Dive Brief:

• The U.S. Department of Education has announced the creation of the Student Aid Enforcement Unit as additional muscle to focus on complaints alleging illegal action by higher education institutions, most of which target for-profit institutions.
• The unit will have four separate groups focusing on identifying misconduct or high-risk activity in the higher education sector, offering legal analysis and advice to federal student loan holders, imposing administrative action, and monitoring compliance with reporting requirements about campus crime and security information, according to U.S. News & World Report.
• The president is expected to request $13.6 million to fund the new unit, which will be run by former FTC consumer protection attorney Robert Kaye, and President Barack Obama’s 2017 budget will also include a policy proposal to close the loophole that lets for-profit colleges collect federal tuition assistance from the Department of Defense without it counting toward the 90/10 rule.

Dive Insight:

Anyone who thought the Department of Education without Arne Duncan at its helm might ease off the pressure on for-profit colleges is likely disappointed. The department announced the hire of former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau student loan watchdog Rohit Chopra in January. Chopra was one of the first to compare student loan lending practices to the subprime mortgage crisis that crashed the economy and was an outspoken critic of bad actors in the for-profit college sector throughout his tenure at the CFPB.

Now a new unit will focus largely on the misconduct that has become dangerously synonymous with for-profit colleges, and Obama will continue pushing a close to the loophole in the 90/10 rule, which limits the amount of tuition revenue for-profit colleges can get in federal student aid to 90%. Obama made this same policy proposal in last year’s budget, but Congress failed to make it law.