By Jennifer Gonzalez

Washington

A panel of negotiators is spending this week discussing proposed revisions to 14 rules that affect for-profit colleges and other higher-education sectors. Among the proposals are those that would more precisely define a high-school diploma and would eliminate exceptions to a ban on providing incentive compensation to student recruiters.

Most of Wednesday's discussion, however, focused on the issue of "gainful employment" of graduates and how colleges should be required to measure their performance on that score.

The panel, comprising federal officials and representatives of institutions and associations affected by the regulations, is responsible for re-examining the rules in a process known as negotiated rule-making.

Two options were put forth by the U.S. Department of Education to determine how institutions would comply with a proposal requiring them to show that a given percentage of their graduates have found gainful employment, but neither one got much traction during the session. Some negotiators criticized what they saw as the department's failure to provide draft language to define "gainful employment."

One option would require a college to show a "reasonable relationship" between the price a student is charged for a specific program and its "value added," which the department suggests could be defined as the difference between the salaries in that field earned by the average graduate of the program and the average high-school graduate. The other would look at whether a student's starting annual income was adequate to cover student-loan obligations.

Some panelists questioned whether the Education Department has the authority to issue such regulations at all, since Congress has never asked for further clarification defining "gainful employment."

The negotiating panel met last month for the first of three sessions. This week's session, the second, concludes on Friday. The third is scheduled for late January. Final decisions on any rule revisions are not expected until then.