U.S. Department of Education Proposes
Overhaul of Gainful Employment Regulations
New
approach will provide useful, transparent higher education data to students and
treat all institutions fairly
WASHINGTON—The U.S. Department of
Education today announced a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that proposes
to rescind Gainful Employment (GE) regulations in order to provide useful,
transparent higher education data to students and treat all institutions of
higher education fairly.
“Students deserve useful and relevant data when making important
decisions about their education post-high school,” said U.S. Secretary of
Education Betsy DeVos. “That’s why instead of targeting schools simply by their
tax status, this administration is working to ensure students have transparent,
meaningful information about all colleges and all programs. Our new approach will
aid students across all sectors of higher education and improve accountability.”
The Department continues to
believe that data such as debt levels, expected earnings after graduation, completion
rates, program cost, accreditation, and consistency with licensure requirements
are important to consumers, but not just those students who are considering
enrolling in a gainful employment program.
Therefore, in the NPRM the Department invites public comment concerning
whether or not the Department should require institutions to disclose, on the
program webpage, information about the program size, its completion rate, its
cost, whether or not it is accredited, and whether the program meets the
requirements for licensure in the State in which the institution is located.
In addition, to provide
prospective students with important, actionable, and accurate information that
could be used in college enrollment and borrowing decisions, the Department plans
to update the College Scorecard or a similar web-based tool to provide
program-level outcomes including, at a minimum, median debt and median earnings
for all higher education programs, at all title IV participating
institutions. The Department believes
that this will improve transparency by providing comparable information for all
programs and helping students understand what earnings they might expect based
on those of prior graduates. This would
also increase accountability of institutions by making it more difficult for
institutions to misrepresent program outcomes, such as the earnings of prior
graduates, since prospective students would have access to accurate data
provided by the Secretary of Education.
The 30-day public
comment period for these proposed regulations will begin once published in the
Federal Register. In the interim, an
unofficial version of the proposed rule can be found here.
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