Emma Ambroziak / The Mossy Log
Since Donald Trump assumed office for his second presidential term, he and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have initiated significant cuts from the budget of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE). Among the institutions within the Department was the Institution of Education Sciences, which tracks the academic progress of American public schools. It experienced roughly $900 million in cuts by Musk’s DOGE after he deemed it to be unnecessary. Furthermore, the unprecedented budget cuts to the DOE have targeted college student loan forgiveness programs, such as the online application portal for income-driven repayment (IDR), which was shut down on Friday, Feb. 21.
Anastacia Dillon, the associate vice president of Lewis & Clark’s Financial Aid Office, explained that most federal grant pauses were primarily focused on research grants rather than student aid.
“A little while ago, we did get assurance that the kind of this freezing business did not apply to the federal programs or the federal student loans that students have been awarded and would expect to receive through the federal student aid programs,” Dillon said. “The other thing that I’m hearing a lot is that federal employees are being cut or asked to resign or fired, and that certainly is impacting some of the staff in the federal student aid program area. So it’s a little bit difficult to say what kind of impact that would have. I think almost certainly it would slow down how they process things, and it may make things a little bit bumpy for a while, but again, that’s different from the federal student aid being available to students.”
According to Dillon, LC receives $44 million in federal student aid for all three campuses, including the Federal Pell Grant, Federal Work Study funding, Federal Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants and federal student loans.
Lois Leveen, the director of public relations, expressed her concerns that the staff layoffs in the DOE could hinder students from accessing financial aid packages, citing the issues with FAFSA the year before.
“We’re concerned that if we don’t have a fully staffed Department of Education, that we don’t have a fully functional Department of Education, and so the money being there for the students’ aid also depends on there being the systems in place for students to access the aid,” Leveen said. “I will say one of the things that became really evident last year during the FAFSA debacle was that Lewis & Clark and Anastacia and her colleagues really worked very, very hard on very little notice and with constantly changing things happening, to figure out how best to support both our current students and students who were applying.”
According to Leveen, most of the federal funds LC receives is funding for scientific research, especially for graduate and postdoctoral students.
“So you can imagine, somebody gets a grant for their research and they staff their lab, and so that often is very directly where the money for graduate students and postdocs comes from,” Leveen said. “And I think again, we’re in this strange situation, because we do certainly have faculty who get research funding, and we definitely want them to be fully funded to do their research, but we’re not in the same position of having postdoc programs that depend entirely on that kind of funding.”
According to Dillon, a significant population of LC students receives federal financial aid, such as the Pell Grant, which would negatively impact the student body if it were decreased.
“As an institution, we commit a lot of our own money to financial aid,” Dillon said. “And so the financial aid that we offer students is not just federal aid. If there are, for example, if the Federal Pell Grant next year were to decrease slightly, that’s a big impact. It would impact probably about 20% of our student body — 20 to 25% of our student body usually receives Federal Pell Grant, but that is something that we would likely be able to absorb with Lewis & Clark funding.”
Despite the uncertainty regarding federal student financial aid, LC’s Financial Aid Office vows to continue making LC as affordable as possible for its students.
“I think what I could say is that the Financial Aid Office’s plans are to continue doing the work that we do and continue kind of moving forward,” Dillon said. “We’re going to be sending out financial aid offers on the same schedule as normal, with the same kinds of federal and institutional aid in them. And then if we do need to respond to something, then we will.”
Leveen also cited the Financial Aid Office’s commitment to financially supporting students, staff and faculty amidst an uncertain future.
“I don’t mean to dismiss the real concerns that people have, but I think we know that we are committed to supporting our students and our faculty and our staff and that commitment is unwavering, and then we just have to see what is changing and respond to it,” Leveen said.
Given the Trump administration’s attack on the DOE, LC’s Financial Aid Office remains concerned about future federal funds for research and uncertain about the situation with federal student aid. Yet, even if LC experiences cuts to federal financial aid, the Office remains determined to provide as much financial support to LC students as possible.
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