Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-Mich.) might be new to Congress this year, but he’s no novice when it comes to the political battles over for-profit colleges that are flaring again as the Trump administration works to overhaul Obama-era policies aimed at the industry. Before coming to Washington, Mitchell was a part owner and chief executive officer of Ross Medical Education Center, a company that operates more than two dozen campuses across the country.
— Earlier this year, Mitchell co-sponsored the House bill that’s part of a new, bipartisan effort in Congress to overturn a decade-old federal prohibition on tracking the educational and employment outcomes of college students. The goal is to arm consumers with better data about colleges and universities. “You can find out more information about a washer and dryer and the reliability of that than you can find out the likelihood of success from enrolling in a college or university,” Mitchell told POLITICO in an wide-ranging interview.
— “I do not support in any way shape or form creating a student unit record [system],” Mitchell said. “I believe there’s every way in the world to protect the privacy of all students in the system while still getting the information. And there’s technology to do it. I admit to anybody, nothing in the world is perfect, God knows, but if we do it right it’s a whole lot better than what exists now.”
— “It’s not the government’s job to tell you whether you should go to this school and that program because we think it’s a good program or not,” Mitchell said. “It’s this mindset that we’ll protect you because you’re too ignorant to figure out whether it’s good for you or not.”
— Mitchell, unsurprisingly, wasn’t a fan of the Obama administration’s crackdown on the for-profit college sector. He said he hopes the Trump administration, in rewriting gainful employment, and Congress in reauthorizing the Higher Education Act, will come up with standards that apply equally across all types of colleges. “There are people that will act badly or have bad outcomes and we deal with it, universally, and not say it’s particularly endemic to one sector or another,” he said. “I’ve been in postsecondary education and workforce development for 35 years, and I can tell you that nonprofits, for-profits and public institutions aren’t any more likely to act with some level of irresponsibility or poor intentions.”