A civil and human rights organization is calling for strong “gainful employment” regulations to protect college students, in particular African-Americans and Latinos, from unscrupulous for-profit schools.
The Leadership Conference Education Fund released a policy brief on Thursday that called on the U.S. Education Department to revisit the so-called gainful employment (GE) rule, which was promulgated during the Obama administration mainly to ensure that for-profit institutions were not burdening students with college loans that they could not repay. U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos nixed the rule this year, but a House bill to reauthorize the Higher Education Act (HEA) introduced by Democrats this week would require the department to establish a GE measure.
The new policy brief noted that African-American and Latino students are over-represented in for-profit colleges. While African-American and Latino students comprise 34 percent of all postsecondary enrollments, they represent 51 percent of students at for-profit institutions.