Washington, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., along with a group of Democratic senators including Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., today called on Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to explain the Department’s decision to delay the implementation of the Gainful Employment (GE) rule, which requires career training programs to provide students with reasonable return on their educational investment – good-paying jobs that allow them to repay their student debt.
Last week, the Department of Education announced it would postpone the deadline for failing schools to submit appeals of their debt-to-earnings rates. The administration’s decision would also delay the use of a new disclosure template meant to provide students better information about their programs.
“The Gainful Employment rule is a critical protection for both students and taxpayers. It will encourage improvement of career education programs that fail to adequately prepare students for good paying jobs that allow them to repay their student debt, and cut off federal financial aid to programs that continue to fall short of these reasonable expectations. This will help prevent students from amassing debt that they can’t repay and reduce taxpayer dollars being wasted on underperforming programs,” the senators wrote in a letter to DeVos.
“Disappointingly, [the Department] has now moved the March and April deadlines back to July 1, 2017, on the grounds that the delay will allow time to ‘further review’ the regulation… [T]his delay needlessly stalls important protections for students and taxpayers and creates more uncertainty for schools.”
In addition to Wyden, Durbin, Murray, and Warren, the letter was also signed by Senators Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Jack Reed, D-R.I., Al Franken, D-Minn., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Maggie Hassan, D-N.H.
Federal law requires career education and certificate programs at for-profit, not-for-profit, and public institutions to prepare students for “gainful employment in a recognized occupation” in order to qualify for federal student aid. The Department’s Gainful Employment rule seeks to hold institutions to that statutory responsibility. Final debt-to-earnings data released by the Obama Administration in January revealed that 98 percent of the 800 failing degree programs identified were offered by for-profit colleges.
