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Alexander: Proposed Gainful Employment Rule “Will Weaken Both Choice and Access”


“To take 841 pages of regulations to define two words in the higher education law shows exactly what is wrong with Washington”

KNOXVILLE, Tenn., March 14 – U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the senior Republican on the Senate education committee, today released the following statement on the administration’s proposed gainful employment rule:

“To take 841 pages of regulations to define two words in the higher education law shows exactly what is wrong with Washington and its desire to overregulate institutions of higher education.  This proposed rule will weaken both choice and access for some of our most disadvantaged higher education students and will be highly destructive to our system of higher education.”

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has been holding a series of hearings on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. At the start of the hearings in September, Alexander suggested drafting a new Higher Education Act from scratch. “Our goal should be to address how the federal government can create an environment in which 20 years from now, 6,000 American colleges and universities can still offer the best higher education in the world with the greatest number of choices at a reasonable cost to students,” Alexander said then.

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