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By Jordan Damond
July 9, 2017 (San Diego) -- President Donald Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, has announced her intent to discard college policies created by the Obama administration to protect students and taxpayers from certain predatory for-profit colleges. Many take issue with Devos’ action, because during the final stages of Obama’s administration, it became evident that these policies have been increasingly effective ways of eliminating costly college programs that have left students mired in debt, without the earning power to pay off student loans.
Gainful employment regulations, the specific policies that DeVos wishes to get rid of, examine how much certain students borrow during college in comparison to how much these same students earn after college. If students are borrowing more than they are earning, then the program is treated as a failure. If this happens for two out of three years, then the program is deemed unsuitable for any federal financial aid. Out of the 500 failing programs, around 300 or more have already been shut down. Many of the colleges, whether for-profit or colleges near bankruptcy, share the same mindset that these programs aren’t worth keeping.
This isn’t the first action from the Trump administration that affects college students. If you go to AmericanProgress.org, you can see that Betsy DeVos has made several impactful actions when it comes to student loans. For instance, she is planning to cut $143 billion dollars in federal student loans. This decision can affect up to 6 million borrowers in the U.S. Many Democrats are irate over the decisions made by Secretary DeVos, claiming the actions violate civil rights, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The decisions made by DeVos reflect her own ideology. Both she and President Donald Trump have been avid supporters of school vouchers. In Trump’s recent proposed budget for 2017, Trump is looking to invest $250 million in voucher initiatives, which are state-funded programs that pay for certain students to go to colleges of their choice. However, the problem that critics raise is that two new studies provide evidence that vouchers don’t benefit the students’ standardized test grades. For more information on the studies, you can visit Time.com. In addition, vouchers take money away from public colleges and universities, shifting funds to private institutions.
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