Trump administration’s regulatory reset on higher education deserves recognition

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bob “Shoebob” Carey, a retired U.S. Navy captain, is executive director of the National Defense Committee, a veterans organization dedicated to military and veterans civil and legal rights. He’s worked for several veteran and military advocacy organizations, served as a member of the Senior Executive Service in both the departments of Defense and Energy, and was a national security adviser to two U.S. senators.

After years of regulatory favoritism that spoke down to military members and veterans and devalued their earned education benefits, the Trump administration is finally releveling the playing field.

Last month the U.S. Department of Education finished the AHEAD negotiated rulemaking. The committee, which was tasked with developing a new framework to hold schools more accountable for student outcomes, reached consensus to implement rules that will apply to all types of colleges and universities — ending a more than decade-long double standard in higher education.

The committee unanimously agreed to repeal the Gainful Employment Rule — a selective, discriminatory regulation designed to target proprietary schools — and replace it with a new “earnings premium” test, which will be applied to all post-secondary schools, not just a select few.

The new framework will “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,” said Nicholas Kent, education undersecretary. This author agrees.

Jeffrey Andrade, deputy secretary for Policy, Planning and Innovation, called the AHEAD committee the “Super Bowl” of accountability. “Over the last 15 years or so, people have sat at these tables and designed regulations, but … not a single program has been eliminated,” he noted. The administration’s regulatory house cleaning is exactly what military and veteran students need.

I had the privilege of serving as both a primary and alternate negotiator representing military and veteran students on two negotiated rulemakings. In those roles, I worked to ensure that the federal rulebook honors our country’s commitment to the men and women in uniform, and that those who serve can freely use their earned benefits.

Career colleges — which offer flexible learning, career-applicable instruction, and typically more affordable tuition (all crucial considerations for non-traditional students like military and veterans) — have become a preferred degree path for many young people, and especially military and veteran students, who often aren’t welcomed, or cannot get into, traditional public and private nonprofit, and so-called elite universities.

Regulations that arbitrarily preclude military and veteran students from using their earned benefits as they best see fit, whether at career colleges or other non-traditional educational routes, presume these military and veteran students, who are trusted with making life-and-death decisions every day, are somehow too inept to pick schools that are right for them. That’s not only condescending, it’s fundamentally unfair.

On paper, the Gainful Employment Rule was meant to police schools that failed to prepare students for careers but saddled them with high debt. But in truth, it was a hammer to drive proprietary schools into the ground and protect the market share of conventional public, private, and state-run colleges and universities.

The rule was applied only to proprietary institutions, even though these schools enroll less than 10% of students and account for only a fraction of the bad actors. Programs at public and private colleges and universities would have accounted for nearly 80% of failing undergraduate degree programs if the Biden administration’s debt-to-earnings test had been applied uniformly.

Coupled with the 90/10 Rule — another selective regulation directed only at career colleges (which the Trump administration also amended last year) — Gainful Employment acted as a student-choice killer. Now, with a new, universal earnings standard in place, the old rule is also obsolete.

The Education Department’s new earnings premium test — which was required by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — gets rid of the favoritism. It requires all schools to demonstrate that their graduates can expect to earn more than peers without a degree, no matter if the school is public, private or proprietary. All programs now must prove they are worth their salt — or risk losing eligibility for federal aid.

President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon pledged to restore educational control with students and their families — not bureaucrats in Washington. The department’s actions to replace Gainful Employment is a major first step to deliver on that promise, and the administration is not done yet.

Late last month, McMahon announced her department will initiate a rulemaking this spring to examine accreditors — the opaque and Byzantine organizations that deign to license post-secondary programs as they see fit, like Greek gods offering scraps from their tables on Mount Olympus. This regulatory review can and should create objective standards to verify the accreditation system truly reflects schools’ value to students, not further protect the status quo.

Trump and McMahon pledged to restore value to higher education, and they are making good on that commitment. The administration deserves high praise for refocusing the Department of Education on what matters — preparing students to succeed and lead in a highly competitive economy — and setting clear and universal rules that allow colleges and universities, of every kind, to provide a high-quality education.