October 19, 2023

Higher Ed on the Hill: Biden’s Attack on Online Education

Welcome back to Higher Ed on the Hill. You may recall in our newsletter debut the administration’s hit on online educational programs. The Biden Administration once hailed these programs as the future of education, and now his administration is leading the charge to shut them down.

The American Consumer Institute’s new report highlights how restricting these programs could be a massive hit on non-traditional students, veterans, and more. Here’s what you need to know:

• • Online Program Managers (OPMs) have improved institutional resilience, financial health, and student outcomes. Meanwhile, the Biden administration continues to target them.
  • Online postsecondary degrees have opened doors for working parents, non-traditional students, veterans, and minorities.
  • Chairwoman Foxx underscored this point earlier this year, noting “innovation in postsecondary education, including online education, have broken through access barriers for many adult learners.” She also stated blanket compliance polices are never going to work.

The bottom line is targeting online programs will affect millions and Americans and could eliminate access for many lower-income students who otherwise wouldn’t get their degree.

Check out American Consumer Institute’s paper here.

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CASE Leads Coalition: CASE Coalition Letter Seeks to Derail Biden’s Attack on Career Colleges
This week CASE released a coalition letter joined by 12 organizations committed to more freedom in academia, asking Chairwoman Foxx to invoke the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to help stop the Biden administration’s assault on career-oriented and for profit colleges through the oppressive and discriminatory “gainful employment” rule. Noted by CASE chairman Gerard Scimeca, “As was made clear by the Obama-era bureaucrats who first attempted to enact the GER, the goal of Biden’s DOE is to close the doors of any school that does not abide by the dictates of the elite education establishment… Without these colleges, millions of students will sadly see the door for opportunity and a better future slammed in their faces.”

Read the coalition letter here:

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Gainful Employment Rule Tells Public Schools it is OK to Be Awful: For several years CASE has been among the most consistent and vocal critics of the Gainful Employment rule (GER), chiefly because it empowers bureaucrats in Washington to deny educational and career opportunity to students, including savvy and conscientious working adults and our military veterans. We have also focused on the incredibly discriminatory nature of the rule. If the Biden DOE truly cared about protecting students as they claim, then why doesn’t the rule apply to public and traditional four-year private colleges?

There are dozens of public schools that would be utterly devastated and see their student body evaporate if they were held to the standards of the GER, but Joe Biden and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona are too focused on closing-down career-oriented colleges that provide skilled employees to our workforce to care.

The list of institutions that are exempt from the GER yet tout abhorrently low average salaries for the fraction of students who actually graduate is shamefully lengthy. The GER could certainly sink its teeth into Coppin State, a public university in Maryland, for example, that graduates a mere 10 percent of its students in four years. Atrocious graduation rates, student debt, and low average salaries are also the norm at Fayetteville State, the University of South Carolina at Aiken, the University of the District of Columbia, and the list goes on. And this does not even consider the hundreds of taxpayer-funded community colleges around the nation which leave many students in debt and with no degree. Meanwhile many of the lowest paying degrees, such as psychology, English, sociology, education, and anthropology, are bread and butter programs for traditional state colleges yet are utterly invisible to the GER.

The evidence is beyond dispute that the GER is not being enacted to protect students, but is an assault on career-oriented and for-profit colleges disfavored by the Washington education establishment. Any fair student advocate would say it should apply fairly and across the board, or be done away with for good.

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What’s New? WSJ’s Sayonara, For-Profit Colleges — The Gainful Employment Rule would punish schools for enrolling low-income students who typically take out more debt because their parents aren’t helping. There might be an argument for protecting taxpayers by limiting federal aid to schools that saddle students with debt they can’t repay. But it would only be fair to apply the rule across all colleges.

CASE in the News via Washington Examiner: Department of Education Rule Threatens Viability of For-Profit Colleges — “Unfortunately, the final gainful employment rule published … by the Biden administration will likely reduce the amount of options available to students that want to learn skills at career colleges and technical schools. Even the administration notes that upwards of 1,800 programs may be forced to close under this rule. 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.”

Foxx Sighting – ‘She’s Just a Bull’: Meet the Woman Leading the GOP’s Charge on Schools and Work via Politico

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