DeVos Repeals Obama-Era Rule Cracking Down on For-Profit Colleges

New York Times logoEducation Secretary Betsy DeVos on Friday officially repealed an Obama-era regulation that sought to crack down on for-profit colleges and universities that produced graduates with no meaningful job prospects and mountains of student debt they could not hope to repay.

The so-called gainful employment rule was issued by the Obama administration in 2014, right before huge for-profit chains collapsed, leaving students stranded with debt and worthless degrees. Under the new standards, career and certificate programs, many of which operate in the for-profit sector, would have to prove their graduates could find gainful employment to maintain access to federal financial aid. It also would have required schools to disclose in advertisements a comparison of the student debt load of their graduates and their career earnings.

In her first two years in office, Ms. DeVos has delayed critical parts of the rule, and last year, she sought to repeal it entirely, siding with for-profit industry leaders and congressional conservatives who have contended that the Obama administration unfairly targeted for-profit schools.

View the complete June 28 article by Erica L. Green on The New York Times website here.

Congress rejects much of Betsy DeVos’s agenda in spending bill

The following article by Moriah Baligit and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel was posted on the Washington Post website March 24, 2018:

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been steeped in controversy since she was first nominated for the role in the Trump administration. (Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post)

Correction/clarification: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated how much Education Secretary Betsy DeVos sought to cut the department’s budget and misstated the reason she aimed to reduce the Office for Civil Rights’s budget. This story has been updated. 

Congress dealt a blow to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s school choice agenda in a tentative spending bill released late Wednesday, rejecting her attempt to spend more than $1 billion promoting choice-friendly policies and private school vouchers. Continue reading “Congress rejects much of Betsy DeVos’s agenda in spending bill”