In today’s Wall Street Journal, Steve Gunderson, president of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (the group that would be decimated — or worse — by the Education Department’s proposed rule) has an article arguing that the “gainful employment” regulation would be damaging and is motivated by the leftist animosity toward making a profit in education.

I don’t like the rule either. Not only is it unfair, but more importantly it doesn’t provide any remedy for the problem that gives rise to the angst over student debt repayment. The rule is worse than the proverbial band-aid on a machete wound; it’s more like a band-aid on someone with a brain tumor. Here’s my letter:

Steve Gunderson is right (“Making ‘Profit’ a Dirty Word in Higher Education”) that the Department of Education’s “gainful employment” rule makes no sense. Suppose that it were implemented and as a result many of the for-profit postsecondary schools that offer job training programs had to close because their graduates don’t earn enough to cover their student loan debts. Those students would then go to other schools where the training is no different and find themselves in similar circumstances after graduation, thus putting those schools in jeopardy under the rule. The essence of the problem has nothing to do with the for-profit schools; it has everything to do with the fact that the Obama administration and particularly Obamacare has wrecked the job market for young people looking for full-time jobs. As long as the federal drag on full-time employment remains, we will continue to have a great surplus of young people — with and without college credentials — who can’t get a good start in a career. Federal policy dangles lots of easy money in front of all high school graduates, encouraging them to enroll in college and worry about the costs later. That policy combined with the government’s impediments to a robust labor market inevitably causes the problem so many young people face, whether they went to a for-profit school or non-profit school: too little income and too much debt. George Leef Director of Research John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy Raleigh, NC