Negotiated Rulemaking Should Retire Gainful Employment Rule

Last week the U.S. Department of Education kicked off the AHEAD negotiated rulemaking, which is responsible for creating and implementing new accountability measures.

Negotiators should repeal the Gainful Employment Rule, which discriminates against post-secondary schools favored by the military, veterans and non-traditional students, writes NDC executive director Bob Carey in the DC Journal.

Capt. Carey represented military and veteran students on the Department of Education’s past two negotiated rulemaking committees. 

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was signed by President Trump last summer, requires the Department of Education to create an “earnings premium,” which will be applied to all colleges and universities.

This “do no harm” test may help restore confidence in, and the value of, a college degree, if it is a reasonable metric that properly measures comparable populations and is applied uniformly to all schools, Capt. Carey writes. But it must set reasonable comparisons, and all types of schools must be held to it.

Public and private colleges would account for nearly 80 percent of failing programs if the Biden administration’s debt-to-earnings standard were applied across the board. However, the Gainful Employment Rule applies only to proprietary schools, which enroll fewer than one in ten students.

“This selective application of the Gainful Employment Rule revealed it for what it really is — a tool to drive career colleges out of business, corner students into conventional four-year universities that may not be the right fit for them, and reinforce the higher ed status quo,” Capt. Carey writes.

“Insofar as the new earnings premium test is a step away from the Gainful Employment Rule, it is a small step in the right direction. Gainful Employment was, and still is, discriminatory. Now, it is also unnecessary.”

Read the Full Op-Ed Here

Read More: NDC Memo to AHEAD Negotiators