EDUCATION/TRUMP PEOPLE/BETSY DEVOS: “This month, the secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, announced plans to dismantle a set of Obama-era policies devised to protect students and taxpayers from predatory for-profit colleges.
Yet data released in the final days of the previous administration shows that the existing rules have proved more effective at shutting down bad college programs than even the most optimistic backers could have hoped.
The rules that Ms. DeVos wants to repeal are called the gainful employment regulations. They work like this: For all for-profit programs, and any nondegree employment certificate programs at public or nonprofit colleges, the education department compares how much the typical student borrows versus how much they earn after graduation.
If the ratio is too high — if students borrow lots of money and can’t get well-paying jobs — the program is deemed ‘failing.’ A program that fails in two out of three years becomes ineligible for federal financial aid. Since many for-profit programs get up to 90 percent of their revenue through the Department of Education, the penalty will almost surely shut them down.”
-Kevin Carey, “New Evidence Shows DeVos Is Discarding College Policies That Are Effective,” The New York Times online, June 30, 2017