Trump Administration Considers Rolling Back College Regulations

The Trump administration is signaling that it plans to undo several rules governing higher education and student aid during the next year, a move the officials says will lead to more innovation but that consumer advocates warn could harm students.

The Education Department flagged its plans in a regulatory filing this week, saying it would target rules on subjects such as the credit hour—a unit measuring how much students accomplish in class—and the process by which colleges receive recognition that qualifies their students to get federal aid.

The moves go beyond previously stated plans to roll back two Obama-era regulations cracking down on for-profit colleges. The department plans as early as this month to rewrite both of those rules, which set earnings standards for for-profit schools’ graduates and create a process for students failed by those schools to have their debt forgiven by the government.

The Education Department’s latest filing suggests it is looking to ease requirements on online and for-profit programs in particular, such as a mandate that online courses include a certain amount of interaction between students and instructors. The department’s in-house watchdog last year said a popular online school, Western Governors University based in Utah, should pay back $712 million in federal aid for failing to provide adequate student-teacher interaction.

Such changes could boost innovative and non-traditional programs, including for-profit institutions, but critics say it could open the door to schools with lower standards.

Overall, the changes represent far-reaching revisions to higher education that would rethink how, and how much, the federal government funds college programs.

“The administration is basically, through regulation, changing the fundamental definition of what higher education is and what government will pay for,” said Amy Laitinen, a former Obama-administration official who works on higher-education issues at the liberal-leaning New America Foundation.