Gainful-Employment Rule Enters Final Lap

The difference is that, when sub-prime loans were offered, no one tried to shut down the real estate firms that sold people the homes that they could not afford. That is because it was the government, not the real estate company, that set the loan amount. In the case of education, it is the government, not the schools, that determine whehter a student receives aid and how much that aid will be. However, if, after graduating from a school, the student decides a couple of years later not to repay a loan, the school gets punished (and only CERTAIN types of schools and programs). If gainful employment was a well designed and researched rule (which it isn’t), it should be applied equally to all schools.

The concept of gainful employment is a good one for career-oriented higher education, and conservatives and liberals alike should applaud an approach like this to regulation of the sector. The detailed formulas and methodology proposed were very badly designed, though, and one can only hope they were modified in the final submission. Meanwhile, the 90/10 rule is a foolish one that creates perverse incentives for career colleges and does nothing to ensure quality education. The interaction of 90/10 and GE as proposed would be nothing short of disastrous in its impact on the accessibility of career education.

Regulations have to be tied to a statute. Regulations flesh out the gap between the broad principles which statutes are intended to state and the actual implementation where the rubber meets the road. Decades of court decisions have said this is a role for agencies, not Congress, which lacks the time and expertise to fill in such details. Funding for proprietary schools was originally supplied not through the higher education act but through the vocational education programs of the labor department and HEW. For political reasons, the proprietary schools wanted to be under the funding of the higher ed act although they are not institutions of higher education (IHEs). One of the few conditions for receiving this extremely generous funding source was gainful employment, which DoEd is finally flleshing out in regulations after decades. By definition, a career school is telling potential students that the reason to enroll is career-related, so they need to prove there is some basis to this. That’s what gainful employment is about. If anything, judicial review to throw out gainful employment would be moot after all these years. If judicial review resulted in throwing it out, though, the result would be that, once again, career related postsecondary educational programs would be banned from involvement in current student aid programs such as Pell and direct loan.

Wonderful legislation that is long overdue! We should be grateful to the congress men and women who authored and fought for this truly patriotic bill.

The for profit education industry in the United States is a highly sophisticated, diversified, activity that annually drains billions of dollars from Americas economy by unlawful conduct.

The question is, should the U.S. taxpayer continue to subsidize the for profit education industry and government backed student loans when so much fraud goes unchecked by the courts?

I just finished working for the for-profit college industry. It was the most terrible experience of my life. I have never seen such racism against staff and students ANYWHERE. These crooks need to be shut down. If you know of a student or staff member attending one of these fake schools, tell them to get the heck out. Students, get attorneys! Protect yourself from these vultures! I even encountered teachers having sex with students. The atmosphere was very hostile. Terrible curriculum. They lie to the students. This is ILLEGAL!

I am a conservative and I vehemently oppose it because it doesn’t apply to public schools as well. Ethnic studies, philosophy and english programs would be would be gone if it applied to publics. The same rules should appy to all types of institutions. By the way, when i graduated from college I had $325 per month student loan payments and was making $1500 per month. Know what I did? I lived low and played little and made the payments every month.

Well that makes a lot of sense doesn’t it.  Lets apply this to public schools and shut down the English programs.  I mean, only the wealthy and the white should know how to speak English anyway right?  If people know how to read and write then they can read the crap cirruculum that these fake, bummy colleges are giving out and know that it isn’t worth half of the tuition that they are being duped into paying for.  By the time they realize whats happened, they are shouldering loans into the triple digits. Lets just cut out Ethnic Studies/Social Studies also because everyone in this world should be white and if they see other blacks/asians/europeans in textbooks then they would also see that the world is comprised of many races which totally NORMAL and that the world has many ways of doing things.  We wouldn’t want minorities to know that they have LEGAL rights which cutting all of the programs you suggest would effectively take away from them.  Your RACIST attitudes are CRYSTAL CLEAR and are CLEARLY HELD by the for-profit industry. LAWYERS, get ready to knock down the for-profit education walls with your briefcases, these crooks are easily exposed.