WIRTW #710: the “if it ain’t broke…” edition

If you have a child applying for college this year, you know the pain that we are currently feeling. This year, Congress decided to change the process to apply for federal financial aid. The changes to the FAFSA ("Free Application for Federal Student Aid") were supposed to make applying for financial aid easier. Instead, it has caused delays, uncertainty, and stress. 

Under the former system, students would have already received their offer letters from the colleges and universities to which they had been admitted, including the full breakdown of all financial aid and the net cost of attendance. That "net cost" is what enables us to make apples-to-apples comparisons of schools and to help our high-school seniors make an informed decision about the best academic, social, and financial choice. 

Instead, the Department of Education has struggled to process the information it has received under this new process. As a result, the DOE has not yet even started providing FAFSA information to colleges and universities, which, in turn, are scrambling to assure students that they will know their financial aid packages and cost of attendance before freshman orientation.

Congress, we know how dysfunctional you have become. You can barely agree on what should be your most core function — legislation to keep our government open — let alone meeting our nation's more pressing needs such as funding for Ukraine, immigration reform, or protecting women's productive rights. Then again, given how you've botched what should be the lowest hanging of fruit when you actually do something, I'm not sure you're actually qualified to govern anything.

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Here's what I read this week that you should read, too.

 

Central Bucks has settled lawsuit with teacher who said the district punished him for helping a transgender student — via The Philadelphia Inquirer

Federal judge says Christian employers don't have to cover gender transition — via HR Dive

DEI Quiz! — via Employment & Labor Insider

Major US Corporations Threaten to Return Labor to 'Law of the Jungle' — via Portside

Have Employers Given Up on Bringing People Back to the Office? — via Evil HR Lady, Suzanne Lucas

Google fired an employee who protested its contract with the Israeli military — via The Verge

Google Engineer Steals AI Trade Secrets for Chinese Companies — via Dark Reading

Judge Strikes Down NLRB's Final Joint Employer Rule — via Hunton Employment & Labor Law Perspectives™

How do people take months off from work to film a reality TV show? — via Ask a Manager

The Pitfalls of AI Applicant Screening Tools — via EntertainHR

Four Years Ago the World Stopped — via Beervana

Is complaining about a hostile work environment enough to support a retaliation claim? Maybe. Maybe not. — via Eric Meyer's The Employer Handbook Blog

Campaign pushes to raise Ohio minimum wage again; some restaurants fight effort — via Fox 8 Cleveland