This week, the Department of Education’s Negotiated Rulemaking Committee will meet to discuss a slew of new regulations that would significantly alter the formula dictating the share of revenue that for profit colleges can receive from the federal government. If the proposed rules are adopted, proprietary and career colleges across the nation will be forced to shut their doors.And of course that’s the point.  Although this is billed as an effort to protect students from so-called “predatory” institutions, these measures will further entrench a failing education establishment at the expense of thousands of students who are simply seeking a better life.

These moves are the latest in a long pattern of bureaucratic malpractice in the education space. Bureaucrats and professional activists have spent decades trying to blame career-oriented schools for the broader failures of our education system. Despite their best efforts, career colleges remain a popular and vital economic access point for non-traditional students, and for those who are seeking a more practical career-focused curriculum. The American economy continues to evolve, and a college degree or specialized professional certification has become a minimum requirement for employment.

These schools have adapted to meet students where they are, diversifying their curriculum to provide choices to students who want to be where the economy is going. As traditional schools have become more selective, their non-traditional competitors offer broader access to anyone with a dream for greater opportunity. This means that a single mother managing a difficult schedule can use a computer or digital device for a virtual education on a schedule that works for her. It means career-focused entrepreneurs can earn their degree on an expedited schedule, and it means that adult learners can go back and get a degree that may have once been out of reach.

No model is perfect, and that’s why it’s important that measures that ensure transparency and accountability are in place to weed out bad actors. But in choosing to impose these measures selectively on career and proprietary schools, the Department deeply undermines what’s left of its credibility. Despite efforts to malign proprietary institutions as broadly inferior to state and nonprofit institutions, evidence suggests that there are for profit colleges that outperform their traditional counterparts, and public institutions that underperform colleges operating for-profit. Schools like Monroe College in New York, which placed 100 percent of its graduating nurses in jobs in 2017, and ECPI, which ranks in the top ten percent of schools for online programs stand out.

The failure of the Department’s regulation based on tax status approach is most evident when considering the Gainful Employment Rule, an accountability measure instituted during the Obama Administration that sought to hold schools accountable for leaving students underemployed with mountains of debt. Because these measures only apply to “for-profit” institutions and certificate programs at public and non-profit institutions, heavily endowed state and private nonprofits can fail students without consequence. And they have. Many public universities have appallingly low graduation rates, with some coming in at below 10 percent. An analysis by the Texas Public Policy Foundation found that only 60 percent of programs at private nonprofit schools, and 70 percent at public colleges and universities would pass the Obama Administration’s Gainful Employment test.

As Steven Taylor notes in National Review, in limiting the application of the Gainful Employment Rule to educational programs at proprietary and career institutions, the Department is failing to afford protection to some 12 million undergraduate students enrolled at public and nonprofit schools. It’s not hard to see that this is having an impact. Students are reporting broad dissatisfaction with American higher education, and questioning the value of their education. Aas students are abandoning community colleges in droves, New York’s CUNY system, a public titan that’s produced a dozen Nobel Laureates, Senators, and a Supreme Court Justice, has seen a 13.2 percent drop in enrollment. Across state schools in California, students are dropping out of or failing essential courses at an alarming rate, prompting calls for reform.

The American labor market needs a skilled labor force that our colleges are supposed to produce, and the economic consequences of this systemic failure can’t be overstated. If we’re going to turn this crisis around, the Department of Education needs to stop hiding behind the language of the Gainful Employment Rule, embrace diverse models, and start promoting universal standards of transparency and accountability that apply equally to all institutions of higher learning.