About 95 percent of the Education Department’s employees who don’t work on federal student aid will be furloughed for the first week of the shutdown. Student aid dollars will continue to flow through programs including the Pell Grant, student loan payments will be due and the Free Application for Federal Student Aid will remain open. But for higher ed, the shutdown likely won’t cause significant disruptions at first. Here are three things to know about the shutdown and how it could affect America’s colleges and universities. The Trump administration has already fired thousands of federal employees, including nearly half of the workers at the Education Department.