The U.S. Department of Education on Monday announced roughly three-month delays to deadlines for colleges to submit appeals or public disclosures under the gainful employment rule, Obama administration performance standards for the ability of graduates of vocational programs to repay their federal student loans.
The rule applies to for-profits and nondegree programs at community colleges and other nonprofit institutions. Congressional Republicans and the Trump administration have signaled that they will seek to roll back gainful employment.
The department’s announcement this week means colleges have until July to submit appeals to academic programs’ debt-to-earnings ratios. The deadline had been this month. Likewise, colleges will have until July to meet a previously set April mark for updating their public disclosures for 2017 rates. The Obama administration in December had announced a delay to a template for programmatic disclosures under the rule.
The Trump administration’s Education Department said in a written statement that it decided to make the new delays to “allow the department to further review the gainful employment regulations and their implementation.”
