{"id":10000,"date":"2025-02-11T09:55:42","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T09:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=10000"},"modified":"2025-02-11T09:55:42","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T09:55:42","slug":"with-education-department-under-threat-what-student-loan-borrowers-can-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/finderica.com\/?p=10000","title":{"rendered":"With Education Department Under Threat, What Student Loan Borrowers Can Do"},"content":{"rendered":"
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President Donald Trump has vowed to dismantle the <\/span>U.S. Education Department<\/span>, which oversees federal student financial aid. There are reports that members of Elon Musk\u2019s Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) team have accessed financial aid data containing the personal information of millions of students enrolled in the federal student aid program.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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These developments may sound the alarm for student loan borrowers. But for now, there\u2019s no need to make dramatic changes to your student loans. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe have to engage in the process that currently exists\u2026we don’t have any guidance that suggests we should be doing things in different ways,\u201d 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. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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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 <\/span>SS<\/span><\/span> to a Jan. 20 <\/span>Executive Order<\/span><\/a> that allows DOGE teams to install in federal agencies within 30 days.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Download your loan information <\/span><\/h2>\n
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Take a few minutes to screenshot or download every bit of information from your <\/span>studentaid.gov<\/span><\/a> account. Having a paper trail of your payments and loan status can protect you if issues arise with the Education Department\u2019s website or if your servicer makes an error.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWe have seen some data disappear from different [government] sites, and entire web pages kind of no longer exist,\u201d Del Pilar says. More than 8,000 government pages have been taken down in the past week, according to <\/span>The New York Times<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For borrowers, this is \u201calways a good practice anyway,\u201d 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. \u201cJust to play it safe and make sure that they have the documentation they may need down the road\u2026.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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Borrowers should also download their complete repayment history. To do so, click \u201cMy Aid\u201d on the bottom-right of your studentaid.gov dashboard. Next, click the blue \u201cDownload My Aid Data\u201d button in the top-right corner.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Here\u2019s what else you should download:<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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