Trump Admin. Tweaks 90-10 Regs
Jessica Blake
July 9, 2025
The change is expected to have a minimal impact on students, but critics worry about the precedent.
The Trump administration’s Department of Education recently made a subtle change to Biden-era regulations that were designed to ensure for-profit colleges provide quality programs.
Under the adjusted policy, for-profit colleges can now count proceeds from online courses that are not eligible for federal aid toward their 90-10 calculation, an accountability measure that requires 10 percent of a college’s total revenue to be from nonfederal sources.
Opponents of the change say the new policy will likely have minimal consequences, but they are alarmed by how it came to be: They worry the Trump administration is finding new shortcuts to advance its political priorities without public feedback instead of going through the rule-making process to amend the regulations.
