Back in March, barely a week after President Trump declared a national emergency and schools, offices, and businesses around the country began to close down in response to the pandemic, the lobbying association for private non-profit colleges sent a letter to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos with a significant ask. The private colleges wanted a reprieve from being tested on their financial responsibility for the next three years, noting that many of the schools lacked “the institutional reserves necessary to weather the current economic storm without a significant impact to their institutional composite score.”
At least so far, no federal guidance has been issued granting the request. But the ask itself is telling: If colleges’ finances are in such bad shape, why should there be less oversight, rather than more?
Over the last decade, hundreds of college campuses have permanently closed. In the worst cases, those schools have shuttered their doors without advance notice — no clear plan for students to finish their education elsewhere, no system for ensuring students could access their transcripts to transfer their credits, and not enough resources to ensure taxpayer losses are covered.