Commentary: WASHINGTON — The National Education Association today filed comments with the Department of Education objecting to its plan to establish negotiated rulemaking committees to revisit program integrity rules on Gainful Employment and Borrower Defense. NEA believes these committees are designed to weaken or dismantle these rules that represent important first steps in protecting students and taxpayers from well documented abuses in the proprietary sector of higher education.
NEA is fundamentally committed to both quality education and social justice, and has strongly supported the Department's efforts in
->painstakingly[ developing these rules ]with input from all affected stakeholders. Both rules deserve time to prove their worth in protection for students and taxpayers. The full comments are below:
July 12, 2017
Wendy Macias
U.S. Department of Education
400 Maryland Ave., SW
Room 6C111
Washington, DC 20202
Re: Docket ID ED-2017-OPE-0076
Comments on proposed negotiated rulemaking to revise the gainful employment and borrower defenses regulations.
Dear Ms. Macias:
On behalf of more than 3 million members, the National Education Association (NEA) submits the following comments on the U.S. Department of Education’s proposal to renegotiate important program integrity rules on gainful employment and borrower defenses. NEA strongly opposes any delay or weakening of these rules, which have been painstakingly developed with input from all affected stakeholders. Both rules deserve more time to prove their worth in protection for students and taxpayers against well documented abuses. The gainful employment regulation was finalized in October 2014 and went into effect July 1, 2016. The borrower defense regulation was finalized in November 2016 and was to have gone into effect July 1, 2017.
NEA is fundamentally committed to both a quality education for every student and social justice, and those twin principles provide the perspective for our comments. NEA represents elementary and secondary schoolteachers, education support professionals at all levels of education, more than 215,000 faculty and staff, and more than 60,000 aspiring educators on college and university campuses around the country. NEA also stands as an organization committed to social justice, willing to speak up to protect the rights of students and taxpayers.
Gainful Employment Rule
Since its inception, the Higher Education Act has required that to remain eligible for federal student aid, institutions of higher education must provide programs that:
• lead to a degree (associate, bachelor’s, graduate, or professional), or
• prepare students for “gainful employment in a recognized occupation.” (This covers certificate programs in traditional institutions, and virtually all programs – degree and non-degree – offered by proprietary institutions.)
However, the Department never defined the term “gainful employment” until recently. During the long effort to implement this rule, involving administrative, legislative, and legal proceedings, NEA strongly supported the Department’s efforts to protect students and taxpayers from institutions that did not in fact provide the education they promised. The final regulation called for eligibility requirements for career education programs that enabled graduates to pay back a sum that did not exceed 20 percent of their discretionary income or 8 percent of his or her total earnings.
On January 9, 2017, the Department of Education released preliminary results of the first year of the gainful employment regulations, measuring some 3,000 programs. The results revealed that over three quarters of career education programs met the requirements, illustrating the overall health of the career education sector, including for-profit institutions. However, over 800 programs failed the accountability standards, and 98 percent of those programs were offered by proprietary institutions.
Over the past several years, numerous investigations have uncovered serious problems in the proprietary sector of higher education. Reports from the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP Committee), the Government Accountability Office (GAO), and numerous advocacy groups have highlighted these problems. At the federal level, the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have investigated misconduct by for-profit colleges, and a bipartisan group of state attorneys general is working on investigations at the state level.
For-profit institutions have opposed these regulations, but they continue to market aggressively, claiming they will provide the credentials necessary for high-paying jobs. These marketing programs target communities of color and groups where existing public systems have not been as effective as they should be. The promise of high-paying jobs is both the explicit point of the marketing and the result the proposed metrics attempt to measure. In these circumstances, it is entirely appropriate that they be judged on their claims.
The percentage of low-income students, women, and students of color attending undergraduate for-profit institutions is higher than that attending all colleges. Individuals from these groups attending for-profit institutions also are much more likely to borrow the funds to attend than those attending public or private non-profit institutions. Adult students working full time are also much more likely to borrow if they attend for-profit institutions. Finally, students at for-profits are twice as likely to default on federal Stafford loans as students attending public colleges, and they are three times more likely to default than students attending private non-profit institutions. These factors add up to a disproportionate burden on low-income students and students of color, who are precisely the students targeted by the for-profit sector’s aggressive marketing campaigns. This injustice is what must be remedied. The rule makes an impressive first step in providing such a remedy. It must be allowed to operate.
The borrower defenses to repayment and college accountability regulations were developed in the wake of several institutions abruptly closing and leaving students and the Department holding large amounts of debt, and leaving students without effective recourse for completing their education. The bankruptcy of Corinthian Colleges alone has left the government holding over half a billion dollars in debt. The Department was reviewing students’ dilemmas on a caseby-case basis, taking up valuable time and resources. In this situation, NEA supported efforts to effectively provide financial relief for students in programs that lose eligibility. Institutions with ineffective programs that lose eligibility for federal aid after students enroll should be required to provide relief to those students. In addition to protecting students, such measures would provide incentives for institutions to improve their programs to regain eligibility or, better yet, to improve their programs so they do not lose their eligibility. Again, the rule was developed through an extensive process involving stakeholders from throughout the education sector. It needs to be implemented and then reviewed. To delay and revise simply prolongs the situation where students and taxpayers are at risk, and irresponsible institutions continue to collect government money without any reasonable accountability to provide educational benefits to their students.
Thank you for this opportunity to comment. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact Mark Smith, senior policy analyst in the Education Policy and Practice Department, at marksmith@nea.org.
Sincerely,
Donna M. Harris-Aikens, Director
Education Policy and Practice Department