WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, released a statement following U.S. Department of Education’s proposal to scrap a regulation put in place by the Obama administration aimed at holding for-profit colleges accountable.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Education announced its proposal to scrap the Obama administration “gainful employment” rule, which aimed to tighten abuses at for-profit colleges. The 2014 regulation put for-profit colleges on notice, requiring them to meet minimum thresholds with respect to debt-to-income rates for graduates or risk losing federal funding. These protections aimed to help students graduates with good-paying jobs that provided enough money to pay off student loans.

“The Trump administration is bending over backwards to make it easier for scam schools to defraud students. It’s so disappointing that the president and Secretary DeVos are working so hard to make it easier for greedy companies to exploit students,” said Murphy. “People pay for an education to land a job. Not every for profit school is bad for students, but a school that consistently fails its students is as much of a fraud as an airline that never actually flies customers. By rescinding this rule, the administration is giving a free pass to institutions that take millions in taxpayer-backed loans to print worthless degrees. It’s got to stop.”

In 2016, Murphy wrote about how necessary the gainful employment rule is to ensuring graduates are job-ready and financially secured.

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