Years of regulatory shenanigans in higher education undertaken by liberal activists and bureaucrats have selectively targeted career and faith-based schools while giving a hall pass to the worst performing public and private programs. President Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon have taken historic action to level the playing field, holding all types of colleges and universities more accountable for student outcomes.
Last week, Secretary McMahon’s Department of Education finished the AHEAD negotiated rulemaking. The committee reached a consensus, an uncommon feat in these regulation-writing sessions, to implement a new accountability framework that puts post-secondary institutions on the hook for how well they prepare students to succeed after graduation, no matter what kind of school.
Perhaps the most consequential piece of the committee’s work was its creation of a new “earnings premium” standard. As required by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, this test will compare graduates’ median income four years after completing a degree to reasonable thresholds. Programs that fail to meet those benchmarks two out of three years will lose eligibility for federal student aid.
With this new earnings test in place for all colleges and universities, the negotiators wisely repealed the Gainful Employment Rule.
A relic of the Obama and Biden administrations, the Gainful Employment Rule was a thinly veiled regulatory hammer used to drive career colleges and faith-affiliated schools into the ground. The Obama and Biden camps despised proprietary schools, which threatened the status quo by giving students alternative options to conventional, woke public and private universities. So, they weaponized the federal rulebook to drive career colleges, and student choice, out of business.
Obama and Biden applied the Gainful Employment Rule exclusively to career colleges, even though these schools enroll fewer than 10 percent of students. Their intent was never to improve student outcomes, but to put proprietary institutions at a disadvantage, cornering students into public and private schools, which often failed to meet their learning and career goals, and saddled them with massive debt.
One study found that programs at public and private universities would account for nearly 80 percent of the violations of Biden’s “debt-to-earnings” measure. But, those schools were allowed to run amok, peddling degrees that often weren’t worth the paper on which they were printed.
McMahon and Trump understand that competition and student choice drive innovation, which produces better outcomes. They know students and their families are best equipped to make their own decisions about their education, not bureaucrats in Washington. And they wasted no time in restoring accountability and fairness to the regulatory system.
The same kind of likeminded policymakers beholden to special interests produce the same kind of likeminded policy. Secretary McMahon wasn’t afraid to bring in disruptors to affect wholesale, systemic change, which is exactly the medicine the Department of Education needed. Hers and President Trump’s pick of Nicholas Kent to serve as Undersecretary and Jeff Andrade to serve as a Deputy Assistant Secretary helped usher in this regulatory reset. Secretary McMahon and her entire team deserve our gratitude.
The AHEAD committee’s work will help “break the cycle of student debt and poor return on investment for students and end the regulatory whiplash that has occurred for far too long,” Undersecretary Kent said this month. “We look forward to holding all programs—across all post-secondary institutions—accountable.”
Consumer Action for a Strong Economy could not agree more, and we have been advocating for the repeal of the Gainful Employment Rule for years. The Trump administration’s actions will restore parity in higher education and hold all schools accountable to students and taxpayers. Now, it’s Congress’ turn to codify these changes into law, to stop any future administration from repeating the mistakes of the past.
We applaud Secretary McMahon for putting students, their families, and taxpayers first. Now, colleges and universities can get back to the business of educating young people and preparing them to lead in tomorrow’s economy.
Gerard Scimeca is an attorney and chairman of CASE, Consumer Action for a Strong Economy, a free market-oriented consumer advocacy organization he co-founded. Learn more at CollegeFreedomProject.org.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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