Education Department Fires Thousands, Then Goes on Hiring Spree
The U.S. Department of Education cut roughly half its workforce in March 2025 as part of the Trump administration’s push to dismantle the agency. Now, just over a year later, its student loan office is on a hiring spree — adding nearly 380 new workers to backfill critical functions that never went away. The apparent contradiction has raised questions about whether the mass layoffs were driven by efficiency or ideology, and what the chaos means for the 43 million Americans who rely on the federal student loan system.
The Paradox at the Heart of the Department
In March 2025, the Education Department announced a reduction in force (RIF) impacting nearly 50% of its workforce, slashing staff from 4,133 to approximately 2,183. The cuts were framed as a step toward eliminating the department entirely — a long-standing campaign promise of President Donald Trump.
But the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA), which manages the nation’s $1.7 trillion student loan portfolio, was hit especially hard. Its full-time equivalent staff dropped from 1,440 prior to the Trump administration to just 731 — roughly half its previous size. According to internal documents obtained by NPR, FSA now plans to hire 334 additional full-time employees to reach a target of 1,065, on top of 52 workers already hired since September 2025.
Even with those hires, FSA’s staffing would remain well below the 1,568 employees it had during the Biden administration.
Acknowledging the Overreach
Education Secretary Linda McMahon has conceded that the cuts went too far in some areas. In a public appearance last year, she acknowledged: “You always just want to cut fat. … Sometimes you cut into the muscle and you cut a little too deep. And we’ve brought some people back. Not a lot, but we did find that we cut a little bit deep.”
Rachel Gittleman, president of AFGE Local 252, which represents Education Department employees, told NPR that the hiring spree proves the layoffs were never about efficiency. “All of this is an insult to the nearly 43 million Americans with federal student loan debt and to the taxpayers who depend on federal oversight to prevent waste, fraud and abuse,” she said. “These new job posts are more proof that last year’s mass firing at the Education Department was never about efficiency or saving taxpayer dollars.”
The Cost of Confusion: OCR’s $38 Million Misstep
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) offers another cautionary tale. Deep cuts there were challenged in court and eventually reversed, but the department kept 247 OCR staff on paid administrative leave for nearly nine months rather than allow them to work during the legal dispute. A Government Accountability Office investigation found this unnecessary back-and-forth cost taxpayers between $28.5 million and $38 million.
Lapsed Oversight of Loan Servicers
The staffing crisis has had real consequences for borrower protections. A March 2026 GAO report found that FSA stopped reviewing the accuracy of loan servicers’ records and recordings of borrower calls in February 2025 — right before the mass layoffs — due to lack of staff capacity. Four of five loan servicers were already failing accuracy standards before oversight was suspended, meaning there is currently no federal watchdog ensuring servicers maintain accurate records or provide quality customer service.
The Treasury Transfer: Real or Illusory?
McMahon has touted 10 interagency agreements to offload the department’s work, including moving FSA responsibilities to the Treasury Department. But the hiring suggests Education Department employees will continue doing the work. At an April Senate hearing, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) pressed McMahon on the contradiction, saying: “You are sending Department of Education employees to work at other agencies to administer the same programs from different buildings.”
Ellen Keast, the department’s press secretary for higher education, defended the hiring, telling NPR: “Returning education to the states and breaking up the federal education bureaucracy does not mean that critical programs won’t continue.”
The ‘Loyalty Question’ and the Changing Face of Federal Hiring
Former FSA staffers who were laid off and are now reapplying have noticed a significant change in the application process. Federal job postings now include an essay question: “How would you help advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role?” The question has been included on at least 5,800 federal job postings and has triggered a lawsuit from federal employee unions alleging it violates the First Amendment.
“I feel as though they want you to show loyalty to this administration,” one former FSA staffer, who is in the process of reapplying, told NPR. “We just want our jobs. We took an oath to serve the public, and that’s what we want to do.”
AFGE National President Everett Kelley called the question part of the “Project 2025 playbook, which aims to replace dedicated, nonpartisan public servants with workers chosen for their political loyalty rather than their qualifications.”
What’s Next
The Education Department’s hiring spree underscores a fundamental tension: the administration’s political goal of eliminating the department is colliding with the operational reality that its functions — managing student loans, enforcing civil rights, distributing Pell Grants — are mandated by law and cannot simply disappear. With FSA still juggling new repayment plans, expanded loan limits, and a backlog of oversight responsibilities, the question is not whether the work needs to be done, but who will do it — and under what conditions.
As the GAO and Congress continue to scrutinize the costs and consequences of the administration’s workforce strategy, the coming months will reveal whether this hiring spree is a temporary correction or the beginning of a more sustainable approach to managing the nation’s education infrastructure.