Trump is moving to gut the Department of Education heres what it does
President Trump took dramatic action Thursday to inch closer to fulfilling a four-and-a-half-decade-old conservative dream of abolishing the Department of Education, which was created in 1979 under the late former President Jimmy Carter.While the Department of Education has one of the smallest staffs of cabinet-level departments, conservative critics have long ripped it as an unnecessary bureaucracy with an oversized budget.Still, the Trump administration has acknowledged that the Education Department has some important responsibilities such as its work on student loans and administering Pell Grants that it wants to retain.“The Department of Education will be much smaller than it is today,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday.
“This president is finally taking much-needed action to return education to where it belongs — and that’s to educators closest to students in their classrooms.”Last year, the Department of Education had a $268 billion budget, which amounted to about 4% of federal outlays.There are 17 offices in the department.
When Trump took office, it had about 4,133 workers, now the administration claims there are about 2,183 on staff.Here’s what the Department of Education does:The most expensive responsibility of the department is to oversee financial aid to students pursuing higher education, which is done primarily via the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA).FSA oversees Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), the form used by prospective students to apply for aid.The Biden administration overhauled FASFA but botched the rollout in late 2023 and early 2024, which led to significant delays for applicants at the time.Last fiscal year, FSA doled out over $120.8 billion worth of various grants and loans to some 9.9 million students.
That includes about $33 billion worth of Pell Grants or subsidies for low-income and middle-income students pursuing an undergraduate degree.To date, there are over $1...