Department of Education’s selective regulation hurts our military

OPINION:

Our military is only as strong as the men and women who are willing to serve. And to be sure, our Armed Forces are facing a recruiting crisis. The branches of our military collectively missed their recruiting goals by 41,000 last year, reducing our active-duty force to its lowest level since 1940. A study last year found a majority of Americans would not be willing to serve if called upon today, and most young people have never even given a thought to military service.

Education benefits are one of the best tools the U.S. Armed Forces have to recruit, retain, and develop the military and civilian leaders of tomorrow. A 2021 survey of military personnel and veterans found 53% of them enlisted to earn these education benefits—the highest motivation of any factor, and even more important (62% and 71%, respectively) for women and people of color.

Yet the Biden-Harris Department of Education goes to great lengths to micromanage how veterans and active-duty military members can use their earned education benefits. These men and women are entrusted to make life and death decisions with our sons and daughters who serve, but the Biden-Harris administration doesn’t trust these veteran students to choose the school that best meets their learning needs.

Instead, the Biden-Harris Departments of Education and Veterans Affairs want to pigeonhole veteran students into traditional public and state-run universities — where enrollment has dropped by more than 12% since 2010 — by instead targeting career-education institutions and distance learning programs with these selective regulations. This forces military and veteran students to choose only traditional public and private nonprofit schools, whether or not they’re a good fit for those students.

The 90/10 Rule and Gainful Employment Rule are two examples of such regulatory cherry-picking, applying them only to career, technical, and trade schools. The 90/10 Rule, which expanded under the Biden-Harris Department of Education in 2022 to include GI Bill benefits, requires at least 10% of a school’s revenue come from a source other than federally sourced aid such as Pell Grants or federal student loans. But it also specifically excludes distance learning programs from such calculations, because unless the bureaucrats do so, they can’t punish the nontraditional schools. And these online programs are the fastest growing sector of higher education, growing 900% since 2000, and expected to grow another 20% by 2030.

Likewise, the Gainful Employment Rule requires degree-granting career-education institutions to prove their graduates earn more than their counterparts who didn’t go to college. This similarly penalizes nontraditional schools from offering the exact type of flexible educational veteran students believe will give them the best leg up on careers for nontraditional students, like those who are older, or who have families or other limitations on their time.

And while the rule may be well intentioned, if it is so necessary, why isn’t it applied to all degree granting colleges and universities, even when the Department of Education’s own data shows upward of one-third of private certificate programs and nearly one in five public certificate programs would fail the Gainful Employment Rule? Plenty of brand-name college students graduate with significant debt and job opportunities that don’t meet their expectations, yet these schools are not subjected to the same punitive regulations.

There’s a reason nontraditional schools and distance learning programs have grown in popularity with military and veteran students, who are generally older, have families, and are making a transition to civilian life: They provide flexible schedules, teach skills that are applicable to a career, and frequently have kept tuition low, creating a cost-effective route to a post-secondary degree. And, distance learning enhances student retention rates from 25% to 60% and reduces study time 40 to 60%.

We believe that military and veteran students —not bureaucrats in Washington— are best equipped to make decisions that are right for them, especially when it comes to their education. That’s why the Ensuring Distance Education Act is critical to keeping government bureaucrats out of the business of trying to pick educational winners and losers, and instead letting colleges and universities of every ilk drive innovation, expand learning options, and enhance access to a quality education.

Our fight to stop the Biden-Harris administration’s destructive and biased agenda while empowering America’s military and veteran students to make their own educational choices is front and center. And our commitment is clear: support those who have supported us, and ensure they have the freedom and resources to succeed and build a stronger, more resilient force — both on and off the battlefield.

• Rep. Burgess Owens represents Utah’s Fourth Congressional District in Congress and serves as the Chairman of the Higher Education and Workforce Development Subcommittee. Bob Carey is a retired U.S. Navy captain and Director of National Defense Committee. He served as a veterans and military advisor to two U.S. senators and was in the Senior Executive Service at the Department of Defense.