Taylor Hansen, a former lobbyist for for-profit colleges, quit his job at the U.S. Department of Education on Friday, Bloomberg reports.
Mr. Hansen is the son of Bill Hansen, head of USA Funds, a student-loan-guarantee agency that has recently branched out into other career-education projects. The younger Mr. Hansen was one of only a few advisers to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos with experience working in higher education.
He resigned after the department announced that it would reverse an Obama-administration regulation that limits fees charged by guarantee agencies. In 2015, USA Funds sued the Education Department over the rule. The change will allow fees equal to 16 percent of distressed borrowers’ total balance.
Last week U.S. Sen. Elizabeth A. Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, wrote a letter to Ms. DeVos about ethical questions regarding Mr. Hansen’s work with the department.
“Shortly after the department publicly listed Mr. Hansen as an employee the department announced a delay of critical deadlines related to the implementation of the gainful-employment rules,” Ms. Warren wrote in the letter. “According to the U.S. Senate Office of Public Records Lobbying Disclosure databases, Mr. Hansen personally lobbied against the implementation of these rules.”
The letter also mentioned Robert S. Eitel, a former vice president for regulatory legal services at the for-profit-college company Bridgepoint Education. Mr. Eitel is now a special assistant to Ms. DeVos.
A department spokesman told The New York Times that Mr. Eitel would recuse himself from working on the department’s gainful-employment guidelines. The controversial regulations set standards for career colleges’ job-placement records.
