The U.S. Department of Education released to a panel of negotiators on Monday a draft of its proposed language for revisions in the rules affecting for-profit colleges.
The panel, whose members include federal officials and representatives of institutions and associations affected by the regulations, has been charged with re-examining 14 rules in a process known as negotiated rule-making. The group met last month for the first of three sessions.
Among the department’s proposed changes are eliminating the 12 “safe harbors” adopted in 2002 to clarify a ban on incentive compensation for student recruiters. The safe harbors specify types of compensation plans that do not violate the ban.
Consumer advocates and admissions officers from traditional colleges have urged the department to do away with the safe harbors, arguing that the exemptions, which allow colleges to pay enrollment-based commissions under certain circumstances, encourage recruiters to sign up unqualified students.
For-profit college officials and lobbyists favor keeping the safe harbors, saying they provide much-needed clarity on whether specific types of payments are in compliance with the law.
In the documents provided to negotiating-committee members on Monday, the department suggests that eliminating all of the safe harbors “would best serve to effectuate Congressional intent.”
Other proposed changes deal with defining a high-school diploma and assuring the integrity of “ability to benefit” testing procedures.
Students who do not have a high-school diploma or a GED, and have not completed high school through home schooling, have to pass an ability-to-benefit test to quality for federal student aid.
The department suggests requiring for-profit colleges to keep listings of high schools in three categories related to the established validity of the diplomas they award, and it would require publishers of ability-to-benefit tests to establish a process to identify and follow up on test-score irregularities that might suggest that cheating occurred. A test publisher would be required to decertify test administrators if it determined that tests had been administered improperly. Last summer the Government Accountability Office said in a report that officials administering such a test at one college had given out and changed answers for students.
The panel will begin its next weeklong session on December 7. A final decision on any revisions in the rules is not expected until next year.
