The Gainful Employment Rule Discriminates Against Some Schools & Their Students
If it strikes you as more than a little ironic that a government currently $32 trillion in debt and a Department of Education which seeks to cancel up to one trillion dollars in federal student loans is policing career colleges on the financial prospects of their degree programs, you’re not alone. But irony doesn’t adequately describe the outrageous return of the DOE’s gainful employment rule this week.
Kickstarted under President Obama and abandoned by President Trump, the Biden DOE has been planning the rule’s return since inauguration. As many already know, the GER will give the department the discretion to deny student loans for degrees or certificates in career training programs they deem inadequate with regard to the expected salary of graduates.
First, we note that the GER 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 interpretative puppetry.
Second, we question what gives the DOE the inside track to play career counselor to thousands of working adults seeking greater opportunity and new job skills. A new wrinkle in this most recent GER 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.
So exactly how does the DOE determine if the projected earnings of a person from Michigan, seeking career training in Florida, to work in Nebraska are within an acceptable range to qualify for federal loans? Do they measure earnings in comparison to non-college educated workers in Michigan, Florida, or Nebraska? Just as having a degree in marine biology won’t get you very far in Wyoming, skilled-worker salaries vary greatly from region to region.
And exactly how do Washington bureaucrats in cushy swivel chairs comprehend a constantly changing job market where students are likely to seek training in an industry where forecasters predict significant future growth? Of course, they can’t, but yet that won’t stop them from slamming the door in students’ faces.
The DOE assures us they will give colleges under scrutiny ample opportunity to demonstrate that targeted degree and certificate programs lead to better employment opportunities, but it is a “guilty until proven innocent” system that will naturally be expensive and time consuming for institutions that don’t have millions in taxpayer subsidies to support them.
While favored institutions can shackle students with enormous debt and not have their departments or degrees scrutinized, the DOE marches on in its non-stop offensive against institutions focused on job skills and helping to fill the 5 to 9 million job shortages in skilled work. Never mind the possibility of career advancement, inside promotions, elevation to management positions, or the numerous ways people with a degree achieve upward mobility in our economy, if a handful of bureaucrats and their magic 8 ball decide a student’s chosen career path lacks the earning opportunity measured against an arbitrary standard, then end of story.
If federal student loans are to be conditioned upon future salary prospects, then they should apply to ALL institutions and ALL programs of study equally. Better still would be no random litmus tests for obtaining loans, and to let students and the marketplace decide what opportunities await those seeking training in each field. There are numerous ways the DOE could ensure students are not ensnared into a hopeless sea of debt; it is quite unfortunate that using the GER to attack career-oriented colleges is the path they chose.
