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President Biden’s Hypocrisy on For-Profit Colleges Is Unacceptable  

WASHINGTON, D.C., February 17, 2022
President Biden’s predatory policies targeting career-focused institutions harm low-income, minority, and other disadvantaged students seeking to improve their career pathways and move up the economic ladder. Holding proprietary institutions to a different standard and ignoring the failures of traditional colleges and universities who enroll 95 percent of students is hypocritical. It’s time for Democrats to recognize the contributions of these institutions and how they are developing the next generation of America’s workforce.

In Case You Missed It via The Economic Standard, Democrats’ double standard on for-profit colleges is nonsensical.


DOE’s War on Career Colleges Will harm the Very Students it Seeks to Help
By Krisztina Pusok
February 14, 2022
 
This week, the Department of Education’s negotiated rulemaking committee will meet to discuss sweeping changes to the 90/10 rule governing the share of revenue that career colleges can receive from the federal government. According to reports, the committee is likely to recommend broadening the scope of “federal funds” under 90/10 to make it more difficult for career colleges to meet the standard and remain certified. If the Department enacts these changes, hundreds of schools may be forced to shut their doors, leaving thousands of students who attend these schools scrambling.
 
Shuttering so-called “for-profit” schools has long been a dream of some ideologues, but that path represents a dereliction of duty for the Department of Education (DoE). The agency exists to ensure that all Americans have access to a quality education. This mission demands a system that provides a diverse array of options for learners of all types with the understanding that American students have different education needs, expectations, and abilities. 
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Transparency and accountability are necessary to reform education, but regulating on the basis of tax status ensures that students at high performing for-profit schools will suffer, while the failures of state and nonprofit schools get a pass. These failures are well-documented. Consumer Action for a Strong Economy, for example, emphasizes that some public non-profit colleges have graduation rates as low as nine percent. Similarly, research by the Independent Women’s Forum notes that most four year, non-profit schools would have to close their doors if subjected to the same gainful employment requirements the committee intends to restore on for-profit colleges.
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Career and proprietary colleges play an essential role in our education system and DoE’s scapegoating of these institutions are harming students. Instead, the Department should implement system-wide transparency and accountability measures to ensure that every American can get the quality education they need. If improving educational outcomes is the goal for this rulemaking, then transparency and accountability standards should be made uniform for ALL colleges, and not just a few.
 
Read the full article here.
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