The Department of Education released a final rule that rescinds the entirety of the Obama-era Gainful Employment Rule.
On July 1, the US Department of Education released a final rule that rescinds the entirety of the Obama-era Gainful Employment (GE) Rule. While the technical effective date of the rescission of the GE rule is July 1, 2020, Secretary Betsy DeVos, in announcing on June 28 the pending issuance of the demise of the GE rule, also issued a notice that affected institutions could elect to implement the new rule immediately.
First proposed early in the Obama administration and applicable to all programs at proprietary institutions and non-degree programs at all other Title IV-eligible institutions, the GE rule became effective on July 1, 2015, implementing a program outcome evaluation methodology based on the median debt of program graduates as compared to their annual and discretionary earnings. Since then, impacted institutions have been required to report enrollment and student debt data annually to ED. While this data was intended to be the basis for the GE debt-to-earnings measures, which would in turn determine Title IV eligibility for covered programs, ED only issued one set of rates, in January 2017, days before the Obama administration ended.