Washington — The association for student-aid officials is urging the Education Department to rescind a decision, announced in the Bush administration’s final days, to end a program in which college financial-aid offices may use experimental approaches in the awarding and delivery of aid to students.

In a letter on Friday to Arne Duncan, the secretary of education, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators says the program has allowed more than 100 two- and four-year colleges and universities, both public and private, to bypass federal rules and regulations in the interest of devising and testing alternative approaches that could save money and staff time, and deliver better service to student borrowers.

The goal of the effort, called the Experimental Sites Initiative, is to take experimental methods that work and apply them to the federal student-aid programs at large. The letter, which is signed by Philip R. Day Jr., the association’s president, says that techniques pioneered in the program have resulted in administrative cost savings and improved service to students.

According to the letter, which is not posted online, the department’s “ill-conceived” announcement that the 14-year-old program would end on June 30, 2009, will cause an upheaval in the affected financial-aid offices, which will have to quickly drop their experimental approaches and start observing the prevalent rules in order to avoid violating student-aid laws and regulations — at a time when many of them are dealing with budget cuts and hiring freezes.

The letter, which notes that the department recently gave the program a positive evaluation, asks for a reversal of the Bush-administration decision and for “further dialogue” between the department, the association, and student-aid offices about the future of the program. —Andrew Mytelka