The Department of Education Office of Inspector General
Summary
ED-OIG polices a $1.6 trillion student-loan portfolio and $70 billion a year in grants on a $67.5 million budget and 193 people -- in fiscal year 2025 alone it flagged $21.2 million in questioned costs and recovered about $29 million, after losing more than a fifth of its own staff.
What is this organization?
What does it do?
Each year the issues more than 20 audit-related reports, carries a caseload of more than 200 criminal and civil investigations, and completes more than 70 desk and quality-control reviews of grantees' outside auditors' work⧉. In fiscal year 2025 -- after losing more than 20 percent of its staff -- it issued 31 reports identifying 125 recommendations and $21.2 million in questioned and unsupported costs, and closed 58 fraud and corruption investigations⧉. Its hotline fields about 600 complaints a month, plus 100 more through Federal Student Aid's feedback channel⧉.
What does it cost to run — money and people?
In fiscal year 2025, the 's total budget authority ran $67.5 million -- $43.9 million in compensation and benefits, $23.6 million in non-personnel costs -- funding 193 full-time-equivalent staff⧉. Congress held fiscal year 2026's enacted appropriation flat at that same level under the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 (P.L. 119-75)⧉, even though the 's own FY2026 request had sought a cut to $63 million⧉. Measured against the more than 9.3 million people who receive Federal student aid each year⧉, that works out to roughly $7.26 per recipient.
View data as table
| FY2024 (enacted) | 217 | $67.5M total budget authority |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 (actual) | 193 | $67.5M total budget authority |
| FY2027 (request) | 175 | $60.75M requested |
Why is it good for society?
The department disburses more than $70 billion in grants a year and backs a student-loan portfolio exceeding $1.6 trillion⧉, reaching roughly 17,000 school districts, 128,000 schools, and 5,400 postsecondary institutions -- a scale where undetected fraud gets expensive fast. In fiscal year 2025 alone, audits and investigations flagged $21.2 million in questioned or unsupported costs and produced about $29 million in restitution, settlements, fines, recoveries, forfeitures, and estimated savings⧉ -- even as the office absorbed a fifth of its own staff in losses. That recovered money is the counterfactual: what goes unflagged once nobody audits the audits.
- FY2025's $21.2 million in questioned costs and $29 million in recoveries came after the lost more than a fifth of its staff during the year -- a smaller office still finding money to flag.
- Congress held ED-'s FY2026 appropriation flat at $67.5 million even though the office's own FY2026 request, filed a year earlier, had proposed cutting itself to $63 million and 185 .
Your handles.* Report fraud, waste, or abuse involving Department of Education funds or programs -- confidentially, or in six languages -- through the OIG Hotline. Read the 's own audits and investigations, filed twice a year, in its Semiannual Reports to Congress. To reach staff working your region directly, ED- lists its 13 field office locations around the country.
Sources(3) ▾
- U.S. Department of Education, Office of Inspector General, Department of Education Office of Inspector General, Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Request (2025-06-25) — ED-'s own FY2026 congressional budget justification, submitted under Inspector General René L. Rocque -- source for the 's own $63 million FY2026 funding request (later not enacted at that level; Congress held FY2026 flat at $67.5M, per doc-ed-oig-cbj-fy2027), the FY2024 Enacted vs. FY2026 Request budget-authority/ table, and the 's statement of its own 1980 establishment date. The sealed copy above is the one-click original-document link; the Wayback capture corroborates it via an independent host. ed.gov · original document
- U.S. Department of Education, Office of Inspector General, Office of Inspector General, Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Request (2026-03-26) — ED-'s own FY2027 congressional budget justification, submitted under Acting Inspector General Mark Priebe -- this entry's primary source: the FY2025 Actual budget-authority/ table (Personnel Compensation and Benefits Costs, Non-Personnel Costs, Total, ), the Appropriations History table showing FY2026's enacted appropriation under the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 (P.L. 119-75), FY2025 and FY2024 workload statistics (reports, recommendations, questioned costs, investigations, recoveries), the 's statutory-creation citation and standing annual workload figures (audit reports, investigative caseload, desk/QC reviews), its hotline complaint volume, and the Department's program scale (student-loan portfolio, annual grants, districts, schools, institutions, and Federal student aid recipients). Wayback save request for the PDF returned no indexed snapshot at time of capture; the sealed copy above is the one-click original-document link. ed.gov · original document
- U.S. Department of Education, Office of Inspector General, U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General, Semiannual Report to Congress, No. 92 (October 1, 2025 - March 31, 2026) (2026-05-27) — ED-'s statutorily mandated semiannual report to Congress (5 U.S.C. sec. 405), covering October 1, 2025 through March 31, 2026 -- source for this entry's precise U.S. Code citation of the Inspector General Act of 1978, as restated (5 U.S.C. sections 401-424), the statute establishing every federal inspector general's independence and oversight mandate. Wayback save request for the PDF returned no indexed snapshot at time of capture; the sealed copy above is the one-click original-document link. oversight.gov · original document
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The U.S. Department of Education Office of Inspector General is a statutorily independent watchdog inside the department it oversees, created by the Inspector General Act of 1978, as restated (5 U.S.C. §§ 401-424)v100_508_SECURED.pdf), and by Section 212 of the Department of Education Organization Act⧉, which established the in 1980⧉. Its Inspector General audits and investigates the department's own programs free of the Secretary's direction, reporting both to the Secretary and directly to Congress.