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On Wednesday, March 9, 2011, the House Education and Workforce Committee held a hearing entitled “The Budget and Policy Proposals of the U.S. Department of Education” where Secretary of Education Arne Duncan testified on the Administration’s FY 2012 Budget.  In Chairman Kline’s opening statement, the Chairman mentioned the how the House of Representatives had passed an “overwhelmingly bi-partisan” amendment, which would stop gainful employment, and again called on Secretary Duncan to withdraw this regulation.  Mr. Andrews said he shared Chairman Kline’s concerns with the “gainful employment” rule.

While much of the hearing focused on K-12 issues, there were several issues of importance to APSCU members. First, in addition to Chairman Kline’s request for the withdrawal of the “gainful employment” rule, his second question of the hearing asked the Secretary to respond, in writing, to recent revelations of short sellers influencing the gainful employment rulemaking process.  The Secretary did not comment on the issue at the hearing.

Additionally, Democratic members Tierney (MA) and Loebsack (IA) both commented that they have heard from students and community colleges regarding the negative impacts of ending year round Pell grants. While Secretary Duncan agreed that this was unfortunate, he said that it was necessary in order to maintain Pell at $5,550 and by doing so that many low income Americans could attend community colleges for virtually free by maintaining Pell at this level.

Cong. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) raised questions about the State Authorization rules, noting that there was significant ambiguity in what the Department could do under the rules, and asked whether the religious school exemption applied to the entire school or just to religious programs within those schools.  Secretary Duncan responded that the State Authorization rules allowed states to exempt entire religious schools, not just the religious programs within them and went on to note that the Department would be providing additional clarification on what the rule actually requires.

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