‘Severely lacking’: Trump admin has backlog of 27K student loan complaints
An office housed in the U.S. Department of Education has a backlog of over 27,000 complaints from students and student loan borrowers, according to a letter sent by the department in response to Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
The letter, sent on July 21 by the department’s Office of Ombudsman, comes after severe cuts to the Department of Education’s staff and an executive order dismantling the U.S. Department of Education . The ombudsman department has decreased from around 63 employees to 25, according to a court filing from a former employee in July.
Of the 27,000, only 1,122 complaints were closed during May 2025 — though it remains unclear how many of those closed complaints were successfully resolved by the department.
There was a backlog of 16,000 complaints in March, around the time of the Education Department cuts, which resulted in layoffs, according to a court filing from a former employee.
“If the Ombudsman’s Office continues to receive complaints at the rate at which it did between mid-March and late June of this year, the backlog will continue to grow by hundreds of complaints per month if ED does not begin resolving complaints significantly faster than it did in May,” Warren wrote in response on August 6.
A U.S. Department of Education spokesperson didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment.
Warren also pushed the U.S. Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon to provide more details about how the department is working in response to the layoffs.
“The American people deserve to know how your policies are impacting services and programs that millions of students and families across the country rely upon,” she said.
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