WASHINGTON — On the
presidential campaign trail, Marco Rubio likes to poke fun at a higher
education system that he says churns out droves of liberal arts majors saddled
with student loan debt and dim job prospects.
The Florida senator and
Republican presidential candidate says the nation needs more welders and
fewer philosophers.
Rubio should know about
leaving school with a pile of debt. On the day he was sworn into the
Senate in 2011, he owed more than $100,000 in student loans
after earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida in
1993 and a law degree from the University of Miami in 1996.
It helps explain why
he's so critical of federal student loan programs, which he says unfairly favor
four-year colleges.
Rubio wants to change
accreditation rules to let more vocational schools and online universities
take advantage of the roughly $130 billion a year in federal loans and grants —
but only if they meet certain benchmarks tied to student outcomes and debt
repayment.
“Although these programs
have proven to hold great promise, they are neglected by our current
higher-education system,” Rubio wrote in a recent column for the National
Review. “These innovative providers cannot compete with the cartel of existing
brick-and-mortar colleges and universities that dominates the accreditation
process and shields our higher-education system from reform, competition, and
accountability.”
Schools win
accreditation if they meet or exceed federally approved standards
that are set by regional boards, whose members come
from already accredited schools.
Schools must be
accredited to qualify for federal financial aid, including Pell Grants. Because
four-year schools help set the standards, many alternative private schools and
academies specializing in career training have had a difficult time winning
accreditation.
Critics of Rubio’s
proposal say it would benefit for-profit schools that have come under sharp
scrutiny by government regulators for high-pressure recruiting tactics and
failure to deliver on their promises of success in the job market.
That's why the Obama
administration implemented a rule July 1 saying colleges and
universities must prepare students for "gainful employment in a
recognized occupation" before students at those schools can qualify
for federal aid.
Programs are considered
in compliance if a typical graduate's annual loan payments
don't exceed 20% of discretionary income or 8% of total earnings.
Students at for-profit
schools represent about 11% of the higher-education population but account for
44% of federal student loan defaults, according to the Education Department.
The answer is to reduce
— not increase — federal aid to for-profit schools, said Whitney
Barkley, legislative policy counsel for the Center for Responsible Lending.
“This is a spigot
issue," Barkley said Tuesday during a forum on student debt at the liberal
Center for American Progress. "The problem is there are federal dollars
flowing into unscrupulous schools and somebody needs to turn them off. We
turn the spigot off and the problem goes away.”
Rubio’s support for
for-profit institutions isn't unusual considering he represents a state where
almost 18% of about 1.7 million college students attended for-profit
schools during the 2012-13 academic year, according to federal data.
Nationwide, about 12% of college students attend for-profit schools
Rubio went out of his
way to help one for-profit school — Corinthian Colleges — when California
state regulators and federal education officials investigated it last year for
false advertising, deceptive marketing and misrepresenting job placement rates.
Last year, Rubio asked
the Education Department to “demonstrate leniency” after regulators restricted
Corinthian’s access to federal financial aid.
“Of utmost concern is
the thousands of students attending 14 Corinthian-affiliated campuses
throughout the state of Florida,” Rubio wrote in a June 20, 2014, letter.
“It would be nothing
less than an injustice to disrupt the educational endeavor of those students
who are seeking to better their futures by effectively forcing Corinthian to
shut their doors.”
That letter — combined
with the $15,000 Corinthian donated to Rubio and his leadership PAC from
2010 to 2013 — have fueled criticism of Rubio's advocacy on behalf
of for-profit schools.
Corinthian shut down in
April after it was fined $30 million by the Education Department. The
government’s decision to forgive the federal loans of students who attended
Corinthian or one its affiliates could cost taxpayers tens of millions,
Education Undersecretary Ted Mitchell told reporters in June.
The head of the trade
group that represents for-profit schools said the Obama administration has
waged “an ideological war” on the industry, noting that more than 500 campuses
have closed since 2009.
Former GOP congressman Steve
Gunderson of Wisconsin, now president and CEO of the Association of
Private Sector Colleges and Universities, praised Rubio for seeing the “bigger
picture” on higher education.
“He is the one candidate
of either party that’s really raising that issue and is addressing what clearly
the data shows is going to be an emerging skill gap over the next few years as
baby boomers retire and as new jobs require additional skills,” Gunderson said.
Rubio has teamed with
Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado on a bill that would benefit a
number of alternative higher education programs currently ineligible for
federal student aid. The measure would allow them access to such aid if they
demonstrate “high student outcomes, including student learning, completion, and
return on investment,” according to Bennet’s office.
The bill would create a
new accrediting authority using more expansive criteria — such as job placement
rates and student loan repayment rates — than those used by the
regional boards.
The proposal gets a
thumbs-up from Amy Laitinen, who handles higher education issues at New
America, a Washington think tank.
Current accreditation
rules rely on irrelevant yardsticks such as the number of books in a
university library and the percentage of faculty holding Ph.D.s, said
Laitinen, a former higher-education policy adviser in the Obama
administration. Those metrics “have nothing to do with whether or not
students are learning anything and whether or not they’re getting a good value
on their education,” she said.
“I actually think this
is an attempt to make accreditation meaningful,” Laitinen said of the
Rubio-Bennet proposal. “If (Rubio) was just saying, let’s let new providers in
the market and give them money, I would say absolutely not. That’s a terrible
idea. But if you’re saying we’re going to hold them to a higher standard than
we hold traditional higher ed, then yeah, absolutely, because we don’t
hold higher ed to any standards at this point.”
Contributing Fredreka
Schouten and Bill Theobald, USA TODAY
