The 18 AGs plead with Education Secretary DeVos and Congress not to roll back for-profit regulations
A group of state attorneys general are asking Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Congressional leaders not to declare “open season” on students by rolling back regulations governing for-profit colleges.
“Over the past fifteen years, millions of students have been defrauded by unscrupulous for-profit post-secondary schools,” said the nine-page letter signed by 18 attorneys general, who said they had been forced to step in to stop some of the worst abuses because accreditors had been “asleep at the wheel.”
Regulations governing for-profit schools and their accrediting agencies were tightened over the past several years after a series of abuses, but the new chair of the House Education Committee — Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) — has vowed to “do everything we can” to roll back the regulations.
“Now that Mr. Trump is the president-elect, I think [we’ll approach things] quite differently than the way we might have if it had been Mrs. Clinton,” Foxx said in a November 2016 interview with Inside Higher Education.
Asked if she sees the federal government taking action to lower the cost of education, Foxx said she did not.
“No. Why should we? We have a $20 trillion debt,” she said. “Why should we go into debt to pay for what the states should be doing? Have you read the Constitution lately? If you find the word “education” in there as a responsibility of the federal government, then I might change my mind.”
Serious cases
The AGs listed some of the most serious cases, including American Career Institute; Ashford University/Bridgepoint Education, Inc.; Corinthian Colleges, Inc.; Career Education Corporation; Education Management Corporation; Daymar College; DeVry University; ITT Tech; National College of Kentucky; and Westwood Colleges, noting that students and taxpayers have lost millions of dollars paying for substandard programs, certificates, and degrees.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and the other AGs pointed to a number of protections they believe should remain intact, including the Gainful Employment Rule, which ensures students who attend career training programs will qualify for employment and be able to repay their federal student loans once they graduate.
The AGs are also pushing to keep vigorous federal oversight of accreditors that are tasked with providing prospective students with quality assurance.
Besides being a gross exaggeration of the number of students who have been damaged by the for profits, the damage done by a hostile administration that destroyed, rather than reformed, schools that had problems, is much less than the damage done by forcing schools to close. The problems were easily fixed. But the mantra of regulators is to punish and destroy rather than to repair and improve. As a result, hundreds of thousands of students had their dreams ruined and the infrastructure to train future employees was left in ruins. The collateral damage done by the politicians also ruined many very good schools and the damage will be felt for years to come. With fewer career oriented educational options, employers will find it increasingly difficult to find qualified employees and many people will be relegated to under employment.