NDC’s Carey Criticizes Dept. of Education’s Infantilization of Military Veterans’ Use of Earned Educational Benefits

 The Gainful Employment Regulation “is not about protecting students’ and veterans- educational benefits, it’s about protecting traditional colleges historical market position”

Bob Carey

Washington, DC, 28 September 2023 – The National Defense Committee decried the Department of Education’s ignoring of more than 7,500 public comments against the “Gainful Employment” Final Rule issued yesterday, with hardly a single significant change made to the regulation despite the broad educational community opposition to the initial Proposed Rule. 

“The Department of Education is following the exact same path as the Department of Veterans Affairs follows when it comes to regulations on veterans earned benefits like educational benefits: decide what it wants to do, pay lip-service to the public comments on that regulation (no matter how much opposition there is), and then go through the motions of responding to those negative comments to meet the bare minimum of the legal standards necessary to dismiss that opposition and produce the regulation it originally wanted,” mourned CAPT Bob “Shoebob” Carey, US Navy (Ret), Director of the National Defense Committee. 

As the National Defense Committee pointed out in its comment on the then Proposed Regulation back in June of this year, this regulation is simply a continuation of the Obama Administration’s “crusade against private career colleges”, and that the underlying rationale for the regulation was given “Two Pinocchios” by the Washington Post as being false and misleading arguments. 

“Nothing significant has changed since the Obama Administration started this crusade,” pointed out Carey, who continues, “As we detail in our education benefits study published this month [“Condescending Paternalism: The Department of Education’s Unwarranted Limits on Veterans’ EARNED Education Benefits”], traditional public and private non-profit universities are in a death spiral of dropping enrollment, veterans choose career colleges because they are a better fit for their educational needs and because they far more welcoming to veterans, and the Department of Education’s crusade to kill off these career colleges is more likely a case of “Regulatory Activism” by a small number of veteran education advocacy groups which the Department of Veterans Affairs said engaged in unethical and possibly illegal lobbying activities.  This regulation is not about protecting students’ and veterans’ educational benefits, but about protecting traditional colleges’ historical market position, by infantilizing veterans as incapable of making any education decision for themselves and forcing them back to these traditional colleges.”

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The National Defense Committee is a grass roots, military and veteran serving organization founded to strengthen the civil-military relationship in our society and protect the inherent legal and civil rights of military personnel, veterans, and their dependents.  For more information about the National Defense Committee, please visit our web site: www.NationalDefenseCommittee.com.  Experienced representatives of NDC are available for media interviews and can be booked with the contact above.

Contact:

CAPT Bob Carey, USN (Ret), 202-779-1598
Director@NationalDefenseCommitte.com