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Colleges Face New 'Gainful Employment' Regulations For Student Loans
HughPickens.com writes: Education Secretary Arne Duncan says the Education Department wants to make sure loan programs that prey on students don't continue their abusive practices. Now Kimberly Hefling reports that for-profit colleges who are not producing graduates capable of paying off their student loans could soon stand to lose access to federal student-aid programs. In order to receive federal student aid, the law requires that most for-profit programs, regardless of credential level, and most non-degree programs at non-profit and public institutions, including community colleges, prepare students for "gainful employment in a recognized occupation" (PDF). To meet these "gainful employment" standards, a program will have to show that the estimated annual loan payment of a typical graduate does not exceed 20 percent of his or her discretionary income or 8 percent of total earnings.
"Career colleges must be a stepping stone to the middle class. But too many hard-working students find themselves buried in debt with little to show for it. That is simply unacceptable," says Duncan. "These regulations are a necessary step to ensure that colleges accepting federal funds protect students, cut costs and improve outcomes. We will continue to take action as needed."
But not everyone is convinced the rules go far enough. "The rule is far too weak to address the grave misconduct of predatory for-profit colleges," writes David Halperin. "The administration missed an opportunity to issue a strong rule, to take strong executive action and provide real leadership on this issue." The final gainful employment regulations follow an extensive rulemaking process involving public hearings, negotiations and about 95,000 public comments and will go into effect on July 1, 2015.
"Career colleges must be a stepping stone to the middle class. But too many hard-working students find themselves buried in debt with little to show for it. That is simply unacceptable," says Duncan. "These regulations are a necessary step to ensure that colleges accepting federal funds protect students, cut costs and improve outcomes. We will continue to take action as needed."
But not everyone is convinced the rules go far enough. "The rule is far too weak to address the grave misconduct of predatory for-profit colleges," writes David Halperin. "The administration missed an opportunity to issue a strong rule, to take strong executive action and provide real leadership on this issue." The final gainful employment regulations follow an extensive rulemaking process involving public hearings, negotiations and about 95,000 public comments and will go into effect on July 1, 2015.
"Career colleges must be a stepping stone to the middle class. But too many hard-working students find themselves buried in debt with little to show for it. That is simply unacceptable," says Duncan.
This is the billboard with neon flashing lights we've all been waiting for: the college degree is the new high school diploma.
In your haste to make a "communism" reference, you missed: In order to receive federal student aid, the law requires that most for-profit programs, regardless of credential level, and most non-degree programs at non-profit and public institutions, including community colleges, prepare students for "gainful employment in a recognized occupation"
Yes, this needs to extend to all colleges and universities. But unfortunately someone will claim discrimination or some 'right' is being violated and this will all get caught up in legal muck.
A liberal arts or pure science education is not meant to be a professional degree. It's a way to learn a lot about a particular topic, independently of whether that directly helps your employment chances or not.
Historically, there was a fairly sharp delineation between universities and vocational schools--even "white collar" vocational schools like engineering were at separate institutions (often A&T or A&M schools), and lawyers and doctors were primarily apprenticed. At some point doctors, and later lawyers, became highly skilled professions that needed more formal training. To a degree it made sense to combine medical schools with pure sciences under one university, since some of the basics overlap.
But it had the unfortunate side effect of starting the thought in people's minds that universities are vocational institutions, rather than institutions of higher learning. I certainly don't mean to insinuate that a liberal arts degree has no application in the real world--quite the contrary. But it's intentionally targeted at longer-term learning rather than particular vocations per se, and not everyone who pursues a higher degree does so as a job entree.
Nonetheless, the law schools and med schools were followed by a spate of mergers between technical institutes and universities. Suddenly non-university vocational institutes were looked on as crappy and inferior, and it became a mantra (for no good reason) that you needed a 4-year college/university degree to succeed at jobs that historically had been done quite successfully without it. Even a shorter professional program started to become more prestigious if allied with a 4-year college, for no good reason (e.g. nursing schools at universities being, generally, valued more highly than independent nursing colleges).
The result was a massive spike in the number of people going to 4-year colleges--that number has sextupled or so over the past 60ish years--and a massive decline in the number of people going to vocational and technical schools. The latter have become a joke to the point where vocational school brings to mind TV commercials for Devry or Andover tractor trailer driving or dental hygeniest schools.
The downfalls of this are manifold. University prices skyrocket as everyone seeks to get in, whether they are really interested in a university degree or not. Vocational schools fold and a large percentage of the people who'd have attended them are forced into universities, exacerbating #1. Jobs see more and more college degrees, and start expecting them, making people start viewing colleges and universities as professional/career prep schools.
And universities become disincentivized to teach pure liberal arts or even theoretical mathematics, as they start being judged based on how good they are as job factories rather than as educational institutions; the result is a short-term focus that harms long-term research and eventually job opportunities (much akin to eliminating R&D budgets, but on a national scale).
rage, rage against the dying of the light
In-state tuition of the University of California is over $10K per year. My daughters averaged $27K (ncluding room and board) per year.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I think that's hardly the college's fault. It's one thing if they don't give you practical knowledge in the field, but a different thing if YOU CHOOSE a field with poor job prospects. I don't understand why people don't do a little research into the job prospects for their major. Yeh the market fluctuates, but in 2 years its not going to change that much. (you spend two years on course class work, and can change your major without a lot of trouble and do the final 2 years) There's tons of sites that give you an idea of what potential salary would be.
Some people make the choice fully knowing of the poor job prospects. You want a burger with peanut butter and pineapple on it? fine, that's what you get, but you eat and don't blame the cook if it's gross. That's a calculated risk you are taking. Investment firms have no responsibility to prevent you from buying stocks that will do poorly.
On the other hand, if you want to make an argument on the basis of public universities being partially funded by tax dollars, and they have an obligation to this or that to contribute meaningful skills to the community etc., then that might be a valid train of though.
I started looking into my major interests while I was in high school. Between then and the first two years of college I changed my mind 4 times on what I wanted to do.
1. Should be something you don't hate to do all the time. It doesn't have to be something you love, but at minimum not hate.
2. Should be something that can make money. Doesn't have to be alot, just enough that you aren't constantly struggling.
3. Should be something you are somewhat good at. You don't have to be the greatest, but if it is something you struggle at then you may have trouble keeping jobs.
Those are the three simple things that guided me. I love my job. I make plenty of money. I feel I do a good job.
Anything like game design, art, or music is going to have more people competing for fewer jobs because it is something people really want to do. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but maybe if it's what you really want to do you should apply some of that passion to finding alternative learning resources, because you are taking a risk going down that path and a huge debt isn't something you should be accumulating if you are uncertain of your employability. Maybe get a computer science degree, get a job, and stretch your game design muscles in your free time.
I went to a state college (twice!) and the graduation rate was bellow 33%
That's a scam... flat out scam. You have to go, they know you have to go, and they abuse you to squeeze as much money out of you as possible.
Yes, there are those that just drink themselves out. But the colleges offer absolutely no help with anything at all.
You're paying a fortune for classes, and the schedules make little to no sense at all. I'd go to a 30min English class, then have to wait an hour and half to take a 4 or philosophy class, then wait 2hrs for my 1 hour programming class. There were thousands of students studying for the same degree I was! What's the point of having these nonsense schedules?? Can't I just get into the 8am-5pm compsci course and be done with it?
On top of that, what's with the books scams? I'm required to buy a book my professor wrote but we never open it in class? Really? I was so broke I'd literally go without eating some days, but my professors ripping me off for $89.95?
Then the campus police... Constant unending harassment. Granted, I was a long hair... but, for example, they decided to raid the door rooms over xmas break and leave me a ticket for underage drinking for having an empty wine bottle in my room. It took me 2 months and 2 visits to court to get it cleared up that I was 23 I had enough going on, I didn't need to be dealing with them.
I will be steering my son towards one of the well established local community colleges we have around here when the time comes. They seem to be the best value, and the least likely to rip you off. I'd stay away from any "online" schools, TV offers and State colleges. They are the worst. The only difference between those and the state collges is the State ones only rip off maybe 80 to 90% of their students as apposed to 100% for the university of Phoenix and the like.
The problem is that universities should not be expected to be trade schools, and trade schools should not be expected to be universities. And there needs to be an additional category in the middle for things like chemists and doctors.
The trouble is, each of those kinds of school needs to have the classes that each of the others has, just with a different center. This used to be handled by the different colleges within the university, but they have become homogenized under the stress of an administration that wants to make administering them simpler, where what they really needed was to become more distinct.
But note that an artist who wants to learn metal welding shouldn't need to learn that in the art school, there should be a "transfer class" in a trade school that teaches welding. The art school should decide (in advance) whether to allow units to transfer for that class. (It should probably decide yes.)
Think of this proposal as splitting the university (plus the trade schools that have been killed off) into separately administered colleges that allow students to flow between them, but each one has its own requirements for what it takes to complete a major.
Now paying for this.... I think that student education should be totally subsidized. Not room and board. Not materials. But the education itself.
I also think that inventions developed with public funding should be available to the public, and free to use for any company chartered and paying taxes within the geographic area controlled by the particular government. This includes drugs. This doesn't mean that the government should pay for safety testing, but it means that no company should be able to prevent another from qualifying a drug that has been developed with public money. I know that this cuts off one major source of funding that has been developed by many universities, but my feeling is "This is a rip-off!", and they don't deserve to control the patents. If they pay for it, of course, it's a totally different matter. But universities that take federal money for non-teaching purposes should not then be able to claim the results other than prestige and copyrights. (And I'm even dubious about copyrights. That could grow into another area of corruption.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.