DeVos Presses Pause on Burdensome Gainful Employment Regulations
Ongoing legal
challenges reinforce need to reset rule to ensure students,
institutions are best-served
Continuing to deliver on her promise of a regulatory reset
at the Department of Education, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced
today the Department will allow additional time for institutions to comply with
overly burdensome Gainful Employment regulations.
“Since their creation under the previous administration,
Gainful Employment regulations have been repeatedly challenged by educational
institutions and overturned by the courts, underscoring the need for a
regulatory reset,” said Secretary DeVos. “We need to get this right for our
students, and we need to get this right for our institutions of higher
education. Once fully implemented, the current rules would unfairly and
arbitrarily limit students’ ability to pursue certain types of higher education
and career training programs. We need to expand, not limit, paths to
higher education for students, while also continuing to hold accountable those institutions that
do not serve students well.”
The Department will now give
higher education institutions until July 1, 2018, to comply with disclosure requirements originally due on
July 1, 2017, regarding the distribution of gainful employment data to students and in promotional materials. The
Department is also extending the deadline for programs to file alternate
earnings appeals in light of the Court Order in American Association of
Cosmetology Schools v. DeVos. A Federal Register notice will be issued
within the next 30 days to specifically implement the Court Order and will
include information on establishing a new deadline for earnings appeals.
On June 14, 2017, the Department announced it would engage in
negotiated rulemaking on Gainful Employment to develop new regulations that
would better serve students and enable institutions to provide high-quality
programs.
You can read the full notice on the Federal Register here.
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