Lurking Behind the Headline: Significant Regulatory Changes Beyond Gainful Employment in ED’s Latest NPRM
Nancy Anderson, Kate Lee Carey and Caitlyn Shelby
June 6, 2023
The Department of Education published a substantial NPRM on May 19, which includes a new iteration of the Gainful Employment rules.
More than a year after the Department of Education (ED) completed its negotiated rulemaking covering an array of regulations related to institutional and programmatic eligibility for federal financial aid, ED published a substantial notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on May 19, 2023. The NPRM is ambitious in its scope and includes another long-awaited iteration of ED’s Gainful Employment (GE) rules.
This NPRM comes on the heels of a litany of new rules, including, among others, rules that broaden borrower defense to repayment (BDR) regulations, tighten the 90/10 calculation, and update change in control regulations, all set to take effect July 1, 2023. Also in the background are substantial recent policy and regulatory announcements, including guidance broadening the scope and interpretation of the third-party servicer rules, a push to require individual board members and executives to assume liability for institutional funds, and another large negotiated rulemaking set to roll out in 2023. Individually, each of these new initiatives requires close review and attention but collectively, this recent flurry of activity is unwieldy at best, and the breadth of the NPRM requires an all-hands approach to understand and prepare for the potential impact.
