The Education Department is expanding identity checks for student aid, adding 300,000 applicants to prior flags and increasing verification demands. College financial aid officers support catching identity thieves but warn the current manual, time-sensitive process can delay or block legitimate students from receiving Title IV aid. The program is slated for eventual automation and limits to first-time students, but present operations are burdensome and can affect continuing students. Aid administrators report alarm at the scale and timing of requests and ask for clearer guidance and support to prevent harm to eligible students and campus offices.
Many financial aid advisers are worried that the Trump administration's latest effort to bolster identity verification in the student aid system could have unintended consequences. Instead of simply catching fraudulent grant applicants and borrowers, some fear that the verification process could also prevent real, eligible students from accessing public benefits. Education Department officials, however, assure aid advisers that one of their top priorities is to distribute aid smoothly to the students who have a right to it, even as they protect the integrity of the taxpayer-funded programs.
In an electronic announcement published Aug. 12, Federal Student Aid officials said they would be checking the identities of an additional 300,000 aid applicants, on top of the 125,000 students already flagged in June. Some college advisers said they were alarmed by the sheer scale of the requests-especially given what they describe as a very tight timeline. While aid officers generally support the concept of catching identity thieves, they fear that requiring students to complete the verification process so quickly could delay or even block aid access for some legitimate students, putting them in a financial hole.
"Schools have been asking for help on how to find these people and prevent fraudulent identities from obtaining Title IV aid, so we're very supportive of the Department of Ed's attempts to assume responsibility," said Karen McCarthy, vice president of public policy and federal relations at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
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