Starting next year, for-profit schools, including some of the nation’s biggest online colleges–like the University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, and Strayer University–will have to provide graduation rate and job placement figures to new students and applicants, the Department of Education has ordered. That’s a sample of more than a dozen reforms the government will impose on for-profit schools beginning July 1, 2011. Students will now be able to make more informed decisions, the Department says. “These new rules will help ensure that students are getting from schools what they pay for: solid preparation for a good job,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in an Oct. 28 press release.

[Online programs have respect to gain among employers.]

The regulations were announced amid scrutiny of for-profit schools from the Senate Health, Labor and Pensions Committee, a damning report from the Government Accountability Office, and investigations into abuse of taxpayer funded loan money by state attorneys general. In October, for instance, Oregon’s treasurer and attorney general sued Apollo Group, the parent company of the University of Phoenix, claiming that the school was eager to boost profits with little regard for its students. A motion filed in federal court claims that the school “concocted a scheme to fraudulently inflate revenues and boost profitability by exploiting well-intentioned and often lower-income students, including veterans of the U.S. armed forces, who were hoping to improve their qualifications and employment prospects,” adding that “students often withdrew early or failed to complete degree programs.”

The firm dismisses the claims and plans to fight the suit. “Apollo Group takes its disclosure obligations very seriously and intends to defend this lawsuit vigorously,” company spokesman Manny Rivera said in a written statement. “Apollo Group is a leader in enhancing the student experience, expanding student protections and working to help students succeed in completing their degree programs.”

[Learn more about online education.]

Last week, the office of Florida’s attorney general also announced that it launched an investigation into the for-profit sector. These suits come on the heels of recent legal action against for-profit schools in Texas, Ohio, and Wisconsin. “Federal scrutiny has unearthed a whole set of questionable practices that conscientious AGs across the country start wondering ‘what’s happening in my state?’” says Christine Lindstrom, higher education program director at the nonprofit Public Interest Research Group. “It makes absolute sense that they’re looking into these programs.”

Deanne Loonin, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, works regularly with students–including several that enrolled online–at for-profit schools who have amassed seemingly insurmountable debt and has heard first hand of the dubious practices alleged by federal and state regulators. While she can’t mention specifics due to confidentiality agreements, she says it’s common for poorer people with limited or no Internet access at home to be persuaded to sign up for an online programs, hoping to rely on libraries to complete their coursework. Once they realize they can’t fulfill the time requirements because of their limited access or that the material is simply too advanced for them, they complain to the school or try to pull out altogether. She claims they’re typically met with limited feedback–almost all of which is intended to keep them enrolled in online programs as they amass more loan debt. “They’re told, ‘don’t worry about it. We’ll figure things out,’” she says. “It’s hard to beat all of these problems, even for people who recognize there’s a problem.”

[Learn more before you enroll in an online program.]

Though the new Department of Education regulations have been put in place to help prevent just what Loonin describes, a more significant battle looms on the horizon. Regulations, which will be based on data, will judge an institution’s ability to prepare students for jobs comparable to the cost of their education, have yet to be finalized. They will target so-called “workforce programs” which include for-profit schools, community colleges, and some state universities. If schools’ students are unable to meet adequate loan debt, loan repayment, and career earnings thresholds, the institutions could be denied federal funding, which supplies a vast majority of revenue at most for-profit online programs. The rules are intended to weed out schools that don’t prepare students for their working lives, which, in theory, would benefit students and perhaps shut the doors of several institutions not up to par. Given the severity of the regulatory threat, the industry is expected to put up a fight, experts say.

Rivera, of Apollo, refuses to speak for the sector regarding the potential for a lawsuit, but Lindstrom at PIRG believes litigation will be inevitable–possibly on the grounds that the new rules unfairly discriminate against the already much-maligned sector. “We absolutely anticipate that as soon as the final rules come out the Department of Education will be met with a lawsuit,” Lindstrom says. “The sector will sue.”

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Online Universities: Government Cracks Down on For-Profit Schools (U.S. News & World Report)

Online Universities: Government Cracks Down on For-Profit Schools (U.S. News & World Report)

In a report released Monday, a marketing firm working for the Coalition for Educational Success, an advocacy group for several privately held for-profit companies, argues that community colleges engage in “unsavory recruitment practices” and offer students “poorer-than-expected academic quality, course availability, class scheduling, job placement and personal attention.”

The report crystallizes arguments from the for-profit sector that community colleges — perceived as the Obama administration’s preferred set of institutions to offer work force training — are ill-equipped to serve the students they already enroll and would struggle in taking on larger enrollments. The document’s release just ahead of today’s summit is intended to tarnish the event’s luster and the praise for community colleges that will come from President Obama and others, and it emerges amid the for-profit sector’s aggressive lobbying, advertising and rallying against the U.S. Department of Education‘s proposed regulations on “gainful employment” and a Senate panel’s investigation of the sector.

“Community colleges play a vital role in the American economy,” said Jean Norris, managing partner of Norton Norris, the firm that produced the report. “However, they are not the only choice. Community colleges have some systemic issues that really need to be addressed and the singular focus on the problems of the career colleges is a waste of time and money and forgets the institutions that serve a much larger number of students.”

For one part of the report, Norton Norris sent “secret shoppers” to meet with admissions officers at 15 community colleges and found that none would provide graduation rates, even when asked. In the report, these findings are likened to those identified by the Government Accountability Office on undercover visits to for-profit colleges, where investigators were told they didn’t have to repay loans and encouraged to lie on financial aid forms. The firm also surveyed current for-profit college students who had been enrolled at community colleges, asking them to compare their satisfaction levels at the two different kinds of institution. In all but one category — price — the for-profit colleges came out on top.

David S. Baime, senior vice president of government relations and research at the American Association of Community College, characterized the report as “garbage” and said it was yet another attempt by the for-profit sector to fight scrutiny from the Obama administration and those on Capitol Hill. “It probably makes sense as a sort of PR strategy to try to run us down and sort of boost themselves,” he said.

Norris insisted that it was not her aim to attack community colleges, but rather to “highlight issues beyond the career college sector that are the same ones the career college sector is being attacked for.”

At last week’s Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing questioning for-profit colleges’ student outcomes and student debt, Senator Michael B. Enzi (R-Wyo.) accused the committee’s chair, Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), of examining the sector without looking at how it fits into the broader landscape of U.S. colleges and universities. “I agree there is clearly a problem in higher education — now you’ll notice I didn’t limit that comment to for-profit schools,” Enzi said. “It’s na?ve to think these problems are limited to just the for-profit sector. We’ve been looking at this in a vacuum.”

While researchers said that some of the report’s findings could be accurate, the study itself is of questionable value.

“We can’t call this research,” said Sara Goldrick-Rab, an assistant professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “The for-profits are under attack and this report is being paid for by for-profits. We need to be asking many of these questions, but a report like this one isn’t providing meaningful answers.”

In the report’s introduction, Norton Norris concedes a string of flaws with the report. The sample surveyed for the study “was one of convenience and may not represent all student experiences,” the report said. The students given a chance to respond to the survey were ones who withdrew or graduated from a nonprofit college before enrolling at a for-profit, admittedly meaning that “bias may be present” among respondents. The response rate was 10%. And the survey was “custom-designed and thereby not previously proven valid and reliable.”

Thomas R. Bailey, director of the Community College Research Center at Columbia University‘s Teachers College, said he saw the report as “a tactic” for for-profit institutions in their battle against greater regulation. “Certainly from [for-profit colleges'] perspective it would be reasonable to try to put out an argument that says there are many problems with community colleges.”

Nonetheless, Bailey said, some of its findings are true. “Community colleges have low resources, the counselor-to-student ratio is extremely low. It’s not surprising that students are not very well-informed about their options at community colleges. But, again, I don’t think we can look at this as a reliable document.”

For-profit college report takes aim at community colleges

For-profit college report takes aim at community colleges

NEW YORK – President Barack Obama’s call for a longer school day and year for America’s kids echoes a similar call he made a year ago to little effect, illustrating just how deeply entrenched the traditional school calendar is and how little power the federal government has to change it.

Education reformers have long called for U.S. kids to log more time in the classroom so they can catch up with their peers elsewhere in the world, but resistance from leisure-loving teenagers isn’t the only reason there is no mass movement to keep schoolchildren in their seats.

Such a change could cost cash-strapped state governments and local school districts billions of dollars, strip teachers of a time-honored perk of their profession, and irk officials in states that already bridle at federal intrusion into their traditional control over education.

“If you extend the school year for, say, five days, you’re paying for another week of salaries, another week of utilities and another week of fuel for, in South Carolina, 5,700 school buses,” said Jim Foster, a spokesman for the South Carolina Department of Education.

Obama told NBC’s Matt Lauer on the “Today” show Monday that the U.S. school year is too short.

“The idea of a longer school year, I think, makes sense,” he said. He did not specify how long that school year should be, but said U.S. students attend classes, on average, about a month less than children in most other advanced countries.

U.S. schools through high school offer an average of 180 instruction days per year, according to the Education Commission of the States. That compares to an average of 197 days for lower grades and 196 days for upper grades in countries with the best student achievement levels, including Japan, South Korea, Germany and New Zealand.

Many education experts say American kids should spend more time in school.

“There’s a growing awareness that American kids are being shortchanged academically by the short school day and the short school year,” said Pedro Noguera, a professor of education at New York University.

Today’s American kids have a long summer vacation because previous generations needed the summer off to work on family farms.

Now researchers say the tradition causes a “summer learning loss” as kids put aside the books for the summer. The problem hits low-income students especially hard. A Johns Hopkins University study found that disadvantaged kids fall back during the summer break, while better-off kids hold steady or continue to learn.

Charter schools that aim to bring low-income students up to grade level, such as the KIPP academies and the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York City, generally offer a longer school year and a longer school day.

In most cases the charter schools have leeway to set their own schedules, in part because their teachers are not covered by union contracts.

At traditional public schools where teachers and other employees are usually represented by unions, lengthening the school day or the school year would be subject to collective bargaining, and more hours would cost more money.

“It has to be negotiated, and it takes money,” said Janet Bass, a spokeswoman for the American Federation of Teachers. “Right now teachers and all other school staff are compensated based on the number of hours they work.”

Some states embrace the idea. In Massachusetts, the state issues grants to districts with plans to constructively lengthen instructional class time, said Kathy Christie, chief of staff at the Education Commission of the States. Obama’s Education Department already is using competitions among states for curriculum grant money through its “Race to the Top” initiative.

“The federal carrots of additional money would help more states do it or schools do it in states where they don’t have a state grant process,” Christie said.

But the federal budget is hard-up, too. And while many educators and parents believe students would benefit from more quality learning time, the idea is not universally popular.

Texas already forbids school from starting before the fourth Monday of August, a provision designed to save money on utility bills and increase business for tourist destinations and other summer attractions.

“Ultimately the states, not the federal government, should have the final word on this and other public school decisions,” said Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry.

In Kansas, sporadic efforts by local districts to extend the school year at even a few schools have been met by parental resistance, said state education commissioner Diane DeBacker.

“The community was just not ready for kids to be in school all summer long,” DeBacker said. “Kids wanted to go swimming. Their families wanted to go on vacation.”

In some states, the school year already starts well before Labor Day and in others nearly stretches to the Fourth of July.

Parents are similarly divided

Parent Irene Facciolo in Monpelier, Vt., said kids need the summer break and learn while they’re away from school.

“I really feel like they need the time to regenerate,” she said.

But Laura Spencer of Orlando, Fla., says she would rather have her 10-year-old daughter learning than hanging out.

“Summer is a lost opportunity,” said Spencer, who believes having kids out of school for three to four months makes an already flawed education system worse.

___

Associated Press reporters Erica Werner in Washington; Tom Breen in Raleigh, N.C.; Donna Gordon Blankinship in Seattle; April Castro in Austin, Texas; Alan Scher Zagier in Columbia, Mo.; and Lisa Rathke in Montpelier, Vt., contributed to this story.

Calls for longer school years face budget reality (AP)

Calls for longer school years face budget reality (AP)

It’s a trend that is likely to grow as seniors’ ranks swell with baby boomers, who by 2015 will represent some 35% of the U.S. population, looking to either acquire new job skills or simply enjoy new learning experiences. (Baby boomers are people born between 1946 and 1964)

Nearly six decades after graduating from college, Pete Shannon still can’t get enough of lectures and homework assignments.

The 78-year-old Dallas retiree has taken dozens of classes at his local community college since he stopped working as a certified public accountant in 2004. This summer he studied music composition, and in the fall he plans to tackle philosophy and whatever else piques his interest.

Exams can be challenging, but one thing he doesn’t sweat is tuition bills. In one of many such arrangements across the U.S., Dallas County residents age 65 and over get up to six hours’ tuition free at Richland College every semester.

“It’s a marvelous opportunity,” Shannon says, calling the college his “candy store.” “It’s a wonderful place to go. The catalog is rich with all kinds of classes.”

The prospect of having to pay for even moderately priced college classes might sound daunting to a retiree living on fixed income. But numerous discounts, tuition waivers and other deals make it possible.

“There are more opportunities than in the past for senior citizens to take college classes and get help paying for them,” says financial aid expert Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org and Fastweb.com.

Many community colleges and some four-year colleges allow seniors to audit classes for free and significantly reduce tuition for those who take them for credit. The financial arrangements vary widely by school and so do the age requirements — generally 60, 62, or 65 and over.

Twenty-one states and Washington, D.C., offer free tuition for senior citizens at some or all of their public colleges, according to FinAid.org. The student still must buy textbooks and may have to pay fees.

Two relatively new opportunities offer even more help.

The Senior Scholarships program, created last year as part of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, provides $1,000 education awards for people 55 or older who volunteer 350 or more hours a year. The money may be used for the volunteer’s own education or transferred to a child, foster child or grandchild.

And the American Opportunity tax credit can lower taxes for students of any age dollar-for-dollar for the first $2,000 spent on tuition, fees and course materials. The credit also applies to 25% of the second $2,000. Unless extended, the temporary credit expires at year’s end.

More seniors might head back to school if they knew about the deep discounts and freebies — or lived near colleges. As it is, education remains an untapped resource for most.

According to data released in June by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans from age 65 to 74 say they spend 6.77 hours on leisure and sports on a typical weekday, watch 3.58 hours of TV, spend 0.71 hour reading, 0.59 hour socializing and 0.03 hour on education. That’s less than two minutes, compared to 0.46 hour or about 28 minutes for the population as a whole.

Shannon, who got his undergraduate degree in business economics from Rice University in 1953, is happy to stay in school for life. He says he takes college classes to get out of the house, at his wife’s urging, and exercise his brain. The rest of him gets a workout, too, as he often bikes the 4 1/2 miles (6.4 kilometers) to campus.

A perfect 4.0 grade-point average through 114 credit hours shows he’s not taking any mental shortcuts.

“I like writing the papers and doing the work,” he says. “It’s more complete than Googling a subject. And by the time you finish the semester, you’ve learned something.”

Thanks to the tuition deals, he reckons he has spent no more than $1,000 on education expenses since he retired. But he’d dig a little deeper into his retirement savings if he had to.

“Frankly, I’d go to college even if I had to pay up to $1,000 a year for it,” he says. “I’d consider it part of my personal entertainment budget.”

If retirement-age students decide to borrow to pay for college, loans don’t have to be as burdensome as they might expect.

Federal student loans are discharged on the borrower’s death. That means the retiree student’s heirs won’t get shortchanged because of those late-in-life classes in history and Chinese. The senior can also choose the repayment plan with the longest payback period, thus the lowest monthly payment.

When finances aren’t an issue, most any educational experience is still possible in retirement. Anne Carter Harrison-Clark of Williamsburg, Virginia, is thriving as a 71-year-old student at the William & Mary Law School.

Learning more about the law is something she long aspired to do during a career as a lobbyist and public policy lecturer at Georgetown University, among other roles. Now she has both the time and money to do it, thanks to she and her husband Bob selling property near the top of the market six years ago.

Immersed in her third year of law classes, she is thrilled to be studying at the college where her great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Harrison V, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was educated. She doesn’t at all mind being the only white-haired student or getting constantly asked why she’s there.

The short answer to that is she wants to keep the brain cells going with new information and new contacts. And she doesn’t know where this educational “journey” will take her, although she does intend to get her law degree at some point, on her own schedule.

“This whole (college) experience has been like dessert, like double fudge icing on a cake. Just a wonderful experience,” says Harrison-Clark, who already has a Ph.D. in politics. “I highly encourage it.”

Retired? Head back to school with college discounts

Retired? Head back to school with college discounts

WASHINGTON – House Democrats are moving forward on first lady Michelle Obama’s vision for healthier school lunches, propelling legislation that calls for tougher standards governing food in school and more meals for hungry children.

The bill approved by the House Education and Labor Committee Thursday would allow the Agriculture Department to create new standards for all food in schools, including vending machine items. The legislation would spend about $8 billion more over 10 years on nutrition programs.

In a statement, Mrs. Obama said the bill would both combat hunger and help curtail childhood obesity.

House bill would make school lunches healthier (AP)

House bill would make school lunches healthier (AP)

Annie and Ella Glazer, 6-year-old twins at Midtown West Elementary School in Manhattan, will be playing hooky with parental consent on Monday. In a pattern being repeated across New York City, their mother decided that the girls’ last day of school would be on Friday — even though, due to a quirk of the calendar, all students are supposed to report on Monday for a final half day.

“We think it’s ridiculous,” said the girls’ mother, Andy Glazer, who said she told teachers that her daughters would not be coming. “It’s a waste of the teachers’ time and of the students’ time. I just feel bad for the teachers, who will have to sit in those hot classrooms.” Her children, she said, will be playing at Hudson River Park.

The city teachers’ contract states that the last day of school is always two days before the end of June, and this year that lands on Monday. Unfortunately, it’s a day when many families have orientation for summer camp or simply want to get their vacations under way.

Instruction time is not really the issue, because at schools across the city, the three and a half hours of school on Monday will be used for picking up report cards, finding out who next year’s teachers will be and bidding farewell to faculty members and friends. So some parents are taking the view that it is optional, and they will await their children’s report cards in the mail.

But classrooms will not be empty. Joy Benson said she would send her son, Jori, 9, to Midtown West on Monday because she did not want the absence to mar his attendance record, a factor considered by selective middle schools. “It counts, even if it’s a half day,” she said.

And Joshua Mandelbaum, 8, said he was looking forward to his last day, because he wanted to be there for the presentation of a class gift — a signed card with photographs of all the students — to his teacher. “The teacher is so well liked that the last day could be at night on a Sunday and they would come,” his mother, Becky Senior, said.

Parents also said the last day of school was low on their list of worries. The calendar also decrees that the first day of school next fall — scheduled for two days after Labor Day — will be on Wednesday, Sept. 8, even though the first full day of instruction will not be until the following Monday, Sept. 13, after the Jewish High Holy Days.

Donna Coppola, a teacher and union representative at Public School 14 in Staten Island, said that parents, teachers and administrators at her school had agreed to switch the first day for students to Sept. 13, and had submitted a request to city officials to train teachers in a new reading program on Sept. 8. But their request was denied, as were similar applications of at least a dozen other schools across the city, the teachers’ union said. The city said on Friday it was willing to push the first day back to Sept. 13 for all students if the union gave up Brooklyn-Queens Day, a staff development day in June; the union wants the decision to be made on a school-by-school basis.

“I’m not too sure if the children will come” the first day, Ms. Coppola said. “They might.”

Deborah Capone, the parent-teacher association president at P. S. 154 in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, said any calendar woes paled in comparison with the 4 percent cut to her school’s budget, which is being faced by schools citywide.

P. S. 154 is slated to lose two classroom teachers and a special science teacher next year, and parents are trying to raise money to save the music program, which costs about $34,000 a year.

“All of that is really what’s on parents’ minds,” she said. While many of her friends will not send their children to school on Monday, Ms. Capone’s three children, who range from a kindergartner to a third grader, will be there, even though for the past week “they keep coming home and telling me what movies they watched.”

“Honestly, for me, it’s free child care,” she said, “and I can get in one last day at the gym.”

For Some, School’s Out Early for Summer

A study released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center highlights the growing diversity in higher education amid debate over the role of race in college admissions and controversy over Arizona’s new ban on ethnic studies in public schools.

Newly released government figures show that freshman enrollment surged 6% in 2008 to a record 2.6 million, mostly due to rising minority enrollment. That is the highest increase since 1968 during the height of the Vietnam War, when young adults who attended college could avoid the military draft.

Almost three-quarters of the freshman increases in 2008 were minorities, of which the largest share was Hispanics.

The enrollment increases were clustered mostly at community colleges, trade schools, and large public universities, which tend to have more open admissions policies and charge less tuition. Still, the gains in minorities were seen at almost all levels of higher education, with white enrollment dipping to 53% at community colleges and 62% at four-year colleges.

Preliminary government data show freshman college enrollment continued rising in 2009 to fresh highs, but demographic breakdowns were not yet available.

“The nation is moving beyond whether minorities have access to post-secondary education,” said Richard Fry, a senior researcher at Pew who wrote the report. “The question increasingly is not ‘which youth go beyond high school?’ but ‘who goes where?’”

California, the District of Columbia, Arizona, Alabama and Nevada had the largest freshman enrollment increases in 2008, with gains ranging from 11% to 21%. States registering declines included Minnesota, Nebraska, Delaware and Oklahoma, which dropped as much as 5%.

Demographers say much of the college enrollment gains reflect the nation’s rapidly changing demographics, in which 43% of all students in K-12 are now minority. But the recession, too, is adding to the increases as more high school graduates — primarily Hispanics — enroll immediately in college rather than take their chances in the labor force.

Among the findings:

•Freshman enrollment of Hispanics in higher education jumped by 15% in 2008, compared to 8% for blacks, 6% for Asians and 3% for whites.

•The share of 18- to 24-year-olds who earned a high school diploma reached an all-time high of 85%, up from 84% in 2007. Among Asians, the number was 92%, whites 90%, blacks 79% and Hispanics 70%.

•Colleges showing the largest freshmen increases included Fresno City College in California, jumping 448% to 2,998 students; Arizona State University, rising 21% to 8,458; and American Public University System in West Virginia, increasing 332% to 121 students.

The findings add to the burgeoning debate over the role of race in America amid a steady rise in the minority population that is expected to make them the new American majority by mid-century. In Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer last month signed a measure banning ethnic studies courses in public schools if they serve to promote racial solidarity or are designed primarily for students of a particular race.

Several minority groups have praised Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, who as solicitor general authorized the filing of a brief by the Justice Department defending the constitutionality of the University of Texas’ affirmative action program that considers race in undergraduate admissions. The case, still pending, is expected to be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Fry noted that minority enrollment appeared to be concentrated in the “basic tiers” of higher education, such as community colleges and trade schools. It is not clear whether gains occurred in more selective four-year colleges, which often use affirmative action to promote diversity.

In addition, while Hispanics have seen recent gains in college enrollment, they still lag overall. Hispanics make up roughly 12% of full-time undergraduate and graduate students, compared to their 16% representation in the total U.S. population.

“These findings are only half reassuring,” Fry said. “Many Hispanic teens still are not graduating high school, and the high school gains may not be sustained when the teen labor market revives. It also remains to be seen how many of these additional minority freshmen will actually complete degrees.”

Pew, an independent research group, based its findings on 2008 data from the Census Bureau and the Education Department. The figures for “white” refer to those whites who are not of Hispanic ethnicity.

U.S. colleges see highest enrollment jump in 40 years

U.S. colleges see highest enrollment jump in 40 years

The Education Department said Tuesday that it had split off and delayed a decision on the most controversial part of proposed new student-aid regulations — the treatment of for-profit college programs whose graduates do not earn enough to repay their loans.

While a package of proposed new student-aid regulations was released Tuesday, a department official said no decision had been reached about what debt-to-income ratio would make for-profit programs ineligible for federal aid.

“This is about accountability, and protecting students,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan. “We have many areas of agreement where we can move forward. But some key issues around gainful employment are complicated, and we want to get it right so we will be coming back with that shortly.”

In the original draft of the gainful employment rules released this year, the department suggested cutting off federal aid to programs whose graduates could not repay their student loans in 10 years with 8 percent of the income.

Consumer advocates and many education groups say that the rules will protect students and taxpayers alike from expensive programs that eat up billions of dollars of federal money, and leave graduates struggling in dead-end jobs.

But the Career College Association, which represents the for-profit institutions, aggressively lobbied against that proposal, saying it would not solve any problem but would lead to the closing of important job-training programs for needy students.

For-profit colleges get the bulk of their revenues from federal aid, and their students are far more likely to default on their loans than those at nonprofit or public colleges. With for-profit colleges booming, and getting $20 billion in federal aid, the government has been taking a closer look at how that money is used. Last week, Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, announced that he would hold hearings on the issue.

“I am pleased to see the Department of Education releasing proposed regulations around for-profit higher education,” he said on Tuesday. “For-profit colleges must work for students and taxpayers, not just shareholders.”

At a briefing on Tuesday, Deputy Under Secretary Robert Shireman said that the department still intended “to hold programs accountable with some metrics that will come in a proposal later this summer” — but that to avoid delaying the whole regulatory package, it had decided to go ahead with everything but the specific gainful employment measures.

The new regulations, to be published in the Federal Register on Friday, would require for-profit colleges to disclose their programs’ job-placement rates and graduation rates, and provide information that would let the department calculate graduates’ debt load and income.

The new regulations also help protect students from aggressive or misleading recruiting practices and ensure that only eligible students receive aid.

The regulations also tighten the prohibition against paying recruiters by the number of students they enroll — a practice that has sometimes led to boiler-room call centers that pressure those with little chance of academic success to enroll.

While incentive compensation was already illegal, the current rules allowed some exceptions that the department said had been abused. The new rules would eliminate those exceptions.

After a 45-day comment period, the department expects to publish final rules by Nov. 1, to take effect beginning July 2011.

Education Dept. Delays Rules on For-Profit Colleges