Spoiler alert: Neither “F” stands for free.

I have written before about the strange way in which Jeremy Singer was tapped to lead the fix of the FAFSA last year. Everything about it, from the late Friday announcement, to the strange choice of a College Board executive (given College Board’s legendary abuses of student privacy and considerable technological challenges), to the unfettered access he and his team would get, to the fact that a former College Board employee was well-placed in ED, pointed to something else going on. Not that there is a paper trail or anything we can point to. Any nefarious plans are probably communicated via Signal, with no journalists accidentally copied.

If you don’t want to read the blogpost at that first link, consider these points:

• When I was in college, students had to pay to apply for financial aid, using the FAF (from College Board) or the FFS (from ACT). I don’t presume either of these organizations operated these services out of the goodness of their capitalistic hearts; there was almost certainly money to be made.
  
  I seem to recall it was about $4 per college report sent, back when the minimum wage was a little over $2. Adjusted for inflation, that would be about $20 today. And we know a lot of students apply to 15 to 20 colleges.
  
• College Board already owns Profile, a private (not free) tool highly rejective colleges use to allocate their own institutional aid dollars. It is, by most accounts, about as much fun as a root canal, and a nightmare for low-income families who have no support, to fill it out.
  
• At the time of the announcement, Joe Biden was still the Democratic nominee, and Donald Trump was ahead in the polls. Trump, of course, had famously pledged to shut down ED, which he has now tried to do, and the GOP seems to be hell-bent on privatizing a lot of government functions.
  
• It was my opinion that the pieces of this puzzle fit together too snuggly, and at the very least, College Board had its talons ready to jump on the chance to make even more money off of the financial aid process should that opportunity arise. You already know how much they make off the admissions process and high-school-courses-for-college-credit process. (Offer not valid for AP African-American Studies courses in Florida.)
  
  And, as is often the case with College Board and taxpayers, considerable government funding is fueling their revenue streams, which might explain why they had the Speaker of the Indiana House on the payroll (literally) until he did something so awful even College Board had to cut its losses. It’s important to note, however, that by the time Huston “resigned” he had already ushered through favorable legislation for College Board.

Now, another interesting development: The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) has announced a new hire: That same former College Board employee who worked at ED.

NASFAA, of course, are the good people who represent thousands of dedicated financial aid professionals, through education, advocacy, and training, among other things. I’ve been to a few of their conferences, and while they’re not nearly as fun as NACAC, it’s clear people in the profession take their work very seriously. (Which, come to think of it, might be why the conferences are less fun. But I digress.)

These seemingly random, disconnected events could be a pure coincidence, and I’m willing to admit that might be the case here. But when dealing with the College Board and people connected to it, you have to consider the Latin phrase “Cui bono?” when they talk about increasing access or diversity or improving things for students. The organization seems to have the ability to brainwash employees into believing that the rampant pursuit of more revenue is good for students, education, and society.

You can probably figure out who stands to benefit from all these events that could be completely random and coincidental. And you know (or should know if you read this blog) that you can’t trust them to do the right or the ethical thing unless they can make money from it. They will shout their accomplishments proudly, but do their best to keep problems out of the public eye. (And those two examples are just in the last month).

Fortunately, the FAFSA was fixed, and we should all be grateful for that. We should thank Jeremy Singer and his team for any role they had in that.

But as far as I know, they’re all back at College Board, a lot more savvy about the workings of the financial aid process, more knowledgeable about data and trends, probably feeling pretty good about the destruction of ED, and just waiting for someone in the GOP to stand up and ask if we shouldn’t re-privatize the process of applying for federal financial aid. If you get a text from Pete Hegseth telling you the FAF Plan is a go, you’ll know what it means.

If that happens, well, you know I love to say I told you so.