Washington — Diane Auer Jones, the Education Department’s assistant secretary for postsecondary education, is leaving office at the end of the month to become president of the Washington Campus, a consortium of university business schools.

Ms. Jones told her staff on Wednesday of her plans to leave the department, only a year after being nominated to the post by President Bush.

Ms. Jones said she had hoped to remain through the end of the Bush administration, in January 2009, but decided to leave early after receiving an offer to replace the Washington Campus’s president, who is retiring. The consortium was founded in 1978 to help business schools train corporate executives in the process of policy making in Washington.

The opportunity was a case of “the perfect job coming at not the perfect time,” Ms. Jones told The Chronicle.

Although the Bush administration still has eight months remaining, Ms. Jones said she would be leaving at an appropriate time in the Education Department’s calendar. Several critical regulatory processes have been finished, and all of the department’s major grant competitions, for which she is responsible, have now been completed, Ms. Jones said. —Paul Basken