Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has begun repairing some of the injustice of Betsy DeVos’s policies in the federal college loan program administered by the U.S. Department of Education.
In an extremely significant first step, two weeks ago, Cardona replaced Mark A Brown, who had been appointed by Betsy DeVos in 2019 to oversee the Department’s enormous student loan program. Brown is known to have favored the interests of the for-profit colleges that depend for their existence on tuition derived from student loans. As Brown’s replacement, Cardona has appointed Richard Cordray, a dogged advocate for the students and military veterans who have been preyed upon by for-profit colleges.
The Washington Post‘s Danielle Douglas-Gabriel reports: “Education Secretary Miguel Carrdona… named Richard Cordray, the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, to head the federal office that oversees the government’s $1.5 trillion student loan portfolio. Cordray led the bureau’s crackdown on consumer abuses in debt collection, student loan servicing, and for-profit colleges, garnering the respect of advocates and drawing the ire of those industries. His selection signals tougher oversight of the Education Department’s contractors and enforcement of the rules governing federal student aid… During his six-year tenure at the CFPB, which he joined in 2011, Cordray frequently clashed with the financial industry and conservatives over his aggressive regulation. His efforts to weed out poor servicing of student loans and predatory career training schools at times put him at odds with the Education Department… The CFPB under Cordray’s direction brought some of the most high-profile student lending cases in recent years. Among them: a lawsuit against the now-defunct for-profit giant Corinthian Colleges for steering students into private loans that had interest rates as high as 15 percent.”
In a piece for The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner summarizes some of the outrageous CONTINUE READING: Secretary Cardona Begins to Correct DeVos’s College Loan Policies that Undermined Vulnerable College Students’ Access to Education | janresseger