Examining Community College Programs That Fail the Biden Administration’s Gainful Employment Test
Jason Delisle and Jason Cohn
December 2022
When the Obama administration implemented the first gainful employment (GE) rule in 2014 to protect students from education credentials that lead to unaffordable debts, virtually all programs at public institutions passed the test.1 Although the underlying GE law applies to certificate programs offered at both public and private institutions, failing programs were confined almost entirely to the private for-profit sector under the Obama-era version.2 That looks set to change under the Biden administration’s proposal.
The Biden administration is developing its own GE rule after the Trump administration repealed the Obama-era rule. A discussion draft of the rule released earlier this year included a new minimum earnings test based on high school graduates’ earnings.3 One in five certificate programs at public institutions could fail this requirement, causing them to fail the overall GE rule and lose eligibility for federal aid.4 (Nearly 70 percent of certificate programs at private for-profit institutions are at risk of failing the test.)
