By Tim Devaney
A group of private colleges and universities is blasting
the Obama administration's effort to tackle burdensome student loan
debt, because they say it would force them to turn away low-income
students, and in particular, minorities.
They also charge the proposed law unfairly targets private institutions while leaving their public counterparts unscathed.
Steve
Gunderson, president and CEO of the Association of Private Sector
Colleges and Universities (APSCU), said the move was an "ideological
declaration of war" against private schools by the Obama administration.
"Millions of prospective students — particularly
working adults, minorities and people with scarce financial resources —
will see their access to higher education and prospects for better
employment dramatically reduced," Gunderson added.
Republicans criticized the rule, while Democrats said it did not go far enough.
The Department of Education released its second attempt
at "gainful employment" regulations on Friday morning, aimed at schools
that "prey on students" by charging exorbitant amounts of money without
providing adequate job training.
The regulations would
apply to thousands of for-profit programs, as well as certificate
programs at both nonprofit and public institutions. They would look at
certain fields of study and measure the amount of debt students would
face compared to their projected earnings, as well as the default rate
among former students. Schools that perform poorly would lose federal
student aid funding.
The Obama administration says this
is part of an effort to push back against schools that saddle students
with unreasonably high debt only to graduate and find a low-paying job,
or no job at all.
"Higher education should open up
doors of opportunity, but students in these low-performing programs
often end up worse off than before they enrolled: saddled by debt and
with few — if any — options for a career," Education Secretary Arne
Duncan said in a statement.
But Gunderson said the new
rule would provide a "perverse incentive" for private colleges and
universities affected by the rule to restrict access to educational
opportunities for low-income and minority students, who often depend on
loans to go to college.
The private schools also say it
could create divisions within a single college or university among
students who will graduate into high-paying jobs and those who will not.
These schools might even be forced to scrap programs that train
students for initially low-paying jobs.
"Individuals
interested in careers with lower starting salaries, such as
communications, psychology, visual and performing arts, and social work
will be barred from receiving the same federal aid as their classmates
choosing more lucrative fields," Gunderson said.
Gunderson also expanded on his view that the gainful employment regulations unfairly target for-profit private schools.
"If
the regulation were applied to all of higher education, programs like a
bachelor's degree in journalism from Northwestern University, a law
degree from George Washington University Law School, and a bachelor's
degree in social work from Virginia Commonwealth University would all be
penalized," he said.
An earlier 2011 version of the
rule was scrapped after a federal court struck it down. But the
Education Department is taking another crack at it.
Meanwhile,
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Health, Education,
Labor, and Pensions Committee, said the rule would not go far enough to
protect students from subpar educations.
"Based on what
I've seen so far … I once again have serious concerns with this
proposed rule's ability to protect students and taxpayers from costly
programs that consistently over-promise and under-deliver," Harkin said
in a statement.
But Republicans disagree.
House
Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline (R-Minn.) said in
a statement he was “extremely troubled” by the new version of the
proposed rule.
No comments:
Post a Comment