The plans start with finding a new leader in place of Richard Cordray, whose three-year term is over a the end of June.
05/31/2024 2:05 P.M.
2 minute read
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona is seeking to ensure the Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid (FSA) office “works better and addresses ongoing management and operational challenges,” according to a blog post from the department.
Chief Operating Officer (COO) Richard Cordray’s three-year term will be up at the end of June, and finding a new COO is first on the list of Cardona’s plans.
Cordray said earlier this spring he would not be continuing his term in a letter to Cardona, Politico reports. A deputy COO, Denise Carter, is in place until a permanent replacement is found.
According to the Politico report from late April, Cordray will stay on through the end of June “for a transitional period as the [d]epartment considers the longer term.”
It says Cordray’s departure comes at a time when the department is facing pressure to act on plans from the Biden administration to cancel student loan debt and “recover from its troubled rollout of a new student aid system.”
Thus, the priorities for FSA outlined by Cardona include reviewing the office’s “current and historical organization, management, staffing, workflow structures, business processes, and operations to continue bringing the federal financial aid system into to the 21st century.”
It is hiring an independent consultant firm to provide recommendations to the COO on ways to improve FSA, reviewing contracts, seeking feedback from the Office of the Inspector General as well as engaging members of Congress, whose constituents receive services from FSA.
“To meet increased demand and improve the student and borrower experience, the [d]epartment will undertake a full-scale review of FSA’s current and historical organization, management, staffing, workflow structures, business processes, and operations,” Cardona said in the letter to department staff. “This includes a review of contracts and acquisition procedures to hold vendors accountable for performance issues.
During Cordray’s tenure, he managed the administration’s student loan relief, including widespread debt cancellation ultimately struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, Politico reports.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision on the student loan relief in July 2023, the department issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) outlining revised plans from the Biden administration, ACA International previously reported.
The proposed regulations would modify the department’s existing debt collection regulations to provide greater specificity on the Secretary of Education’s discretion to waive federal student loan debt, according to the NPRM.
ACA submitted comments (PDF) on the department’s far reaching and in some ways duplicative NPRM.
In addition to the FSA plans, the department is working to finalize its rules in the NPRM by the fall.
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