Democrats Blast Education Dept for Removing Complaint Button on Student Aid Site

In a letter sent to Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon on August 25, a group of Democratic senators, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), condemned the department’s decision to remove the ‘Submit a Complaint’ button on the Office of Federal Student Aid’s (FSA) website.

Since Trump’s inauguration in January, the department has laid off approximately 1,300 people, close to half of its staff. Many of those employees handled borrowers’ complaints, according to the senators.

The senators first raised these issues in a letter to the Education Department in March. In response, the agency assured Warren that “the button to submit a complaint has been moved from the top of the webpage to the footer and renamed ‘submit feedback.’”

But the senators say the department’s response was “highly misleading and incomplete.”

“What was once a simple click from the Department of Education’s homepage, is now a multi-step, illogical navigation process,” they wrote in their August 25 letter. “Prior to the Trump Administration, submitting a complaint on the Federal Student Aid website involved a clear button on the home page labelled ‘Submit a Complaint.’”

Now, the process is far more complicated. On the bottom of the FSA homepage, on the left hand side, in a font smaller than almost everything else on the page, it says: “Help Center | Contact Us | Site Feedback.” If the user clicks on “Site Feedback,” a pop-up asks, “What kind of feedback are you sharing today?” Two options are provided — “Website Feedback” and “Other.” If the user clicks “Other,” they’re finally provided with a link to submit a complaint.

In March, Politico reported that emails between Education Department staffers show that they intentionally hid the button in order to reduce the number of complaints received.

“Removing the ‘Submit a Complaint’ button on Studentaid.gov is already underway,” Mell Brittian-Smith, a senior Education Department employee, wrote in an email obtained by Politico, adding that they would also like to remove the word “feedback” from the site.

“I believe this change would help decrease contact center volume and the number of complaints that the Ombuds office receives — so an overall win,” she wrote.

In Fiscal Year 2024, the Education Department received just under 290,000 complaints; over 90 percent were submitted through the website, according to the Federal Student Aid’s 2024 annual report. More than half of those complaints were related to student loan repayment. The second most common complaint concerned navigating the student aid application process.

Like many federal agencies, the Trump administration has gutted the Department of Education, which the president has said he plans to eliminate. As Department of Education secretary, McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive, has championed budget cuts, layoffs and, ultimately, the end of the department altogether. Earlier this year, the department stopped forgiving student loan debt for people enrolled in the Income-Based Repayment Program, without notifying Congress or borrowers. The program allows borrowers to have the balance of their debt forgiven after making 300 payments, which typically takes about 25 years. The department has not said when it will resume forgiving borrowers’ debt.