Protect Students & Taxpayers offers a collection of resources produced by organizations working on behalf of students, veterans, faculty and staff, civil rights advocates, researchers, and others concerned about career education programs that leave students with debts they cannot afford. Predatory schools leave students with unfair and unaffordable student loan debt and leave taxpayers exposed when students cannot repay those debts. Many predatory schools are heavily dependent on taxpayer funding and target veterans in particular for their GI Bill funds.
We support common-sense accountability to ensure that all students are able to access an education that improves their lives, students who are cheated by colleges are able to fairly cancel student loan debt, and that taxpayer dollars are not wasted on programs that offer little value to students but leave them with debt they cannot afford to repay.
Negotiated Rulemaking
Why Students of Color Need a Strong Gainful Employment Rule
- Student Voices
- Gainful Employment: A Civil Rights Perspective
- Gainful Employment Program Outcomes and Student Demographics
- For-Profit Colleges Are Not Allies of HBCUs
- Accountability That Works: Restoring Gainful Employment and Strengthening Higher Education Accountability Measures
- Student Protections and the Value of a Gainful Employment Rule
Implementing 90/10 Loophole Closure to Protect Student Veterans
- Letter from 32 veteran groups supporting the closure of the 90/10 loophole | March 2021
- How the 90/10 Rule Loophole Harms Veterans | ThirdWay, May 2020
- Memo: Three Loopholes that Congress Needs to Close to Protect Students | ThirdWay, May 2020
Facts and Tools
- Negotiated Rulemaking Digital Media Toolkit
- What Will Happen If We Reinstate the Gainful Employment Rule? | Third Way, February 2022
- What Programs Passed and Failed the Gainful Employment Rule in Your State? | Center for Responsible Lending, December 2021
- Why Students Need a Strong Gainful Employment Rule | TICAS, February 2021
- The Bermuda Triad: Where Accountability Goes to Die | New America, November 2019
- What to Know About the Gainful Employment Rule | TICAS, August 2019
- Why the Department Shouldn’t Weaken the Gainful Employment Metrics | New America, December 2017
- The Gainful Employment Rule Explained | ThirdWay, September 2017
- How Low Does The Gainful Employment Bar Go? | ThirdWay, September 2017
- Memo: How the “Gainful Employment” Rule Protects Students and Taxpayers | ThirdWay, January 2017
- Improving Gainful Employment: Suggestions for Better Accountability | New America, September 2013
Further Reading
- Accountability That Works: Restoring Gainful Employment and Strengthening Higher Education Accountability Measures, TICAS, December 2021
- “Voters Overwhelmingly Support Guardrails on For-Profit Colleges, Finds TCF and Data for Progress Poll,” The Century Foundation, January 2021
- Anticipating and Managing Precipitous College Closures, New America, March 2020
- Gainfully employed? New evidence on the earnings, employment, and debt of for-profit certificate students, Stephanie Cellini, The Brookings Institution, Brown Center Chalkboard, February 2018
- Stephanie Cellini and Nicholas Turner, Gainfully Employed? Assessing the Employment and Earnings of For-Profit College Students Using Administrative Data, Revised January 2018
- Memo: GE by the Numbers: How Students Fared at Programs Covered Under the Gainful Employment Rule | ThirdWay, September 2017
- “Gainful Employment regulations will protect students and taxpayers. Don’t change them,” with Adam Looney, David Deming, and Jordan Matsudaira, The Brookings Institution, Brown Center Chalkboard, August 2017
- “DeVos Is Discarding College Policies That New Evidence Shows Are Effective,” The New York Times, The Upshot, June 2017
NegReg Session Recaps
- Searching for Common Ground: Week One of Negotiated Rulemaking | October 13, 2021
- Halt and Make Edits: Assessing the Second Work Period of Negotiated Rulemaking | November 9, 2021
- One Last Time: The Affordability & Student Loans Negotiated Rulemaking Committee Wraps up Its Work | December 16, 2021
- What Comes Next? Accountability Issues in Negotiated Rulemaking | January 26, 2022
Click through for key coalition materials and coalition letters
