Obama Did Persecute For-Profit Colleges

Lots of nonprofit programs flunk the Gainful Employment rules he imposed

By Andrew Gillen and Richard Vedder.

"The Obama administration crafted a set of “Gainful Employment” regulations primarily targeting these programs. If a pool of graduates had too much debt relative to earnings, the government would cut off financial aid to its students. These and other regulations helped drive a sharp decline in for-profit enrollment. But new data released by the Education Department reveals just how misguided these policies were.

It isn’t only for-profit colleges that are selling dud degrees. Public and nonprofit schools, including some of the most prestigious, have many programs that fail an updated Gainful Employment test too. With the test updated to fit current Education Department data gathering, at Columbia the bachelor’s program in rhetoric and composition/writing studies falls short (median earnings $19,700, median debt $28,556), as does the program in visual and performing arts (median earnings $21,800, median debt $25,500). Those getting a master’s degree in fine and studio arts at Yale have meager median annual earnings of $17,200 and median debt of $21,200. Nor is the problem limited to the arts and humanities. Professional programs in law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in optometry at the University of California, Berkeley, and in dentistry at Harvard fail too."

"72% of financial aid recipients who graduate from failing public and nonprofit programs."