WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In a letter to President Barack Obama, the Coalition for Educational Success (Coalition) asked the President to halt the proposed “gainful employment” rule, currently under consideration at the U.S. Department of Education (DoE), because it fails the very standards outlined in the recently signed Executive Order “Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review”. The Coalition also launched an advertising campaign that highlights how “gainful employment” falls well short of the standards of the Executive Order.
“We applaud the recent Executive Order, which seeks to improve the regulation and regulatory review process. As the President has stated, onerous regulations can ‘stifle innovation and have a chilling effect on jobs.’ In fact, the President’s recent Wall Street Journal op-ed noted the ability to achieve proper balance that preserves freedom of commerce and economic growth, while protecting people and businesses from abuse, is paramount to America’s free enterprise system,” said Coalition Co-Chairmen Avy Stein and Lincoln Frank.
“However, for nearly a year, the Department of Education has been pursuing a path of arbitrarily regulating the career colleges in a way that fails every one of this Executive Order’s new criteria. The GE regulations do not just represent bad policy, the process around which the rules were developed is equally flawed,” they added.
On January 18, the President signed an Executive Order to improve regulation and regulatory review. The Coalition compared “gainful employment” against the Executive Order’s main tenets, and found that it fails to satisfy every one of the Order’s criteria. The letter conveyed the following key points:
- “Gainful employment” will negatively impact economic growth, innovation, competitiveness and job security. The regulation will reduce access to higher education for many Americans by limiting financial aid to students who elect to go to for-profit career colleges. Americans will lose access to the training they need to fill in-demand jobs. In addition, GE’s negative impact will also be felt at the career colleges themselves, which will be forced to reduce faculty and staff as programs are deemed ineligible.
- “Gainful employment” does not take into account benefits and costs, both quantitative and qualitative. DoE has never tested the impact of GE on the constituencies who would be impacted most by the regulation. For millions of full-time jobholders – working parents, minorities, veterans, and seniors – career colleges offer the best, and for many, the only real access to higher education.
- The development of “gainful employment” did not allow for public participation and an open exchange of ideas. The panel of negotiators involved in developing the GE regulation with DoE included only one career college sector representative out of 17 members. DoE picked organizations and individuals that were most interested in harming career colleges. Behind the scenes, DoE communicated and met with known “short-sellers” who bet against the performance of for-profit colleges, and stood to gain financially from regulations that would harm the sector. These non-transparent meetings influenced the GE regulation.
- “Gainful employment” does not maintain flexibility and freedom of choice for the public. The GE regulation is based on an arbitrary set of principles that would limit choice and reduce access to higher education for many Americans, by reducing the amount of financial aid available to students who elect to attend career colleges.
- “Gainful employment” does not identify and use the best, most innovative and least burdensome tools for achieving regulatory ends. Instead, the proposed rules are at odds with accepted economic theory. GE does not recognize that the value of higher education is experienced in lifetime earnings, and not an arbitrary window. The GE regulation is based on a faulty premise regarding student loan default rates. It uses nontransparent, privacy-protected data for earnings, so that the schools can neither plan appropriately nor challenge inaccuracies.
About the Coalition for Educational Success
The Coalition for Educational Success includes many of the nation's leading career colleges, serving more than 350,000 students at 478 campuses in 41 states. Career colleges provide training for students in 17 of the 20 fastest growing fields. The Coalition advocates for policies that support wider access to higher education, particularly for non-traditional students including full-time workers, workforce returners, working parents, minorities and veterans.