September 14, 2023

The Honorable Robert Aderholt
Chairman, House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services, and Education
266 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Chairman Aderholt,

As you prepare to bring the Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations bill for the Department of Education to the floor in the coming weeks, I encourage you to take action that protects the ability for students to attend career colleges of their choice. Specifically, I urge you to include amendment language that prohibits funding for the DOE to finalize its deeply flawed rule on gainful employment. The proposed rule harms students and must be halted before it can take effect in the months ahead.

As you may know, the DOE has a long vendetta against career colleges – higher education institutions that prepare students with important trade skills before they enter the workforce. Career colleges offer flexibility, affordability, and real skills needed to be successful in the 21st century. Our organization, Consumer Action for a Strong Economy (CASE), has documented the actions taken by bureaucrats to close these schools and keep students locked in expensive four-year colleges.

Now, the Department is looking to finalize a proposed rulemaking titled “Financial Value Transparency and Gainful Employment (GE),” published as a new regulation in the Federal Register, May 19, 2023 (RIN 1840–AD51). It is important that your committee include a provision that would prohibit funding for finalizing and enforcing the rule on GE.

We’ve noted that the gainful employment rule does not apply to degrees from traditional public or expensive private 4-year universities, where students are more than welcome to take on six-figures of debt to obtain a degree in philosophy, English, or gender studies. A new wrinkle in this most recent gainful employment rule is that it measures post-graduation salaries in reference to workers with no more than a high school diploma, a completely arbitrary standard that has not received even the slightest economic study or analysis to determine its value.

Moreover, the Department of Education overlooks the makeup of students who attend career colleges. Unlike traditional public and private colleges, career schools are made up of non-traditional learners, veterans, and full-time employees to name a few. This idea that students are a monolith and can only learn from programs that the department deems acceptable is just wrong. Students should have the ability to engage in their academic studies from whatever perspective they see fits. By stifling students’ ability to attend programs at career colleges the department is pushing students to the community colleges and traditional private and public colleges many sought to avoid.

The federal government shouldn’t punish students who choose for-profit colleges or vocational training, but that is exactly what the DOE is doing with its GE rule. To ensure students have all options available to them, it is crucial that you work to add in language that reins in President Biden’s Department of Education.

Please do not hesitate to reach out if CASE can be of assistance on this matter, or if you would like to further discuss President Biden’s misguided actions to close career colleges. Thank you again for your attention to this issue.

Sincerely,

Gerard Scimeca
Chairman
Consumer Action for a Strong Economy (CASE)