The head of the Biden administration’s Federal Student Aid office is stepping down after the disastrous implementation of the revised Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) program, the secretary of education announced Friday.
Richard Cordray’s FAFSA form overhaul has been dogged by glitches and delays, which have prevented millions of students from hearing back about how much money they’ll need to fork over to attend college in the fall.
Cordray will stay on as the country’s top student aid official until June, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement.
“We are grateful for Rich Cordray’s 3 years of service, in which he accomplished more transformational changes to the student aid system than any of his predecessors,” Cardona wrote.
“Rich will conclude his tenure at FSA at the end of June and will serve as Chief Operating Officer until then, we thank Rich for his tireless work and commitment to provide the service that our students, families and institutions deserve,” he added.
Congress approved the FAFSA Simplification Act of 2019 with the intention of streamlining the financial aid application form to make it easier for students to determine their eligibility.
Cordray’s office missed the Oct. 1, 2023, deadline to implement the new form by three months.
Once launched, the new online form was also riddled with bugs that locked students out of the application and provided incorrect financial calculations.
The delays and significant technical issues have fueled uncertainty for millions of students over their enrollment status and have denied families’ access to crucial financial aid information in a timely manner.
Last month, as problems with FAFSA persisted, Cardona reached out to colleges and universities, encouraging them to “reconsider aid application deadlines” to ensure that “all students have time to submit and correct their FAFSA forms.”
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.) have called for an investigation into whether funds set aside for FAFSA form overhaul were misappropriated, including by being diverted to President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.
“It remains unclear whether those funds were used to promote an efficient overhaul of the FAFSA form or for other projects, specifically the $153 billion in student loan ‘forgiveness’ approved to date,” Ernst and Letlow wrote in a letter to the Office of the Inspector General for the Education Department earlier this month.
FAFSA is used by roughly 17 million students and more than 5,500 colleges and universities.
