Washington, DC – August 1, 2016 – Today, Career Education Colleges and Universities (CECU), the voice of the nation’s postsecondary career education schools, called upon the U.S. Department of Education to withdraw its proposed Defense to Repayment regulation and instead work collaboratively with all stakeholders to create a more clear and fair process. The Comment begins by noting that, “[e]very stakeholder in higher education has a sincere interest in operating under a fair and comprehensive set of rules that protects students and their chosen educational institutions, prevents fraud, and imposes appropriate penalties on institutions that abuse their public trust. For its part, the Department of Education is obligated by its enabling legislation to address these issues in a manner that treats all higher education institutions equally and fairly. This is a daunting task. It requires careful study and sober consideration of the likely impact of any new rules on the ability of the resulting system to function effectively for the benefit of students. The concern is not with the goals of the rulemaking, but with its unintended consequences. We should be careful not to do more harm than good in our desire to implement even the most well-intentioned system. Many of the ideas encompassed within the NPRM have merit, but together they create a dangerous system that omits safeguards necessary for worthy schools, penalizes institutions before misconduct is shown and creates serious risks to the viability of institutions across the postsecondary sector – non-profit, public and proprietary alike. With this in mind, we offer constructive comments to clarify and improve the Proposed Rule. In doing so, we also identify portions of the Proposed Rule that are inappropriate, counterproductive, or in certain instances simply exceed the scope of the Department’s authority under its enabling statutes.”
In its over 50 pages of detailed concerns, including numerous constructive suggestions for improvement, CECU wrote “[t]here is no doubt that an institution shown to be responsible for intentionally misleading students should be penalized, including taking responsibility for the debt the student incurred. But rather than craft a precise and fair system, the premise of the Proposed Rule seems to be that, to ensure punishment of bad actors we should dramatically lower the standard to prove misconduct, assess penalties when there is only a possibility that bad conduct might later be shown, and accept a system of prosecution, adjudication, and punishment that consolidates authority and nearly unbridled discretion in the Department to an unprecedented degree.” The comments addressed four separate issues:
CECU proposes that a much more clear and fair process for borrower defense claims is necessary. That system should, at a minimum, do the following things:
The association called on the Department to establish a set of regulations based upon reasoned study. “The lack of any clear process for filing, hearing and adjudicating claims puts at risk the very protection of students the rule seeks to achieve. As the Department has admitted, the proposed procedures are undefined, to be established at a future time; it is therefore impossible to comment meaningfully on their efficacy and reasonableness. The very premise of an NPRM is to elicit informed comments on the operation of a proposed rule. That is impossible if critical aspects of the proposed rule are shrouded in uncertainty.” Key passages of the comment include:
CECU concludes its Comment by stating, “[w]e strongly endorse the Department’s goal to protect students and afford them debt relief when they are the victims of fraudulent or intentionally misleading conduct by the institutions they attend. At the same time, we urge the Department to resist the temptation to rush a complex regulation through the rulemaking process in an effort to solve the student debt problem without fully understanding the impact of its aggressive new mandates.” Comments are closed.
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