Politico Pro: Education Whiteboard: Alexander praises education spending bill

Senate HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, who sits on the Appropriations Committee, applauded the education spending bill approved by the committee today — including its controversial policy riders.

The bill “prevents other unhelpful and burdensome regulations on our nation’s 6,000 colleges and universities,” Alexander said in a statement. He detailed several problems with the Obama administration’s proposed gainful employment rule, which the spending bill would block.

“According to the Department of Education, if this rule were to take effect, it would kick 840,000 students enrolled in 1,800 programs out of their colleges,” Alexander said. The debt-to-earnings ratio in the bill “doesn’t make sense,” he added, and the rule “is not fair because it doesn’t apply to degree programs at public universities like the University of Tennessee, or private, nonprofit colleges. It only impacts degree programs at for-profit colleges, which is only one sector of higher education.”