For-profit college rules get reset by U.S. Department of Education, and it starts in University Park
Last month, U.S. Department of Education secretary Betsy DeVos put the brakes on two Obama-era regulations designed to protect student borrowers at for-profit colleges, saying it was “time for a regulatory reset.”
That reset started this week — in University Park.
On Wednesday, the Department of Education held a full-day forum in the basement of Southern Methodist University’s Law Library to gather public comments on unwinding those regulations. It was the second of two hearings this week, the first held Monday in Washington, D.C.
Fewer than 50 speakers presented their cases to a panel of bureaucrats that included Jim Manning, the education department’s acting under-secretary who also worked in President Trump’s transition effort.
The agency plans to reopen a lengthy rule-making process to rework two important provisions: the “gainful-employment rule” and the “borrower defense to repayment,” both aimed at protecting student borrowers from predatory practices of for-profit colleges. A 2012 Congressional report found that federal taxpayers helped foot $32 billion in student aid annually at for-profit schools.
The gainful-employment rule looks at the level of student loan-debt for graduates and the income of jobs they are getting out of school, using federal aid as a cudgel to ensure for-profit colleges aren’t excessively burdening their students.