what
happens on the whether they have enough people to answer the phones the translation services have not been fixed we have recommendations in that space um students or their families who do not speak English or Spanish I have no clear path towards translation services
currently with the call center even though that's the prime venue for getting translation services at this point in time there's no call center prompts for that and the Department's own website incorrectly tells people to press the number seven which gets them
nowhere on the phone system when they call um I understand there was a problem for people who reside in Puerto Rico was that did you identify that as a problem um there were I don't know that Puerto Rico specifically came up in our
work but there were problems for for many many um people with many of the technical issues and we could look into that for the record okay um notwithstanding all the problems I understand that uh
students actually did receive more elig there was more eligibility for pel than before about 500,000 more students were eligible for pel that right that was not part of our study we do anticipate a new study looking at the
beneficiaries of the new formula and we will be looking at that in our new work is there anything we can do in the formula to increase the number of students who could be eligible for more financial aid we'll look into that in our new work that is something you're going to be
looking into we we do expect to be looking at the effects of the formula and examining what changes if any could be made okay thank you Mr chairman thank you I'd like to now recognize the chair of the full committee Dr Fox thank you Mr chairman
and I want to thank our Witnesses for being here today um we've had you here many times um unfortunately all but we appreciate all always you're coming Miss emry Aris how easy was it to receive documents and
communication in a prompt and accurate manner from the Department it was extremely challenging it took us five months to receive documents that we had requested in March in your other GAO investigations
have you experienced similar difficulties or was this uniquely challenging this was uniquely challenging and for context I will say that gao's Chief Operating Officer and general counsel met monthly initially
with education's general counsel and chief of staff from February through May to discuss access issues on this job and then they met weekly that's right weekly they had a standing Monday meeting starting in early June up until recently
so over three months of weekly meetings at that senior level to go over our information requests I was shocked to hear that 75% of calls went unanswered in the first five months following the eror
fill January FAFSA soft launch did the department give its call center proper resources to prepare for student questions no the department is responsible for providing the forecast
for letting the contractors know how many calls they can expect to receive and education botched that they dramatically underestimated how many calls would be coming in and as a result the call center vendors were unable to
staff the center appropriately thank you um Miss Cruz K do you believe the structure of the FSA contract showed urgent and planning for a timely Fafa
release I think that the firm fix price that they did use was not the best Avenue as it didn't include an incentive structure so normally contracts can use an incentive they may capture 10% of the fixed fee in incentive pool and distribute it when that contractor meets
certain Milestones or metrics and that's agreed upon in advance um another example is you can tie incentives to to Major releases but this contract didn't have any of those so there was no real urgency for the contractor or any incentive for them to meet the specified
deadlines and functionality releases thank you FAFSA is one of the Departments bread and butter responsibilities meaning it's basic to the department it shouldn't have taken a
subpoena from committee Republicans for this Administration to let GAO and Congress conduct oversight into this terrible disaster the Biden Harris administration's failing will continue to have Ripple
effects on hundreds of thousands of students to come and Mr chairman I I know we have the copies of the two reports from the GAO but I think it's important to point out the GAO is basically an agency that
we can count on simply to call balls and Strikes it is nonpartisan and I'm very grateful again to the hard work that is done by the GAO over the years and as I've mentioned we've had the GAO in this committee Time
After Time After Time and the reports we get are excellent but I want to point out the titles of the two reports that we have even though they may have been mentioned already one is entitled FAFSA education
needs to improve Communications and support around the free application for federal student aid and the second one Department of Education preliminary results show strong leadership needed to address
student serious Student Aid System weaknesses these are strong statements coming from the GAO again which is impartial nonpartisan and I thank them very much for the great work that has
been done on these two reports and I yield back thank you I'd like to now recognize Mr Kye thank you Mr chair for uh for holding this hearing and uh thank you to the G Witnesses for being here to to share with us your important uh oversight work uh you know this uh FASA
situation has been uh a source of great stress uh and anxiety um and has resulted in the denial of opportunity for many of my uh constituents and thousands and thousands of young people and their families uh across the country
and you know it comes in the context of uh an already sort of nerve-wracking process with the cost of higher education continuing to go up and up uh and with applying for college just sort of an inherently uh sort of a daunting process uh for a lot of students the
last thing that 17 18 year olds need when they're going through this is to have this whole wrench thrown in the system uh where the form they need for that financial aid uh doesn't uh doesn't get released on time doesn't get processed properly their status is uh unclear they try to call for help and
nothing happens uh and you know it's worse given that uh the agency here uh had strict instructions from Congress with the fasta simp simplification Act is we want you to make the process simpler and instead they made it a lot
more complicated or at least a lot more complicated to navigate uh from the perspective uh of the user uh it really is just a stunning example of a government bureaucracy uh failing to
perform uh relatively you know modest tasks uh to the detriment of so many Americans I mean you look at the impact back to this we had 432,000 fewer people file FAS this year than last year so what does that mean is
they're denied access to financial aid pel grants what they need to open the doors of opportunity uh this is disproportionately by the way the drop came in low-income communities maybe some young people who would be the first person in their family to go to college denied that opportunity because the government couldn't provide them with a
form in order to get uh the assistance that they need to actually go to school so you can be sure that this uh failure to perform uh the most sort of uh what should be routine of tasks by the agency
has widened the opportunity Gap that exists in this country has widened uh achievement gaps um so uh my question I guess is you've provided very compelling testimony uh and documented in your report all of the de defect and there were 55 defects dozen of them went
undetected uh and the Myriad other problems that plagued uh this role at and continues to plag us now with yet another delay for this year um so how does this happen how do we what lesson do we draw from this in terms of how we
can systematically reform uh not just this bureaucracy but maybe others so that they are more capable of handling tasks that for many in the private sector uh it would be fairly routine I think on the technical side with the development there's best
practices out there that are supposed to be given good practices to oversee the development make sure that the actual functionality is meeting the requirements of the system that it's doing what it's supposed to it's performing the way it's supposed to and those should be followed um I know it's
difficult if there are delays or things aren't going the way they're supposed to but it's important that those practices are followed but it's also equally as important that leadership is involved in the major decisions that are being made and are kept in the loop on how such large scale projects are
going thank you I would also add that it's important to talk with students in colleges and let them know what's happening it's unconscionable that 4 million calls went unanswered when students were struggling thank you I appreciate uh you
acknowledging that it was incredibly frustrating for so many families uh but um I'm thankful to uh chairman Owens and as well as uh as chairwoman Fox uh for their leadership in holding this department uh to account frankly I think
the department owes uh many many people in this country uh an apology and uh we're going to be doing everything we can uh and certainly I will be uh to get this process back on track so that we can provide uh students and families a greater measure of certainty uh going into this next year thank you I yield
back thank you Mr gy uh i' like to go ahead now and recognize Miss Wilson for her closing remarks thank you thank you Mr chairman as we conclude today's hearing I want to take a moment to reflect on the path ahead
while we've discussed the missteps in implementing the FAA simplification act my focus is on the future and the immense potential we have to get this right we must look forward and figure
this out our children and families are depending on us I want to emphasize faith in the department of education's ability to turn this situation around the path ahead requires a commitment to
accountability and transparency ensuring that every student receives the support they deserve together we can learn from the challenges we face and emerge stronger empower ing students to seize the
opportunities that higher education offers as we look forward let's focus on our students who are counting on us together we can create an environment where the promise of higher education is
not just a dream but a reality for all we can correct our mistakes and offer millions of want to be somebody Young young people a path to success the Department of Education has already
begun to do that and I'd like to submit for the record a report from the Department it's entitled a focus on improving the faster
experience updates actions and a path forward for the 2025 26 cycle with that I yield back thank you thank you so much I want to submit this for the record no no
objection okay first of all I want to thank everyone again um and I just want to Echo what Dr Fox said earlier uh J AO thank you so much uh it's been obvious when reports you given us from your
testimony that you share the the frustration that any American across the country has when our kids are left where they are I want to thank my colleagues um on the other side of aisle I think this is one of those areas that we are very bipartisan about um and we should
be you know I have six kids and have all gone through this process and didn't think at all about how hard it was because it wasn't at the time you we we've been talked about what can we do to prevent this from happening and I'll say this it can only be
prevented we can only have best practice is followed if we have people who care we have an Administration who did not care about this we have a CEO you talk about things like U calling centers processing technology
expertise um contractors having a chance to uh be be incentivized this is all under operations the chief of operations R Richard cowry not one single hour of experience in this industry he's a litigator so he's the wrong person to be
brought into this particular industry uh industry in the first in this particular area in the first place and obviously uh he failed drastically uh stunningly uh did not get fired was just allowed to drift off into the sunset finish off his contract you
probably land someplace else in in government we need to bring people to this Arena and educa education is a national security issue we've been talking about the lack of of the learning loss we've been going through we talking about the lack of Workforce this is a national security we're going
to truly be com uh competitive uh across our country we have to have the best kids out there and we have people who do not care about this they care about other things in this case here cardu was more I think focused on on the um um loan forgiveness as opposed to
making sure his kids got got their work done we're now looking at colleges that are on brink of bankruptcy because they have lost the revenue they need to keep things going I unfortunately unlike my colleague do not have faith in the Department of Education we start seeing uh this type
of process we have no accountability we have to wonder what do we need to change this what kind of innovation we need to bring to this this particular area this department that'll make sure this never happens again we have countless numbers of American kids that will never achieve
their dreams because this dreams were were tied into making sure they got a further education post postgraduate postc education that window is closed for many of them so I I'll say this um we understand how this is a national security issue uh
we have um uh we have a party this is our priority for Republican Party by the way China the budget and education and we're going to make sure that moving forward we keep the promises we've made to our kids if they work hard they work honestly they dream big that we will
give them the opportunity to take the next step to be the last that of of of a string of generations that might not not have succeeded in the past this this country has always been about giving our kids a chance to take that next step and we need to make sure we're doing that uh
I want to thank again everyone for the the testimony you've given today uh this has been very very helpful uh we will stay on on top of this and uh we're going to hold the Department of Education accountable again the flowy words don't do it it's the lives that we care about that impacted for good and we
have to make sure we're we're addressing that so that being said I'd like to again thank our witness for taking the time to testify testify before the subcommittee today without objections there being no further business uh the subcommittee now stands adjourned thank you so
much e for