Questions Raised About Change to FSA Website

The Office of Federal Student Aid’s website exhibited a subtle change Wednesday: The FSA logo, which normally reads “Federal Student Aid/An office of the U.S. Department of Education” now just says “Federal Student Aid.”

It’s a small difference. But in light of the Trump administration’s recent announcement that it hopes to transfer much of FSA’s oversight and operations from the Department of Education to the Department of Treasury, the tweak caught the attention of one user who flagged it for Inside Higher Ed.

The interagency agreement being used to justify the transfer of FSA responsibilities from ED to Treasury was first made public in March. The Trump administration has repeatedly said the move is being broken down into three parts: first, the transfer of defaulted loans, then the remainder of the loan portfolio and finally other remaining FSA functions, including the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, the Pell Grant and more. Throughout the process, the departments have stressed that this—like the nine other interagency agreements—is a proof of concept and that they are not attempting to move FSA all at once.

Given that, ED spokesperson Ellen Keast said the change was “a website glitch.” Keast then noted that the headers of other FSA websites—including Partner Connect, the portal financial aid administrators and lenders use to manage student aid programs—still had the original logo, adding that Inside Higher Ed’s “premise of a change is false.”

“[I] hope you had other stories in the pipeline today, otherwise you just wasted a lot of time extrapolating,” she said. 

However, Keast did not respond to a request for comment on how a logo change glitch could occur or whether staff were working to change it back.

As of Wednesday afternoon at 4 p.m., the change remained in place on studentaid.gov.