News Clips

Lenders could be clashing with an old nemesis soon. Richard Cordray, 62, has been named chief operating officer of federal student aid, putting him in charge of the U.S. Department of Education’s $1.6 trillion portfolio of federal student loans.

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.

Richard Cordray, a close ally of Senator Elizabeth Warren who served as the first director of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during the Obama years, has been selected as the new head of federal student aid in the Biden administration, a post that will put him at the center of the swirling debate over forgiving student debt.

Now, advocates are calling on the U.S. Department of Education to more aggressively monitor these arrangements after years of evidence that the current approach to the rules isn’t doing enough to protect students from potentially harmful financial products.

For Washington, the embrace of such demands marks a striking change, as an idea advanced by anti-corporate greed Occupy Wall Street activists a decade ago – and resoundingly rejected by the Trump administration – moves to the heart of political debate.