Gainful Employment Proves Contentious, Again
Katherine Knott
June 22, 2023
Higher education groups sharply criticized the Education Department’s sweeping set of regulations that would define gainful employment and make other changes.
Higher education groups representing a range of colleges and universities told the Education Department this week that the agency has a lot of work to do over the next four months to fix its proposed gainful-employment rule.
They want some areas of the more than 1,000-page regulation clarified and others thrown out completely. Meanwhile, think tank analysts and consumer protection advocates applauded the department’s proposed rule, which they said would strengthen the higher education system.
The Education Department received more than 7,400 comments on a sweeping set of regulations that would once again define what it means to prepare graduates for gainful employment, require institutions to meet new conditions to access federal financial aid and make it easy for the agency to take action against institutions. The deadline to submit comments was Tuesday.
