Here is a response from Stephen Burd of the New America Foundation.

In finalizing the “Gainful Employment” rule last Thursday, Obama administration officials did what federal policymakers often do when dealing with highly polarizing issues: they attempted to split the difference between the opposing sides. But as is often the case in such situations, the compromises they made didn’t satisfy anybody (with the exception of the for-profit higher education sector’s friends on Wall Street who were delighted to see career-college companies' long-beleaguered stocks soar on the news).

As we reported at Higher Ed Watch last week, the biggest concession that the administration made to the industry was that it significantly delayed the point at which even the most irredeemable for-profit college programs would be in jeopardy of losing access to federal financial aid. Under the proposed rule, which the Department of Education released a little less than a year ago, career college programs that leave low-income and working-class students buried in debt but without the training they have been promised could have been kicked out of the federal student aid programs right away.

The final rule, however, takes a “three strikes” approach to disciplining the worst programs (those at which fewer than 35 percent of former students are repaying their loans, and where graduates have a debt-to-income ratio greater than 12 percent of their total income and 30 percent of their discretionary income). Instead of immediately losing access to federal financial aid, these programs would have to fail each of these tests at the same time three out of four years in a row before they could become ineligible.

If administration officials thought that this concession and others like it would mollify the industry and its champions on Capitol Hill, they were -- unsurprisingly -- mistaken. In reacting to the final rule, industry groups signaled that the fight is far from over. “As we closely review the U.S. Department of Education’s final gainful employment regulation, nothing changes the fact that Congressional leaders have made it clear that the definition of ‘gainful employment’ is the purview of Congress and not the Department,” Penny Lee, the managing director of the for-profit college lobbying group the Coalition for Educational Success, stated. “The Department’s attempt to arbitrarily expand the definition of ‘gainful employment’ is clearly at odds with the intent of Congress.”

Meanwhile, Republican Congressional leaders were predictably unmoved. "With this regulation, the administration has chosen to disregard the concerns of countless Americans and blatantly ignore the bipartisan will of the House of Representatives,” Rep. John Kline, the Minnesota Republican in charge of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, claimed.

The industry’s Democratic friends were not any kinder. In a press release entitled “House Democrats Blast Department of Education on Gainful Employment Regulation,” seven Democratic Members took the administration to task for daring to crack down on the sector. “It is deeply troubling that an administration supposedly committed to increasing college completion in the United States would propose a regulation that restricts minority access to higher education and limits job opportunities for those who need them the most,” Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL), who won his seat in Congress in 1992 after having been impeached as federal judge over bribery charges, stated.

Perhaps the one silver lining for the administration was that the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities -- which was formerly and more accurately known as the Career College Association -- announced that it would at least temporarily hold off from filing its long-promised lawsuit seeking to stop the Education Department from implementing the rule. The group said that it remained “very concerned” about the regulation but would “run an independent analysis” of the regulation’s impact before deciding how it plans to proceed. “The gainful employment regulation, while reflecting the fact that the Department has listened to the sector and made changes to its initial proposal, is still using the same ill-advised metric approach to this matter and is clearly outside of its statutory authority,” the association stated.

While the final ruled failed to assuage its critics, it also managed to demoralize many of the consumer advocates who have been on the front lines in supporting the administration’s efforts to rein in the industry’s worst actors. While some organizations tried to put the best possible face on the rule (arguing, for example, that it’s at least a good start), others refused to hide their deep disappointment and even outrage at the administration’s concessions -- particularly that the most exploitative career college programs to continue operating “with no requirements to improve,” as the research and advocacy group Education Trust pointed out, until at least 2015. Whether the administration will be able to count on these groups to rush to the regulation’s defense when the industry inevitably tries to kill it again is now far from certain

Now, it’s true, as David Halperin at Campus Progress has pointed out, that the Gainful Employment rule is just one part of the administration’s broader effort to eliminate the sector’s most unscrupulous players and practices. Bold new rules the Education Department issued last fall that are aimed at curbing recruiting abuses and stopping schools from misleading students may go a long way in protecting the most vulnerable students when they go into effect in July -- as long as they are vigorously enforced. The administration also deserves a tremendous amount of credit for putting the spotlight on for-profit college abuses and spending so much time and effort trying to rewrite student aid rules in order to combat them. The Education Department's efforts have forced changes at least at some of the schools and accrediting agencies, and helped spur investigations into the sector by Senate Democrats and by nearly a dozen state attorneys general.

It may also be possible -- as Kevin Carey of Education Sector argues – that the administration deserves far more credit than it is getting for changing the paradigm in federal higher education funding. He writes:

For half a century, the federal government has been handing out untold billions of dollars to colleges with no real quality control mechanism other than ‘if you’re accredited by someone, somehow, we trust you.’ Now for the first time, it has decided to judge colleges not by their inputs and processes but by what actually happens to their students after graduation … This is a historic change. One can fairly argue that some specific parameter is too weak. But the most important thing is to establish the principle and build the underlying structure of the regulation and data collection on which the parameters are based.

This is a strong argument, but it only holds water if the regulation is allowed to fully go into effect. As we wrote last week, we are not entirely optimistic. By designing the rule as it has, the administration has given career college lobbyists plenty of time to try and kill it before any schools are penalized. And it has, at least for the time being, weakened the resolve of those who would ordinarily rush to the barricades to defend it.

No wonder the industry's friends on Wall Street are celebrating.

I agree largely with Steve Peha -- our policies and mindsets have made "college" synonymous with "job training," and that has led to huge inefficiencies. But there is an even deeper problem: government aid, both to students and schools.

The most aggressive opponents of for-profit schooling to have posted thus far appear to agree that taxpayer-funded student aid is what for-profit institutions are after. No doubt the critics are, for the most part, right. But there is another side to this equation: The aid also enables students to choose proprietary schools, choices many aid recipients likely would not have made had they been using only their own money, or money they borrowed from people who willing lent it to them. So aid helps enrich proprietary schools, but it also hugely degrades the incentives of students to economize or fully scrutinize the choices before them.

College is a two-way street, and student aid has fueled out-of-control traffic going in both directions

But it gets worse. What has been perpetually ignored by far too many people who've been involved in the assault of for-profit institutions is that all sectors of higher education get massive subsidies, and all are performing very poorly.

Public colleges get huge subsidies directly from state and local governments, yet still saddle students -- and aid-supplying taxpayers -- with big bills. And how do they perform? Only about 55 percent of students at four-year public colleges finish their degrees within six years, while only about 21 percent -- one-fifth! -- of community college students complete their programs within 150 percent of expected time. And yes, there is a lot that these figures do not capture, but there is no way to look at these outcomes of public schools as anything other than atrocious.

And nonprofit private institutions? They get big tax benefits by virtue of being putatively nonprofit, and often accumulate major wealth as a result. But their six-year grad rates? Only 64 percent.

Once again, the root problem is that massive government subsidies induce students to spend far more -- and think about their priorities far less -- than they would were they using their own dough, or money someone voluntarily gave them. Moreover, all of our higher ed subsidies enable colleges to raise prices with near impunity, and expend cash on all sorts of things that make them hugely inefficient.

In light of all this, “gainful employment” is clearly no solution to our higher ed troubles. It is, at best, an over-hyped distraction.

Here is a comment from Richard Bishirjian, President of Yorktown University.

Reading comments submitted in response to Fawn Johnson’s June 6 topic on “gainful employment” gives me a sense that professional “educationists” have aligned themselves with the Obama Administration’s hyperactive the U.S. Department of Education’s regulatory policies.

My suspicion is due to the focus of most comments on what one commentator on “abusive practices at for-profit colleges which pile deep debt onto their students in exchange for questionable credentials.”

The full topic that Ms. Johnson submitted asks, “Should school programs that aren't regulated by the gainful-employment rule prepare for the administration to look at them next?”

I wonder what this commentator would say if he took time to read the entire topic?

Should new “gainful employment” regulations be imposed across the entire landscape of higher education? Or, following Ms. Johnson, “Who’s next?”

I was at a meeting where state authorization and gainful regulations were discussed and one commentator, representing a Utah Internet high schools, said, “I’m next.”

When you unleash the full power of the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Justice Department at one sector of an industry, you create a scapegoat of that sector. I don’t want to sound extreme, but that is how totalitarian governments secure the complaisance of the general population.

Identify a scapegoat, make the punishment severe, and those who are not scapegoated will keep their mouths shut. Some of us who enjoyed required courses in the history of Western civilization will recognize that this occurred during the Crusades, in Nazi Germany, in Muslim countries at this very moment.

Why can’t others see that the greater the power of the administrative state to punish one group and not another opens a door to more serious use of the power of the state to coerce?

Yorktown University is an educational institution authorized by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education to award degrees and offer courses for degree credit. Yorktown University is also accredited by the Accrediting Commission of the Distance Education and Training Council.

The intent of the Gainful-Employment Rule is to protect degree-seekers from accumulating more debt than they can handle in pursuit of career training.

But the act as it is now written won’t accomplish this because it treats only symptoms—and weakly at that.

We would be better served by changing the way we distribute financial aid and curbing our tendency to conflate post-secondary academic education with career training.

Fixing the financial aid system would fix part of this problem without strange rules and compromised regulations. Best of all, it would address the problem in both the for- and non-profit post-secondary sectors.

As it stands now, degree- and certificate-granting institutions have strong incentives to sign students up but not much need to graduate them, to equip them with economically-viable skills, or to help them find work in the areas they study. The Gainful-Employment Rule is so weak that this situation will not be meaningfully affected.

But even if the provisions were tougher, the rule still wouldn’t address two fundamental problems: (1) We invest financial aid with little evidence that the people we’re investing in will get a decent return for the risk they assume; and (2) We invest in institutions that are not designed to provide high-quality career training.

Taxpayer financing of career-focused post-secondary degrees and certificates is a good investment if, and only if, students complete their programs and find work that enables them to repay their loans directly in their fields of study.

But these two things are not true for the majority of students who seek post-secondary degrees and certificates and receive federal financial aid.

While on average, post-secondary degrees and certificates are still good investments, too many institutions offer too many programs in which too many students fail to become gainfully-employed in their fields of study within a reasonable period of time.

In this sense, financial aid is often a subsidy given to institutions providing sub-par career training. Institutions get government funding and students get stuck with the tab—or the taxpayer does when students default on their loans.

The reason the Gainful-Employment Rule was so violently opposed by the institutions it affects is that these institutions know their numbers better than anyone. They know how much people pay for their programs. And they know how few of these people are able to translate the knowledge and skills they gain directly into employment in their chosen field that pays both their bills and their loans.

This may be equally true of the traditional post-secondary sector as well. The real differentiator here may merely be the economic means of the student populations they serve. Traditional institutions may not pass the gainful-employment test either. But the students they serve may not find themselves in such dire financial straits as a result.

For example, when I left college with an English degree, I couldn’t find employment that made direct use of what I had studied. But I was able to pay my loans for two reasons: (1) They weren’t very large because I had two sets of parents who had each mortgaged homes to send me to school; and (2) Even if I hadn’t been able to pay my loans, I could have easily borrowed more money from my folks to stay afloat and out of bankruptcy.

Coming from a middle class family, and seeking a middle class college education, I faced little risk of financial ruin or need for a taxpayer bailout. My situation also let the universities I attended off the hook for my gainful employability. But I suspect that if either institution were held up to close scrutiny in this regard, neither would fare particularly well, especially given how expensive they are today.

This is why applying something like the Gainful-Employment Rule only to certain types of institutions makes even less sense than the rule itself. If the value we are trying to assert is the protection of individual students and the stewardship of public funds for the purpose of career advancement and individual economic viability, then all post-secondary institutions should be held to the same standard.

Then again, the entire notion we’ve developed that going to school is a good way to get a great job is rapidly becoming exposed as an antiquated notion and a classic error of category confusion. The farther we go down the garden path of “college = job training”, the more we’re going to find out that sending people to school is not the best way to train them for jobs.

Secretary Duncan and President Obama want very badly to raise the percentage of people with post-secondary credentials in our society. This is laudable, but it’s the wrong thing to laud. We should be striving instead to raise the percentage of people who are gainfully-employed in satisfying and stable careers. That’s the end result we seek. But a Gainful-Employment Rule is not the way to get it.

The Gainful-Employment Rule with its ratios and requirements will be mastered easily by any institution with a smart CFO who knows how to use a spreadsheet. Juggling numbers will keep schools out of trouble. But it won’t improve how they train students for work, or whether those students find viable employment in their chosen fields.

There are many theories of how people are best trained for various roles in life. But none that I’m aware of suggests that going to school is the best approach except in certain professions like law, medicine, or science. Most of us receive our best job training on the job. Sometimes we do this in an apprentice-like capacity, sometimes we just do it on our own, and sometimes we seek out more equivalent opportunities in a closely allied but more accessible field.

This is usually the most direct and reliable path to prosperity. It also has the advantage of allowing us to experience our chosen field, or at least certain aspects of it, before we’ve invested many months and many thousands of our own and other people’s dollars in a degree or certificate program.

Call them internships, residencies, apprenticeships, job shadowing programs, whatever. There are many ways institutions can and do offer direct and valuable career preparation. But too few institutions take this approach, and even those that do may not do it well or for very many students.

Why? Because it takes a lot of thought, a lot of effort, and a lot of money—three things most institutions would rather not think about if they don’t have to. And thanks to the Gainful-Employment Rule as it stands today, they don’t.

If we wanted to impose rules that would lead to more gainful-employment, we would impose rules about offering students direct access to work in their chosen fields while they are studying them. But this would be a ridiculous degree of interference on the part of the federal government.

To be fair, there are many amazing institutions that do exactly what I describe. These places have high graduation rates, high placement rates, and high numbers of successful, satisfied graduates. These are institutions worth investing in. So one way to improve things would be to give financial aid money directly to institutions rather than to students. Investing in high-quality institutions, who would be incentivized to maintain their status by using the money to attract deserving candidates and mentoring them to success, would make more sense than giving money directly to students to spend on programs whose results may be unknown or unsatisfactory.

The accountability component here is simple and in direct accord with the missions of institutions that represent themselves as purveyors of high-quality career training: train people well, help them find good work, and you get more financial aid money. Train people poorly and you get less.

Best of all, however, would be a cultural uncoupling of academic education from career training. Both are valuable. But the structures and strictures of the former are ill-suited to achieving the more dynamic and directed goals of the latter.

Academic study tends to be more reflective and slower-paced; it often privileges the past over present and future, and has diffuse and idealistic goals. Career preparation is, of necessity, just the opposite: present-centered, future-oriented, fast-paced, and focused on specific and decidedly more pragmatic outcomes.

Our country needs people who are both well-educated and well-employed. Pursuing both goals at the same institution, however, given how different they are and what it takes to do them both well, may be unrealistic and—when it comes to investing taxpayer dollars and saddling young people with excessive debt—it may be irresponsible as well.

Needing both well-educated and well-trained adults as we do, we may at some point realize that we need two distinct types of post-secondary institutions: those that specialize in academic experience and that those specialize in work experience. This may be a painful realization. But as the weightlifters like to say, “No pain. No gain.”

Here is a response from David Halperin, Director of Campus Progress, which is part of the Center for American Progress.

On Thursday, the Obama Administration issued its long-awaited “gainful employment” rule, aimed at pushing for-profit colleges and career training schools to stop ripping off students and taxpayers. Although there are good programs in the for-profit sector, many programs are high-priced and low-quality, and some programs, as we have learned from recent government and media investigations, appear to be little more than straight-up swindles: Recruit students to fill slots, collect the federal checks, leave the students without career skills or options. Repeat.

The dramatic rise of such schools over the past decade has left hundreds of thousands of students deep in debt. For-profit colleges now have about 10 percent of US students, 25 percent of federal financial aid, and nearly half of all student loan defaults. Many of these schools get 90 percent of their revenue from federal grants and loans. Left unchecked, this sector could produce a new subprime-like debt crisis.

The reaction to the new rule has been all over the place. Among representatives of for-profit schools, responses have ranged from “Congress must stop this rule” to “we’ll have to see what happens.” Groups who advocate holding these schools accountable (including Campus Progress), have issued statements with sentiments varying from “thanks Obama Administration!” to “thanks for nothing.”

Some insist that money talks and cite a rally in for-profit college stocks as proof that this is a critical victory for the industry.

I think the rule gives bad actors in the industry a few more years to do their worst. But their unrestrained orgy of waste, fraud, and abuse at taxpayer expense inevitably will come to an end.

It’s certainly true that the final rule is significantly weaker than the rule that the Administration proposed last summer (and even the standards of that original rule were too low). Under the final rule, a program can systematically fail to provide value to students and still be eligible for federal financial aid. Sixty-five percent of students from a program can fail to pay back their loans, and loan repayment from a school’s graduates can consume 30 percent of their disposable income, and the program will nevertheless remain eligible [PDF] for federal grants and loans.

In fact, a program would have to slip below those low standards three out of four years in order to lose eligibility. That’s pathetic. But amazingly, some of today's for-profit programs would likely fail those standards because they are so high-priced and so low-quality. The Department of Education says that five percent of for-profit programs will run afoul of this rule and lose their aid.

So even under these low standards, the very worst programs will eventually have to shut down. But also, crucially, a much larger pool of bad programs will have to improve their performance for fear of being part of this bottom five percent. Before, there was little incentive to do more than take students’ and taxpayers’ money. Now industry players know they will have to provide at least some value or lose the federal aid that keeps them alive. Also important is that the new rule will provide students and the public with critical information about the effectiveness of individual career college programs. The programs that will have the best reputations will be those that keep debts low and prepare people for jobs that really exist—exactly what students want. These changes could help millions of students.

So what has driven up the for-profit stocks, at least for now?

First, the market values certainty. Few people are giving this rule a big hug, which suggests that the Administration may have found the political center between the fact-based arguments of our coalition and the cynical position of the for-profits, who have spent tens of millions of dollars on a furious campaign of lobbying, litigation, advertising, and political contributions in an effort to maintain the status quo. The concessions made by the Administration are likely to make the rule harder to overturn in Congress. So the rule may well be the standard that guides the industry for a while.

Second, Wall Street is focused on short-term profits. Even more significant than the degraded quality standards of the final rule is the extended delay in making the rule effective—programs are not at risk of losing eligibility until 2015. So for-profit companies can hope that the 2012 election will bring a new President and Congress that will overturn the rule. Some bad actors also could adopt a strategy that, rather than seeking to comply with the rule, instead starts to loot the assets of their schools, cutting costs and quality even further, and going out in a blaze of glory until the rule catches up with them in 2015.

If the for-profit education business is ultimately compelled to reform, it will be because the gainful employment rule is just one part of a changed landscape. The Administration already has issued other rules aimed at curbing misinformation and over-aggressive recruiting practice by for-profits. Senator Tom Harkin continues to hold public hearings focused on misconduct by these schools. Eleven state attorneys general have joined together to investigate for-profit abuses. More and more students who have been misled and mistreated by these schools are speaking up and even going to court. And media investigations have exposed more bad practices in the industry and widespread abuses of students who need help the most–low-income people struggling to support families, students of color, and our veterans. Finally, there is now a strong coalition of civil rights, consumer, educator, and student groups, representing millions of Americans, that is determined to hold bad schools accountable and protect students and taxpayers.

Collectively, these developments will make it more and more difficult to sustain a business model based on deception, low investment in students, and skyrocketing prices. For-profit education companies will be forced to clean up their acts or shut their doors.

It would be a travesty if the for-profits now spend even more money—largely money that comes from taxpayers—on a continued pressure campaign to avoid accountability. But if the industry refuses to back down, Congress should act in the interests of fiscal responsibility, our economy, and especially our students, and resist efforts to roll back the new rules. Republicans and Democrats should support directing federal resources to programs that actually help students to learn, graduate, and succeed in the job market.

We have a comment from, José Cruz, Vice President for Higher Education Policy and Practice at The Education Trust.

The Obama administration’s new “gainful employment” regulation is a disappointing stumble on America’s path toward regaining the global lead in college attainment.

The abuses of many career colleges have been well and repeatedly documented. But the final, watered-down rule does not do nearly enough to curb these abuses. It provides students and taxpayers with only the most meager of protections against an aggressive industry bent on exponential growth and ever-escalating profits. In the end, the 436-page document is little more than an a la carte menu of ways these institutions can game the system.

For example, under the new regulations, many of the most toxic career education programs will continue to operate and grow their enrollments for three years — largely at taxpayer expense — with no requirements to improve. And because 81 percent of these programs are two years or fewer, the vast majority of students will be out of school and into the job market, shouldering huge debt and holding a certificate or diploma that may or may not lead to gainful employment, before any sanctions are levied against the programs that shortchanged their dreams and made off with the cash.

Under the leadership of Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, 10 state prosecutors recently announced a joint investigation of the programs that should have been reined in by this federal regulation. Now, the millions of students who had hoped that the Obama administration would stand up for them can only hope that state action will provide them with the kind of protection they need from predatory for-profit college companies.

In announcing the regulations, Secretary Arne Duncan told The New York Times that “as a country, we need this sector to succeed.” This is a troubling statement, but makes clear the point of view the administration took in finalizing these regulations.

America does not need this sector to succeed. We need our students to succeed. Regulation designed for the success of the sector won’t help our students, our economy or our democracy.

The new regulations represent the first step the US Department of Education needed to take to reining in abusive practices at for-profit colleges which pile deep debt onto their students in exchange for questionable credentials. The new rule sets a standard for these schools: their programs have to ensure graduates can earn enough to pay off the hefty student loans they must carry to pay for their enrollment.

The price tag for these colleges is so high that about half of all borrowers who default on their student loans attend for-profit colleges. The quality of the education is so weak that, in one survey, 57 percent of students departed without a diploma.

Meanwhile, taxpayers are picking up the tab by underwriting billions in federal student loans and grant aid that pour into these colleges. About one in ten college students attends a for-profit college, but these colleges absorb one in four federal loan and grant dollars.

We are disappointed that the new standard doesn’t go into effect soon enough, nor is it strong enough to adequately clean up the industry on behalf of student loan borrowers.

We look forward to pushing for further reform with supporters on Capitol Hill and in offices of Attorneys General across the country.

When our number one priority as a nation ought to be creating the more than 20 million jobs needed over the next 10 years to reemploy the unemployed and keep pace with a growing population, the Administration continues to push an ill-conceived regulation that will result in jobs lost and fewer Americans getting the postsecondary education and training they need.

The President has emphasized postsecondary completion and positioning the United States as the global leader in postsecondary attainment, but the administration—despite clear opposition in Congress—issued a rule that runs counter to his rhetoric by targeting a sector of higher education that serves low-income and minority students and has provided an important alternative to traditional higher education for many students that otherwise would not have access.

If the goal is to improve quality—the suggestion has been that these institutions are delivering a subpar education to students—why isn’t the Department making an effort to reform our outdated system of accreditation? And why the double standard of assuming that traditional schools are good performers without judging them by the criteria—like costs or employment outcomes—used to discredit for-profits (for-profits should be held to high standards in these areas, of course).

If the Department is trying to address the ever-increasing cost of higher education, then why is it limiting its efforts to the for-profit sector? The Department is concerned with taxpayer dollars going to students attending these institutions through Pell grants and federal student loans. They don’t seem to be concerned, though, with taxpayer subsidies going to public and private not-for-profit institutions—or with related issues like completion rates at those institutions and the salaries of those who graduate.

There are a number of problems in higher education today that demand our attention—quality and affordability are two of the biggest—but they need to be addressed across the entire sector regardless of the tax status of the institution. If we as a nation continue to put a premium on achieving some level of credential, certificate, or degree beyond high school, we need everyone at the table and playing a part in reaching that goal.

Rather than targeting private-sector higher education providers, the Administration should be engaging them as a partner in meeting their completion goals. The Chamber’s Institute for a Competitive Workforce recently released a report, College 2.0: Transforming Higher Education through Greater Innovation and Smarter Regulations, which highlights some of the most transformational offerings from “edupreneurs,” who are proving that higher education can be affordable, reach more people, and enable students to learn faster and at higher levels. The report also looks at barriers to entry for these types of innovations (gainful employment is a prime example) and how smarter policymaking can help bring these innovations to everyone who can benefit from them.

National Journal’s Fawn Johnson is to be commended for asking a series of very important questions that deserve equally serious answers.

The long lead-in now permitted for adapting to new “gainful employment” regulations causes me to recall the saying, “Thank God for small favors.”

This “small favor”—granted after executives at the U.S. Department of Education, Arne Duncan, James Kraal, David Bergeron and White House aides were badgered by some of the most influential education leaders in the proprietary-education sector—was granted begrudgingly.

Even Nancy Pelosi voted for the repeal of the “gainful-employment” scheme when it was introduced as a rider in last year’s budget legislation. The Washington Post’s Donald Graham and University of Phoenix founder John Spelling—supporters of Obama Administration policies in every other area came down hard against gainful-employment regulations.

This joining of hands across the aisles by Republicans and Democrats who oppose “gainful employment” causes me to believe that just maybe there is enough goodwill left in American politics to achieve many more compromises for the public good.

Gainful employment is a regulation conceived in the mind of Robert Shireman, an appointee at the U.S. Department of Education who seems to harbor a particularly vile marque of detestation where for-profit education is concerned. That he was appointed to a key position that doesn’t require Senate confirmation suggests he would have run into very serious opposition leading to rejection or substantial delays if his appointment to the post allowed for Senatorial scrutiny.

The word “reckless” comes to mind when you read the proceedings of “negotiated rule-making” that led to the new gainful-employment regulations. And the Department’s commentary on the more than 90,000 replies—most of them quite critical of gainful employment—reads like Marie Antoinette upon hearing of the mobs in Paris demanding bread.

As a former Member of Congress, I saw arrogance like this coming from the U.S. Department of Education before. Is there something about professional “education” bureaucrats that motivates them to so maniacally plow the federal bulldozer through every parcel of American education?

If you read the Constitution of the United States, the word “education” doesn’t appear. In our federal system, education is expressly the responsibility of the states and the people.

The “hook” that is used in promulgating regulations that could lead to the closure of several hundreds of useful real-job-creating vocational programs is the reality that students seeking vocational credentials come from our poorest classes.

In Denver, Metro State College charged $2,000 a year in tuition! Facing the reality of deep budget cuts, that tuition will be increased by 35%. An additional $700 doesn’t hurt Jack or Jill from upper-middle class families. Their parents can afford to pay $23,000 a year in tuition, room and board to attend the University of Colorado.

But, for employees of McDonalds, Wal-Mart or King Sooper’s, trying to pay their bills and go to school at night, that $700 can mean the difference between realizing their dreams and being stuck in low-wage jobs.

Take away those vocational programs that they’ve accessed and are financing by federal direct student loans, and you relegate them to a life of penury. And, it isn’t only the students at for-profit vocational colleges who sometimes walk away from their student-loan debt. In La Junta, Colorado Otero Junior College has a 27% repayment rate.

What’s the difference between the minority students who make up the student body at Kaplan Education and Otero Junior College? Nothing! But, between now and 2015, when gainful-employment regulations go into effect, a great number of Kaplan’s vocational degree programs will be changed to certificate programs or simply closed down.

I’m troubled, therefore, by the application of these standards to only the proprietary-education sector and I’m afraid I must conclude that this represents an anti-business, anti-capitalism bias of the Obama Administration.