“Amounts borrowed today do not indicate what you will be able to repay in five years, ten years or over a working lifetime,” the association's president, Harris Miller, said in a statement.
Others who were hoping for tougher rules were disappointed, as well.
Pauline Abernathy, vice president of the Institute for College Access & Success, said while the proposal is significant and has teeth, programs could continue to profit from federal aid when more than half their students can't afford to pay down the principal on their loans.
“It is not as strong as it should be to protect students and taxpayers from getting ripped off by career education programs that over-promise and under-deliver,” she said.
Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee criticized the proposal, saying the government could in effect “institute price controls on certificate and degree programs at thousands of institutions of higher education.” Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, a Democrat who is holding oversight hearings on for-profit colleges, said at first glance, “the regulation appears to set a low bar.”
The proposed rules were published Monday in the Federal Register and a 45-day public comment period follows. The final rules are scheduled to be announced in November and would take effect next year, although enforcement action that would strip schools of aid eligibility would not begin until the 2012-2013 school year.
