Saturday, May 27, 2017

James Runcie, Chief Administrator of DOE's Federal Student Aid Program, resigns rather than testify before Congress. Will he take his bonuses with him?

James Runcie, Chief Operating Officer for the Department of Education's Student Aid Office, resigned a few days ago rather than testify before the House Oversight Committee. Good riddance!

Runcie, who has an MBA from Harvard, was appointed to the COO's position by the Obama administration in 2011. In December 2015, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan secretly reappointed Runcie to the position just before  Duncan stepped down as Education Secretary. In fact, Runcie's reappointment was one of Duncan's last official acts.

The Runcie-supervised student aid program has come under severe criticism over the last several years.   Recently, the press reported that the program misspent a total of $6 billion in federal money in the Pell Grant program and the Direct Student Loan program. A Huffington Post article, published about a year ago, noted that "government investigators from other agencies routinely slammed Runcie's division for failing to aid distressed borrowers and protect students, or they unearthed evidence of mistreatment that Runcie's deputies missed."

In fact, reports from multiple sources make clear that the Federal Student Aid office is a mess. The Government Accountability Office reported in December that DOE had underestimated the cost of its income-driven repayment programs. GAO concluded that the true cost was about double what DOE estimated.

And in Price v. U.S. Department of Education, decided recently by a Texas federal court, we got a glimpse of how poorly DOE responds to student complaints. Phyllis Price, filed an administrative complaint seeking to have her student loans discharged because the University of Phoenix, the school she attended, had falsely certified that she had a high school diploma.  DOE took six years to resolve Price's claim, and then it got it wrong. Price had to sue the Department to obtain the relief to which she was clearly entitled under federal law.

But sloppy administration did not prevent James Runcie and his close cronies from getting big salaries and handsome performance bonuses. As the Huffington Post reported, the typical Federal Student Aid employee makes more than $100,000, about a third more than typical federal employees are paid.

Runcie himself got a lot of bonus money. Just a few days ago, U.S. Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), accused Jordan of receiving $433,000 in performance bonuses while working for DOE!

Just think how big his bonuses would have been had he performed his job competently?

I hope the House Oversight Committee orders Runcie to appear under subpoena and explain what the hell he was doing while he was in charge of the Federal Student Aid program.

It is probably impossible to get Runcie's bonus money back, but surely Congress can stop the Department of Education's practice of giving cash bonuses to people overseeing the federal student loan program--a program that has brought so much misery to millions of Americans.

Will Mr. Runcie return his bonus money?

References

Sabrina Eaton. Rep. Jim Jordan blasts student loan official's $433,000 in bonuses despite failing grades. Cleveland.com, May 25, 2017.

Andrew Kreigbaum. GAO Report finds costs of loan programs outpace estimates and department methodology flawedInside Higher Ed, December 1, 2016.

Christopher Maynard. Education Department blasted over $6 billion in improper student aid payments. consumeraffairs.com, May 26, 2017.

Price v. U.S. Dep't of Education, 209 Fed. Supp. 3d 925 (S.D. Tex. 2016).

Shahien Nasiripour. Education Department Secretly Reappoints Top Official Accused of Harming Students. Huffington Post, May 7, 2016.

Top Federal Student-Aid Official Resigns Over Congressional Testimony. Chronicle of Higher Education, May 24, 2017.

US. Government Accounting Office. Federal Student Loans: Education Needs to Improve Its Income-Driven Repayment Plan Budget Estimates. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accounting Office, November, 2016.






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