Minority Organization Expresses Disappointment Over Miscalculation in
Gainful Employment Rule
WASHINGTON: In response to reports that the U.S. Department of Education re-released
the controversial “Gainful Employment” rule yesterday following major miscalculations
surrounding the number of African American students affected by the rule, Harry Alford,
president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) issued the following
statement:
“The Department of Education’s calculation error confirms our initial concerns that the
‘Gainful Employment’ rule would unfairly harm minority students at proprietary colleges and universities. The department has failed time and again to recognize that repayment rates at proprietary schools are based heavily on demographics – and it has now been forced to rerelease the ‘Gainful Employment’ rule based on incorrect interpretation of the statistical
results. Had the Department of Education conducted a Minority Student Impact Assessment
– as the National Black Chamber of Commerce and other minority leaders had called for in
May of 2011 – we would not be facing this issue.
“The ‘Gainful Employment’ rule should be overturned once and for all. It is clear that the
entire process has been unfairly biased by the Administration, Congress and third party
groups against proprietary colleges. If the regulation is not overturned, these biased
opinions will cause the Administration to hurt educational opportunities and job training
prospects for thousands of low-income and minority students.”
In the corrected rule, the Federal Register reads, “In the preamble of the final regulations,
we used the wrong data to calculate the percent of total variance in institutions’ repayment
rates that may be explained by race/ethnicity. Our intent was to use the data that included
all minority students per institution. However, we mistakenly used the data for a subset of
minority students per institution.” The Department originally estimated that race explained
only 1 percent of the overall total variance in repayment rates across schools subject to the
regulations, however the corrected data reveals that race actually explains 20 percent of
the variance.
About NBCC
The NBCC reaches 100,000 Black owned businesses. There are 1.9 million Black owned
businesses in the United States. Black businesses account for over $138 billion in annual
sales. African Americans have over $1 trillion in expendable income each year according to
the US Bureau of Census. The National Black Chamber of Commerce is dedicated to
economically empowering and sustaining African American communities through
entrepreneurship and capitalistic activity within the United States and via interaction with
the Black Diaspora.
