Welcome back to Higher Ed on the Hill where we break down the top news driving higher education policy. Up to bat today: Biden administration fumbles on Gainful Employment.

On our list of top five priorities for 2024, overturning the Department of Education’s Gainful Employment Rule (GER) came in at #3. We weighed in on this issue late in 2023 in “Biden wants to pick and choose who gets to go to college” – so did the Washington Examiner – arguing that President Biden is trying to kill education alternatives, but Congress can stop him.

Here’s what you need to know:

• The proposed GER would not apply to degrees from traditional public or elite four-year universities, where students often rack up six figures in debt, and some 700,000 students would lose access to over 1,700 programs.
• Career colleges would be hit the hardest by the rule, despite the fact they are educating aspiring health care workers, law enforcement officers, educators, and needed skills in our workforce.
• Not to mention, an association representing nearly 30,000 college financial aid administrators called on the administration to delay GER deadlines since their resources are already so strained due to the botched FAFSA rollout.
• Fortunately, a Texas court stepped up in June and implemented a temporary restraining order, but more must be done to stop the Department of Education’s crusade against career colleges.

That is why we led a coalition letter signed by a dozen free-market and limited government organizations asking Chairwoman Foxx to vet the 1,000-page proposed rule and annul it through a Congressional Review Act (CRA) as it would damage millions of non-traditional degree seekers, including veterans, working parents, minority students, active military personnel, and more.

Read more in the Washington Post here and Washington Examiner here.

And be sure to check out our most recent report Cardona Bias.

What’s New? Federal Judge Blocks Biden’s Title IX Overhaul in Four More States via the Washington Examiner

“A federal judge in Kansas has blocked the Department of Education’s Title IX rewrite in four more states, continuing a pattern of successive losses for the Biden administration on the controversial regulatory overhaul… the Biden administration’s new Title IX rules, which change the definition of sex to include claimed gender identities, bringing the total number of states with a similar block to 14.”

Michigan, CUNY Fell Short in Responses to Antisemitic and Anti-Palestinian Discrimination, U.S. Says via the Wall Street Journal

“The U.S. Education Department said the University of Michigan and City University of New York didn’t adequately respond when discrimination before and during the Israel-Hamas war created a hostile environment. Investigators from the Education Department’s civil-rights office found that the schools didn’t properly investigate reports in recent years of harassment and discrimination against Jewish, Palestinian and Muslim students.”

TOP READ – Chairwoman Foxx’s Report on the Fall of the Chevron Doctrine

“The 40-year experiment of Chevron-deference has allowed the bureaucracy to aggrandize nearly unlimited power, culminating in the Biden administration exceeding its authority from sea to shining sea and from cradle to grave with overregulation. For example, take President Biden’s gargantuan student loan bailout the Supreme Court outright rejected. Despite this rejection from the Supreme Court, the Biden administration continues to claim the power to implement its student loan bailout under even more ambiguous legal pretenses.” Read her full column here.