The Trump administration’s staffing cuts at the Department of Education are predominantly hitting federal workers who oversee student financial aid and handle discrimination cases.
At least half of the 1,315 Education Department employees who were laid off Tuesday as part of a large-scale reduction in force worked in the Office for Civil Rights, the Office of Postsecondary Education or the Institute of Education Sciences, according to an internal document shared with NOTUS, which lists the positions of about 75% of the employees who were let go.
The largest number of employees were terminated within the Office of Postsecondary Education, where at least 326 Federal Student Aid employees were let go. FSA is the largest provider of financial student aid in the nation; it oversees the disbursement of about $120 billion in aid every year and manages oversight of the use of those funds. The office previously employed about 1,400 workers.