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Richard Cordray, who has led the Federal Student Aid office since 2021, is stepping down at the end of June, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said Friday. His departure arrives amid withering criticism of his office’s rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which suffered delays and errors that upended the college admissions process for scores of families this year.

Columnist Ingrid Jacques writes:  President Joe Biden often appears confused these days. So maybe it shouldn't come as a surprise that his major rewrite of Title IX , finally released this month after multiple delays, makes it clear he has zero understanding of why the law exists.  Title IX is the education civil rights law Congress passed in 1972 that demands schools receiving federal funds ban discrimination in programs and activities "on the basis of sex." It’s a straightforward measure that was ground-changing for women and their access to school sports. Not anymore. 

It was when the shuttle bus stopped coming that Luka Fernandes began to worry. Fernandes was a student at Newbury College near Boston, whose enrollment had declined in the previous two decades from more than 5,300 to about 600.The private, nonprofit school had been placed on probation by its accreditors because of its shaky finances.After students went home for their winter holiday, an email came: Newbury would shut down at the end of the next semester.
 

It’s been three months since Sami Saeed filled out a federal financial aid application. And for three months, the senior at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, Md., has waited to fix an error in his form. Somehow, when Saeed’s parents submitted their portion of the application, it was automatically submitted without his signature. So as acceptance letters rolled in for him from the University of Maryland in College Park and George Washington University, neither college could tell Saeed how much aid he might receive without a completed financial aid form. It was mid-April before Saeed was finally able to correct and finish his application.
Now, he has trading one waiting period for another — biding his time until financial aid offers arrive.

High school seniors are more likely to attend college if they complete the federal financial aid form known as the FAFSA, or Free Application for Federal Student Aid. But the state that was the first to require students to fill out the form to graduate, Louisiana, has reversed course and dropped the mandate, after state officials decided it was too intrusive. For now, Louisiana appears to be an outlier.