Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 1 

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

OFFICE OF POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION

INSTITUTIONAL AND PROGRAMMATIC

ELIGIBILITY COMMITTEE

SESSION 2, DAY 5, AFTERNOON

February 18, 2022

On the 18th day of February, 2022, the following 

meeting was held virtually, from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., 

before Jamie Young, Shorthand Reporter in the state of 

New Jersey. 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 2 

1 PROCEEDINGS

2 MR. WAGNER: Welcome back. Hope everyone had a good 

3 lunch. Before I turn it over to Greg, I just wanted to say I 

4 wanted to thank everyone for following the recommendations 

5 this morning and having very productive discussions and 

6 dialog. I do want to mention that Jamie is back for 

7 accrediting agencies, and David Peterson will be at the table 

8 representing financial aid administrators. So, I will turn it 

9 back over to Greg to resume 90/10.

10 MR. MARTIN: Thank you, Kevin. And welcome back, 

11 everybody. Hope you had a nice, nice lunch. And the wind here 

12 on the East Coast has died down considerably, which is very 

13 nice because I was worried about losing power, so that 

14 probably won't happen. So, no excuse to get out of this for 

15 the rest of day. So, we're moving on to, we're still in 668.28 

16 A. But we are moving past, we don't have anything in three, 

17 that's a change, so we're moving over to four, application of 

18 funds. So, I'll wait for, I don't know whether it's Vanessa or 

19 Renee at this point to pull it up, but Renee I believe it's 

20 Renee, so thank you, Renee. And we are at 4 the application of 

21 funds. And here you'll see that we have some edits to clarify 

22 the presumption that funds to students must be included up 

23 front to the cost of tuition and cash payments made to the 

24 institution. And so, we'll read through that first. Excuse me. 

25 "The institution must presume that any federal funds it 

26 disperses or delivers to a student or determines was provided 

27 to a student by another federal source will be used to pay 

28 this student's tuition fees or institutional charges up to the 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 3 

1 amount of those federal funds, if a student makes a payment to 

2 the institution, except to the extent that the student's 

3 tuition fees or other charges are satisfied by" and then we'll 

4 go through those in a moment, those are the funds received

5 first and then going down to romanette 1A. The changes here 

6 clarify that were the institutions able to identify federal 

7 funds used to repay a student's tuition and fees, they must 

8 include those in in this section. So again, we say, except to 

9 the extent that the student's tuition fees or other charges 

10 are satisfied by grant funds provided by non-federal public 

11 agencies provided those grant funds do not include federal or 

12 institutional funds, unless the federal portion of those grant 

13 funds can be determined and the portion of federal funds must 

14 be included as federal funds under this section. If the 

15 federal funds cannot be determined, no amount of the grant 

16 funds may be included under this section. And then, of course, 

17 the other sources of funds received first are private sources 

18 unrelated to the institution, its owners, or affiliates. And 

19 funds received under a contractual agreement arrangement with 

20 the institution for the purpose of providing federal job 

21 training to low-income individuals or funds provided by a 

22 student or a savings plan established on behalf of the student 

23 in accordance with the that rather that qualifies for special 

24 tax treatment under the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, or 

25 institutional scholarships that meet the requirements in 

26 paragraph A five romanette four of this section. So, I'll stop 

27 there, open it up to comments.

28 MR. WAGNER: Let's see. Amanda, I see your hand up.

29 MS. AMANDA MARTINEZ: Hi, was my name called?
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 4 

1 MR. WAGNER: Yes, yes, Amanda.

2 MS. AMANDA MARTINEZ: Sorry, I just had a quick 

3 process question. I mean, it is related to 90/10 in our 

4 [audio] but I would just like to propose that we prioritize in 

5 the restructuring or of the agenda for next week that we 

6 prioritize putting 90/10 and gainful employment at the first 

7 two topics that we discuss next week. Other than that, I 

8 support this section of the application of funds.

9 MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Amanda, for that, we'll 

10 take that under consideration. Thank you.

11 MR. WAGNER: Amanda. Brad, you're up.

12 MR. ADAMS: I second Amanda's choice, I made a 

13 similar proposal for this week. So, can I we did propose some 

14 language and we had some discussion on three Greg that I know 

15 there were no changes made by Department, so maybe that just 

16 means you're not interested in my proposals, but can I just 

17 ask a question or two on three romanette three going into 

18 four?

19 MR. MARTIN: You want to go back to three romanette 

20 three?

21 MR. ADAMS: Yes. If that's okay. I did submit several 

22 changes to that section that I'm sure are not included.

23 MR. MARTIN: So, let me give me a second here. Three 

24 romanette three funds paid by the student?

25 MR. ADAMS: Yeah, and it's really A through E. Are 

26 you good?
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 5 

1 MR. MARTIN: Yeah, I'm fine. Go ahead. Sorry.

2 MR. ADAMS: I am waiting for you to3 MR. MARTIN: Oh, no, I'm there I was, I should have 

4 announced that I was there I I'm there.

5 MR. ADAMS: So here there's a couple of things and 

6 I'll just describe what occurs here that looks like, by the 

7 way, this is written that are no longer allowed for the 10. 

8 I'll give you an example of like our nursing [audio] part of 

9 their program must get BLS certifications. That includes CPR 

10 and whatever else is in the BLS certification, right? And we 

11 do offer at the same time we're teaching those students that 

12 BLS course, the opportunity for others in the in Knoxville or 

13 really any location to come in and get recertified because an 

14 annual certification requirement to be a licensed nurse in 

15 Tennessee. So, I just want to confirm that you are saying 

16 that's no longer allowed from a 10 perspective that we can't 

17 if they come in and pay us 50 bucks to get trained and get 

18 their annual BLS certification, that's no longer allowed? If 

19 I'm reading that correctly.

20 MR. MARTIN: Well, I'm trying to think put it into 

21 perspective for exactly what you're asking with respect to- so 

22 what type of program is this again? [Interposing].

23 MR. ADAMS: [Inaudible] within one of our existing 

24 courses, right, our students are taking it so I'm not asking 

25 about the students. That's clear, that's okay. It is just part 

26 of their just general tuition, anyways, my question is at the 

27 same time, we're offering that course to the public and for 

28 those people they come in and pay us 50 bucks to get their 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 6 

1 annual certifications so they don't have to go somewhere else 

2 to get it. And I'm just clarifying that the intent of the 

3 Department is if you're not a student and you attend a 

4 certification that's being taught to students by our faculty, 

5 you're saying that it's no longer eligible? That's a change 

6 from what it's used to.

7 MR. MARTIN: Yes well, you're talking about in three 

8 where it says funds paid by a student on or behalf on or on 

9 behalf of a student by a party related to the institution or 

10 its owners or affiliates for undergraduate training program 

11 that is not eligible under 668.8 and does not include any 

12 courses or coursework offered in an eligible institution. So, 

13 if it were if it did include this course that course, it 

14 wouldn't be allowed. That's correct.

15 MR. ADAMS: And I obviously proposed that to be 

16 changed, I have before. Now, the other piece the same example, 

17 but at the approved location, so we do that same certification 

18 at a hospital. So, on behalf of Covenant Hospital here in 

19 Knoxville, we'll send a faculty member for a small fee to 

20 teach their nurses on their location a BL- get them BLS 

21 certified, right. So that also used to be okay before 90/10 

22 from what I remember, and now that's no longer allowed as 

23 well.

24 MR. MARTIN: That's correct. You're talking about in 

25 A B provided by the institution at one of its approved 

26 locations, the institution may not count revenue from a non27 eligible education or training program where it merely 

28 provides the facilities.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 7 

1 MR. ADAMS: And can the Department just explain why 

2 they're making that change for me?

3 MR. MARTIN: Yeah, well, we have made this change 

4 because of our position that this must be an education, an 

5 actual program offered by an actual program offered by the 

6 institution, a non-eligible program offered by the institution 

7 that is separate from its eligible, its eligible programs and 

8 that the institution offers. It's not just providing a 

9 location for acting as a proctor for or overseeing a course of 

10 self-study, that it be an actual an actual course of study.

11 MR. ADAMS: I just would like to say that that's 

12 frustrating because that's what we do is we train people and 

13 educate people and providing this service to nurses is now 

14 being excluded. I'm worried that now where are they going to 

15 go get it, right? So, I mean, I guess we could still do it and 

16 just not run it through the 10 but17 MR. MARTIN: That's correct. I want to point out that 

18 we're not precluding, we're not precluding you from 

19 [inaudible].

20 MR. ADAMS: Correct, Greg. Just no longer is, I guess 

21 incentivization is gone other than the fact it's the right 

22 thing to do for the community. Well, I'll put in my comments 

23 proposing to change that back. But so next question on D, and 

24 I guess it was D and E. Just everything that was struck from 

25 old C down through E. You know, I'd like to see the Department 

26 add those provisions back in. So, if an institution is 

27 providing training on the state license, it's kind of going 

28 along what I just said, but. I'm just struggling. Same thing 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 8 

1 with accounting in class, I mean, we have a Becker Accounting 

2 class as part of our Master of Accounting program. And folks 

3 that want to be trained on how to pass that test are no longer 

4 able to do that. And that's the state licensing required, to 

5 practice as a CPA you must be licensed in your state. And so, 

6 you're now saying that we can't include that as part of the 

7 10. I mean, I guess I'm just struggling with why the 

8 Department thinks that an instruction to these people that 

9 need this stuff should not benefit the institution from a 

10 90/10 perspective, it's troubling.

11 MR. MARTIN: I don't know what else I can say more 

12 than whatever they have that we feel that it should be, this 

13 should be limited to actual training programs that the that 

14 the institution provides. Oh, I don't know. Steve, do you want 

15 to add anything to that?

16 MR. FINLEY: Not really, I think. I think Brad's 

17 concerns have been expressed and we can take it back for 

18 further discussion.

19 MR. ADAMS: I'll let I'll let Johnson go. Thank you.

20 MR. WAGNER: [Audio] Johnson, you're next.

21 MR. TYLER: I just want to point out for Brad that I 

22 remember taking the bar prep course, you got to pay that out 

23 of your own pocket. There's no Title IV funding for that, and 

24 it's- there are preparation courses people take to pass 

25 licensing that they got to pay [inaudible].

26 MR. MARTIN: I want to clarify here these are these 

27 are what we're talking about here are non-eligible courses. 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 9 

1 So, these would be these are these would be these would be 

2 programs where the institution offers them but not Title IV, 

3 they're not Title IV eligible programs.

4 MR. ADAMS: Right and Johnson, your example is 

5 perfect, I don't I don't have a Master's in Law Degree here. 

6 So, I don't, I don't want to speak for that. But if we did and 

7 we had that preposition course available to students, what 

8 we're saying is anyone else that wanted to take that through 

9 our institution and paid us cash, it's nonfederal or Title IV 

10 eligible, we can't count that anymore. That was the point. So, 

11 thoughts on that being counted if they pay us cash, Johnson?

12 MR. TYLER: My point, though, Brad, I'm sorry, I'm 

13 not following the whole thing, but my point is there are whole 

14 industries that do this that are not receiving any Title IV 

15 funding whatsoever. I mean, the bar prep courses are just 

16 businesses that are come pay cash on your own. So, you know, 

17 they don't mix and match.

18 MR. ADAMS: They can, we do, we have a CPA prep 

19 course that's part of our master’s program, so you can do 

20 that. It's an eligible course. Okay, well, I will resubmit my 

21 comments, I will agree to disagree on excluding them from the 

22 10.

23 MR. MARTIN: Thank you.

24 MR. ADAMS: On four, if we're good? Anyone else have 

25 anything on three?

26 MR. WAGNER: Before you start, just quick, I just 

27 want to mention Yael is stepping in for the state AGs.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 10

1 MR. MARTIN: I do want to offer since Brad brought it 

2 up, raise three, I do want to make certain that nobody else 

3 has any comments relevant to that before we move on.

4 MR. WAGNER: Okay, so we're back onto four? 

5 MR. MARTIN: Yes.

6 MR. WAGNER: Okay. Any comments on four? Brad.

7 MR. ADAMS: Yes, so this this goes back to our 

8 earlier discussion on how we as the institution must be able 

9 to calculate the portion of federal funds separate from the 

10 portion of the other grant funds in romanette one. So, I know 

11 we had a lengthy debate about it this morning in section one 

12 because it also was referenced there. So again, I think that 

13 last sentence that's been added is also what's the most 

14 troubling part, really. I mean, the whole thing is troubling 

15 having to track it, but then you say if you can't determine 

16 it, it can't be included. So that that last sentence, in 

17 addition to everything we talked about this morning, is you've 

18 got to track the exact percentage between federal and state. 

19 You're now saying, if you can't do it, you can't count it at 

20 all. Am I reading that correctly?

21 MR. MARTIN: Yes, that is a correct reading.

22 MR. ADAMS: So, in a, so I just want the committee to 

23 realize that all the debate we talked about is how difficult 

24 it would be to separate those two. Now we're saying if you 

25 can't do it, which means they admit [ph] that it's likely that 

26 that can happen, you just can't count it whatsoever, and it's 

27 coming from the State. I just, sorry, that's, you're now 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 11

1 telling states that their state grants aren't eligible for 

2 institutions if they can't differentiate the difference 

3 between the [inaudible] is what you're saying here.

4 MR. MARTIN: Well, as I said before, we will take it 

5 back, I think we can do some, investigate how readily 

6 available the breakdown between federal and state monies are 

7 and you know, as I said, we'll, we'll consider we'll consider 

8 your suggestions.

9 MR. WAGNER: Go ahead, Steve.

10 MR. FINLEY: Yeah. I just wanted to ask a question as 

11 a follow-up to some of the comments that were made earlier, 

12 which is, and it was addressing Brad's comment about the many 

13 grant programs that they might have to deal with. Is this one 

14 of these cases where there might be five large grant programs 

15 and two hundred small ones? Or you know can you kind of 

16 describe what the comp is, you know how the field shakes out 

17 there when you're looking at these programs?

18 MR. ADAMS: Sorry, Steve, was that a question to me?

19 MR. FINLEY: A question to everyone, but you would at 

20 least raise the issue that there were lots of them and it 

21 sounded like a lot of those might have been very small and 

22 posed a lot of administrative burden for the size of them.

23 MR. ADAMS: Well, I yes, and there are a lot of them 

24 and they are administratively burdensome. But it's important 

25 to me if the rule says that, you know, we were trying to 

26 differentiate between federal and state and to have state 

27 money get excluded from the calculation is where I'm having 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 12

1 issue with it. And yes, but you, to answer your question is 

2 there are some larger programs, but there are a whole lot of 

3 programs across the country. And you know, I'm limited to my 

4 six states that I've got locations in, so I don't want to 

5 speak for all 50 states. So let me let me ask, Dave raised his 

6 hand, I see, and he probably has audit experience in a lot 

7 more states than I do. So let me defer to him.

8 MR. MCCLINTOCK: Yeah, I would just say that our 

9 experience auditing 90/10, the difficulty of this is going to 

10 be 90/10 gets calculated on a student-by-student basis, so you 

11 must look at each student and determine how the dollar amount 

12 of institutional charges, so we talked about the nuance of 

13 what gets included in that earlier, and then apply the funds 

14 by a set priority against them. So, you know, and the way that 

15 schools have this information is based on what gets posted to 

16 a student's ledger card. And so, you have the types and you 

17 know how to apply it. Well, now we're saying that some of 

18 those amounts posted, you must split up into two different 

19 amounts. I don't know when you're going to find out when those 

20 amounts get included. I don't know how often it changes. 

21 Again, when I was part of SEOG, it was, they were de minimis 

22 about, so it's almost going to make it impossible to track 

23 90/10 and only because you don't look at, okay, how much money 

24 do we get from the state grant program? And at that level, 

25 subtract out what the federal portion is. You must look at it 

26 for each individual student, and that's what's going to make 

27 it very difficult to calculate and I would say difficult for 

28 us to audit.

29 MR. WAGNER: Thank you, Dave. Okay, David, you're up.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 13

1 MR. SOCOLOW: Yeah, I will just renew my point that 

2 at least as it relates to a grant from the state that might 

3 have co-mingled federal funds with other state funds, you know 

4 it's the word unless the federal portion of those grant funds 

5 can be determined. I think you can shift some of that burden 

6 to the states. In every case that I know of, it will be very 

7 easy to simply say a percentage. I mean, you've just given the 

8 example on the federal funding where it's 75/25 on campus9 based programs like work study and what else ever have you 

10 that's 25/75. You just apply 75. I mean, it's a simple 

11 mathematical number that you can get from the state 

12 government, and that would be the case in all 50 states 

13 because as it relates to federal funds, cost accounting to the 

14 feds about when you co-mingle your funds with theirs is done 

15 in a uniform way.

16 MR. WAGNER: Thank you, David. Brad, is your hand 

17 still up? Yeah? 

18 MR. ADAMS: Yeah, I was wanting to confirm in four 

19 romanette two that that, the whole segment is just specific to 

20 WIA, I mean, because WIA is the low-income job training and I 

21 just want, should we just state what it is or?

22 MR. MARTIN: It's generally WIA. What’s provided 

23 under contractual arrangement with I, the wording in the 

24 regulation allows for it to be different. I mean, at one time, 

25 I think if we go back to the dark ages, WIA was JTPA if you're 

26 old enough to remember that. Unfortunately, I am. So, I think 

27 that could change. Probably won't. But it's built in there so 

28 that it would be any such program. But yes, I think you're 

29 correct in saying that it's mostly with. And someone could 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 14

1 correct me if I'm if they feel I'm in error there, if there 

2 are other things that I should be aware of.

3 MR. ADAMS: I mean, that's the only one I'm aware of. 

4 So, I was just going to ask if we should just list it, but 

5 maybe there's more. I think Dave just said there might be 

6 more.

7 MR. MARTIN: And you know, you know, we're writing 

8 the regulation going forward. You never know when you're going 

9 to have another shot at regulation. So it needs to be, I don't 

10 think we want to say, you know, if rather than just say, you 

11 know, we are a successor or programs or whatever, it's better 

12 just to say just to list the type of arrangement that it is 

13 and for that reason, I would I would my feelings that the 

14 regulation works best to state it, but I can take that back if 

15 you think we should say something like such as WIA or 

16 something like that.

17 MR. ADAMS: I think so, but I'll defer to David.

18 MR. SOCOLOW: Yeah, I would strongly disagree, Brad, 

19 there are several other programs, including the federal SNAP 

20 E&T program that operate the same way, contracts from state 

21 agencies to the with federal money to the local job training 

22 providers to do contracts for low-income individuals to get 

23 job training. So, I think this is the right generic. It 

24 certainly covers WIOA and SNAP E&T and stuff that people might 

25 be doing with their local TANF federal block grant.

26 MR. MARTIN: Thanks, David.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 15

1 MR. WAGNER: Thank you, David. I don't see any hands, 

2 Greg. Do you to take a temperature check on this? Do you want 

3 to keep going?

4 MR. MARTIN: Yes, we could take a temperature check 

5 on this, so we'd be taking a temperature check on four.

6 MR. WAGNER: Okay. Just a reminder, if everyone could 

7 vote with your thumbs and so we can see them, hold them up, 

8 please. I see one thumb down. Thank you. Back to you, Greg.

9 MR. MARTIN: Thanks, Kevin. So, we are moving on from 

10 four. There are no, we made no changes in five over what you 

11 had last time, and so we are moving on to, I believe, six, 

12 funds excluded from revenues, if I'm not mistaken, just make 

13 sure I'm correct here. Yes, we are moving on to six 

14 specifically. So, we're in romanette seven. So, our addition 

15 here further specifies that third party loans cannot be 

16 included in the 10 side of revenue. We have similar 

17 suggestions. We had similar suggestions from a negotiator but 

18 have provided our own suggestions here for language. So, these 

19 are going back to make sure we're all aware of what we're 

20 talking about here. These are these are all funds excluded 

21 from revenue. So, if you go back to the stem of six for the 

22 fiscal year, the institution does not include [inaudible] 

23 things that we're all familiar with, the amount of works that 

24 it came up previously. So just to clarify that the amount of 

25 work study wages paid directly to the students are not 

26 included. However, if the institution credits a student's 

27 account with work study, which it can do with the permission 

28 of a student, that doesn't really happen very often, but, FWS 

29 is excluded. The amount of funds received by the institution 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 16

1 from a state under a LEAP, SLEEP, or GAP [ph] programs the 

2 amount of institutional funds that are used to match Title IV 

3 HEA program funds as was talked about earlier, the amount of 

4 Title IV funds refunded to students under 668.22 [inaudible] 

5 charge for books, supplies or equipment, unless the 

6 institution includes those that amount as tuition fees or 

7 other institutional charges, which is, you know, goes back to 

8 the discussion we had earlier about making revisions to 

9 clarify institutional charges instead of using the words books 

10 and books and supplies. Any amount from the proceeds of the 

11 factory and sale of accounts receivable or institutional 

12 loans, regardless of whether the loans were sold with or 

13 without recourse. That was a change we had last time we met in 

14 January. And then this is the updated one again. Any funds, 

15 including loans provided by a third party related to the 

16 institution owners or affiliates, to a student in any form. 

17 So, I'll stop there and open it up for discussion.

18 MR. WAGNER: Thank you, Greg. Let's see. I see Yael,

19 MS. SHAVIT: Thanks, and Greg, I don't know if the 

20 language you just read was maybe an attempt to get at this, 

21 but Adam had proposed language in section five that I know we 

22 didn't go through now because you didn't make changes there to 

23 make very clear the role that ISAs play and the fact that any 

24 funds provided to an institution from an ISA provider or, I 

25 should say, any other sort of fintechy alternative, the kind 

26 of the traditional loan product. Of course, ISAs are loans, 

27 can't be included by institutions to get to the 10, and I 

28 think it's you know critical that the Department do this 

29 explicitly. My concern, you know, there was a loophole in 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 17

1 90/10, which is the reason that 90/10 needed to be revisited. 

2 I am worried that a formulation of 90/10 now that doesn't make 

3 very, very clear that schools can't pad their calculations by 

4 relying on ISAs or similar products will result in students 

5 being pushed into potentially predatory but certainly, you 

6 know, frequently problematic financial products, and I really 

7 can't state this enough. So, I saw that the Department chose 

8 not to go with the suggestion that Adam made previously. But I 

9 caution the Department not doing something quite explicit 

10 about this in this regulation could really be opening a very 

11 problematic [inaudible].

12 MR. MARTIN: Yeah. In response to that, I want to say 

13 that we have not yet decided on that. We're still considering 

14 that language. We are aware of the of the issues posed by 

15 income share arrangements, and we are we are looking at that. 

16 We weren't ready to put to address that in these in this 

17 iteration here, we probably will. I have many more to say 

18 about that in the third, in the third round, but we certainly 

19 are aware of your concerns. I don't want to; I don't want to 

20 seem dismissive of that. And I share the concern that those 

21 types of arrangements could be used as an alternative to 

22 loans, you know, to potentially circumvent some of the 

23 ramifications of 90/10, so we certainly are aware of that.

24 MS. SHAVIT: Thank you, I appreciate that.

25 MR. WAGNER: Yael. Brad, you're up.

26 MR. ADAMS: Greg, I know we talked about this briefly 

27 in romanette six in week one. And you know, I proposed taking 

28 the whole thing out. I I'm okay with the language, basically 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 18

1 saying that they are or institutional loans that are sold with 

2 recourse back to the school, leaving that as a as something 

3 that's exempt from the cash being included on the 10. I'm good 

4 there. I do completely still disagree, though. If you're 

5 selling a loan or an account receivable without recourse, 

6 that's a bona fide transaction that someone is paying a fair 

7 market value for that loan and you're receiving cash for that 

8 loan and we're in a cash accrual basis here. I mean, not 

9 accrual, we're on a cash basis of accounting. You're not on 

10 accrual basis. So, remember when you disperse a loan, if we 

11 disperse a thousand-dollar loan, we don't get a thousand 

12 dollars towards the 10, right? It's only what they pay. And in 

13 a loan, that's sold in the same year that then disperse to the 

14 student, the revenue is already there. So, you're getting hit 

15 on the revenue side. More likely in my instances, they would 

16 have probably received some sort of other aid because we don't 

17 do 100 percent of tuition and an institution [inaudible] close 

18 to that. So more than likely, they already received 80, 90 

19 percent of their tuition costs with federal aid. So, you're 

20 counting that towards the 90 and what you're telling me here 

21 that if you sell a loan or AR, you can't count that towards 

22 the 10. Again, I'm not saying sold with recourse back to 

23 school. That's that is not really selling anything, that's 

24 just really pledging or pledging your asset, I'm saying. But 

25 if you sell it without recourse, you've got to count that as 

26 you've counted the federal aid tied to that tuition already 

27 and I submitted that comment and I'll submit it again, and I'd 

28 love the Department to talk about why a loan sold without any 

29 recourse back to the school is not allowed from a cash 

30 perspective here.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 19

1 MR. MARTIN: Our position with this is I think, as I 

2 stated the last time, we were here in January is that the 

3 principal of 90/10 why it was enacted was to with the 

4 understanding that that a program that a program should be of 

5 value enough that students would be willing to put something 

6 out for it other than federal money, that to be willing to put 

7 some amount of their own resources. Some students would have 

8 would be willing to pay, you know, other through other means 

9 to the institution and that that would be actual payments to 

10 the institution. So, with these sales of receivables and sales 

11 of institutional loans that we don't see this as and as in the 

12 sale of a receivable or institutional loan as an indication 

13 that this was anything that was paid for where the students 

14 are willing to pay for. In fact, in large, in many cases they 

15 were uncollectible, which is why they were not, not in every 

16 case, but they can, therefore they're being they're being sold 

17 generally, generally at a discount. So, it does not represent 

18 money that was paid towards tuition and fees at the 

19 institution and therefore should not be allowable as part of 

20 the 10 as part of the 10 percent.

21 MR. ADAMS: I'll let Steve speak, he had his hand up, 

22 and I'll comment.

23 MR. WAGNER: Yeah, same thing. Go ahead. Do you have 

24 anything to say, Steve?

25 MR. FINLEY: Yeah, I apologize if this just sounds 

26 like exactly what Greg said. I think he responded adequately. 

27 You know, the person buying the accounts receivable is not 

28 paying the institution for the education that they provided. 

29 They're making a business decision that if they pay 60 cents 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 20

1 on the dollar or 80 cents on the dollar, or 10 cents on the 

2 dollar that they can recoup more than that as a business 

3 investment, right? When the students borrowing the money from 

4 the school and making payments on that loan, the student is 

5 purchasing the education from the institution, and that seems 

6 to be a meaningful distinction between those two transactions. 

7 MR. ADAMS: So here are my overall two concerns by 

8 doing this, Mr. Finley, it is one we're now encouraging, 

9 encouraging institutions to essentially be servicing 

10 companies, right? That's not what we do well at. And so now 

11 we're servicing these loans for a longer period. The other 

12 portion is now students that may not have wanted to pay cash, 

13 they may be now encouraged to say come up with $500 instead of 

14 an institutional loan because of 90/10, if you only have $500 

15 left on your tuition to go, you may have qualified for an 

16 institutional loan to cover that. But because of this, we're 

17 going to require you to pay cash. And now because of this, 

18 they won't be able to go to that nursing school because they 

19 can't come up with that $500 cash payment, and we're not going 

20 to give them an institutional loan because of this. So, you're 

21 encouraging students to turn away, you're encouraging 

22 institutions to turn away students that may want to attend for 

23 a small little gap because you're excluding that and I’m 

24 struggling with that.

25 MR. MARTIN: I would point out that, yes, I think you 

26 do have your point about the fact that if you make the loan, 

27 you will have to retain it in service it as opposed to selling 

28 it. But all those things are institutional decisions. I mean, 

29 if you choose not to extend credit to the student because of 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 21

1 this preclusion, then that I think is on the institution. 

2 We're not saying that you can that you cannot have an 

3 outstanding receivable or that you can't make an institutional 

4 loan to the student. And we're not saying you can't and we're 

5 not saying you can't sell them either. We're simply saying 

6 that it can’t count as revenue for 90/10 purposes.

7 MR. ADAMS: I will just submit my comment in the 

8 chat. I mean, my changes to the language in the chat, but I 

9 still disagree.

10 MR. WAGNER: Thank you, Brad. Jaylon.

11 MR. HERBIN: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, we would 

12 like to see annual repayments of institutional loans move into 

13 this section. We have submitted a memo addressing our 

14 reasoning here. This addresses the issue of transcript 

15 withholding, which is discussed earlier because 98 percent of 

16 institutions say that they, they use that practice to collect 

17 their receivables. I can also put this source in the chat as 

18 well, but I also want to go back to what Brad just stated to 

19 the point of the lending. I also would like to see, excuse me, 

20 not Brad, David, in the chat, will also like to see the 

21 language changed from loans to also include the word credit 

22 because ISAs says if you look at it, they are not essentially 

23 a loan, it's a credit or an advance investment to the student, 

24 which in return they must repay back to the institution. And I 

25 think if we can include that in there, that would be helpful 

26 in this argument as well.

27 MR. MARTIN: Thank you. Again, we have heard the 

28 concerns expressed about ISAs, and we are looking at it just, 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 22

1 took us a little more time than we didn't have enough time to 

2 respond to it fully at this meeting, but we'll have something 

3 more to say about that in March.

4 MR. WAGNER: Thank you, Jaylon. Thanks, Greg. Oh, go 

5 ahead. You have a follow-up?

6 MR. HERBIN: We'll be happy to provide some language 

7 on ISAs as well. We're working on some items that would 

8 address that as well.

9 MR. MARTIN: Sure, feel free to provide that to us.

10 MR. WAGNER: Okay, I'll turn it back to you, Greg, so 

11 you can continue with six.

12 MR. MARTIN: As we're moving on to so I believe that 

13 is everything. Make certain here, that was everything for, 

14 that was everything for six, right? I think we got to the 

15 bottom of six. That was everything that we had that we had in 

16 six and we would be moving. So let me just stop there and 

17 we'll take a take a temperature check before we move on to C 

18 sanctions, which is the last thing we must consider on this 

19 paper for today.

20 MR. WAGNER: Real quick, Greg. Sorry to cut you off. 

21 Jaylon, before we go to that temperature check, do you have a 

22 comment? 

23 MR. HERBIN: Just quick. Greg, I would like to also 

24 see if we can include institutional loans into section six as 

25 well.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 23

1 MR. MARTIN: So, I just want to be clear what you're 

2 what you're asking here, so there would be so any 

3 institutional loans would be excluded, excluded from funds 

4 would be funds excluded from would be excluded from revenue 

5 rather? Correct? Irrespective of whether they were sold or 

6 whether it will service [ph].

7 MR. HERBIN: That's correct. 

8 MR. MARTIN: Okay, we'll take that suggestion.

9 MR. WAGNER: Okay, Greg, so we're taking I just want 

10 to make sure I understand what we're taking. How far along in 

11 six we're taking the temperature check for?

12 MR. MARTIN: So, we are taking the temperature check 

13 for, this is the entirety of this is the entirety of six, 

14 right?

15 MR. ADAMS: May I respond to Jaylon's comment? 

16 MR. MARTIN: Of course.

17 MR. ADAMS: Thank you. You know, if the Department 

18 does that, I really think you're going to find that a lot of 

19 students that have small gaps in funding won't be able to go 

20 to school if you exclude institutional. I wish Bank of America 

21 would lend everybody a loan. I wish any bank would loan. I 

22 don't want to issue loans to students, but sometimes when 

23 there's a small amount of money left over and students can't 

24 pay cash for that money, the institution alone is the option. 

25 So, I don't know what else to say about it, but if we could 

26 get more banks to lend to students, I'm all for that.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 24

1 MR. WAGNER: Thanks for your comment. Greg, are you 

2 ready to take the temperature check for six?

3 MR. MARTIN: Sure.

4 MR. WAGNER: Alright.

5 MR. MARTIN: And I do want to point out, though, just 

6 as a point of information with respect to institutional loans 

7 as they as they stand and as it continues, forget about the 

8 sale of them. But we do currently only permit institutions to 

9 use the amount that has been paid. So that already is, so 

10 currently it only is what is what is repaid to the 

11 institution. And in any instance where an institution is 

12 required to pay recourse, they must factor that in too, to 

13 90/10, the recourse that they must pay so we do have we do 

14 have controls for institutional loans. I didn't want anybody 

15 to walk away thinking that an institution can simply just make 

16 a loan to the student and book the entirety of that loan as 

17 revenue. That's not that's not possible under the current 

18 rules. I don't know if anybody wants to speak to that. Dave, 

19 did you, Dave McClintock, did you want to say anything else 

20 about that or?

21 MR. MCCLINTOCK: I [audio] agree that it's all tied 

22 to the [audio] payments and so, you could have a five-year 

23 institutional loan over those five years as the student makes 

24 payments in those future year future years is when the cash 

25 counts toward the 10, not you make a loan and the school just 

26 books that full amount to the 10.

27 MR. MARTIN: Okay, that's all I wanted to say. And we 

28 could take we can take a temperature check on six.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 25

1 MR. WAGNER: Okay. 

2 MR. MARTIN: That would be A6.

3 MR. WAGNER: A6, we still have B through C, correct? 

4 MR. MARTIN: Yes, [inaudible]

5 MR. WAGNER: I just want to be sure so I understood 

6 where we were. Okay, if you could do the temperature check by 

7 voting with your thumbs and hold them high so we can all see 

8 them, I'd appreciate it. Okay. I see two thumbs down. Alright, 

9 great, thank you. Oh, three thumbs down, I'm sorry. Alright. 

10 Thank you for that, I'll turn it back to you, Greg.

11 MR. MARTIN: Thank you. So, we're moving on to C, 

12 sanctions so, Renee will be pulling that up, and he has. So, 

13 there we are at sanctions and this talks about the basically 

14 the consequences for failure to meet 90/10. And you see there, 

15 if an institution does not meet, derive at least 10 percent of 

16 its revenue from sources other than federal funds, it talks 

17 about the loss of eligibility there in one and the becoming 

18 provisionally certified if it fails for any fiscal year. And 

19 then we move down to three and four. So here in three, we have 

20 an addition that creates a disclosure requirement for the 

21 institution to inform its students of failure, and this was 

22 added at the request of negotiators. So you'll see there in 

23 three for any fiscal year that it fails to meet the 

24 requirements of this section, it must notify students of the 

25 possibility of the loss of Title IV eligibility and then in 

26 and in four this revision further clarifies that institutions 

27 must report a failure within 45 days of the end of the fiscal 

28 year or at any point after the institution learns of its 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 26

1 failure if it is determined that the institution did not 

2 correctly determine it had passed the requirement in the in 

3 the prior in the prior fiscal year. So, basically in four, it 

4 must determine whether it passed the revenue requirement and 

5 report a failure no later than 45 days after the end of this

6 fiscal year or immediately thereafter if subsequent 

7 information is obtained that shows the institution incorrectly 

8 determined that it passed the revenue requirements for the 

9 prior fiscal year, so that that also was requested by 

10 negotiators at the previous session. So, that is everything 

11 for paragraph C. So, I'll open it up for discussion.

12 MR. WAGNER: Thank you, Renee. And Brad, I see your 

13 hand up. You're up.

14 MR. ADAMS: So, so this comment may change depending 

15 on where we land with the money that students receive. 

16 Primarily, I think it's just VA monies that go directly to the 

17 student, not the institutions, so depending on where we land 

18 on that, I may not need this comment, but if there's still any 

19 money that is not going directly to the institution that the 

20 institution is having to include in its 90/10 calculation, 

21 I've got major reservations here with four. So, I'm glad the 

22 Department modified their language here, but obviously we 

23 can't report failed 90/10 if the Department hasn't given us 

24 the data to let us know we have failed. So, and so it's very 

25 confusing to me why the Department must make an institution 

26 liable under five for any funds it disperses after failed 

27 90/10 if they are unable to calculate 90/10. I mean, so just 

28 as an example, what if the Department takes nine months, which 

29 is not unreasonable dealing with the VA to get its 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 27

1 disbursement data from the VA, is the Department really going 

2 to call back all the funds to the institutional fiscal year 

3 for nine months because it became aware way after the fiscal 

4 year end that we failed for the second time? So, hopefully we 

5 can agree that everything's just coming directly to the 

6 institution. And then this makes it easier because we do this 

7 all the time. Right now, I can calculate my 90/10 on the last 

8 day of the fiscal year, and I can have it audited in a week 

9 and I'm good with 45 days. But if you're saying we've got to 

10 get data from the VA and still hit this 45-day mark and be on 

11 the risk for the money when it's the VA's delay that's causing 

12 us the problem. I can't believe that we would propose this.

13 MR. MARTIN: I we do understand that there are some 

14 logistical issues with this that we'll take back. I think it's 

15 it isn't, it's our intention to get that information to the 

16 institutions as soon as possible and, because, again, I just 

17 as general information to anybody listening who's not familiar 

18 with 90/10, as has been pointed out before, a 90/10 must be 

19 done on a student-by-student basis. So in order for if we were 

20 going, if we're going to require inclusion of funds that were 

21 given directly to students by these federal sources, they're 

22 non-Title IV sources, it would be necessary for the 

23 institution to know exactly how much money the student 

24 received in order to be able to do that calculation so that 

25 there are there are concerns with certainly how timely that 

26 that occurs, and we are aware of that, and so I thank you, 

27 Brad, and we will discuss, we will discuss that.

28 MR. ADAMS: If the VA, if we're waiting on VA as 

29 written, this would mean the institution could have a very 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 28

1 longs worth of financial aid that's been disbursed to students 

2 and be obligated to repay those back to the Department. So, 

3 that's, we should not be tied to the VA.

4 MR. MARTIN: We understand your concern.

5 MR. WAGNER: Thank you, Brad. Let's see here, I think 

6 Travis, you're up.

7 MR. HORR: Thank you. And yeah, I just want to 

8 respond to that, I understand VA is VA, but I also think it's 

9 important to include money that is paid directly to students, 

10 specifically Chapter 35. I want to point out like survivor 

11 benefits and tuition from that way and Montgomery GI Bill, 

12 which is still around, and that money is paid directly to 

13 students to pay for their tuition. And it should be included. 

14 So, I want to you know state that, for the record, that we 

15 shouldn't just, you know, exclude all VA money that's being 

16 that's being paid because those are very different things. We 

17 talk about the post-9/11 GI Bill with the tuition assistance 

18 is a very different thing than the survivor benefit as far as 

19 Chapter 35 GI Bill goes. And I understand there's 

20 complications in how to include those, but things like Chapter 

21 35 need to be included or else we're just going to move the 

22 target that's been on service members and veterans for a long 

23 time, just to the surviving families and a more vulnerable 

24 population. And it's very important to protect those in these 

25 regulations. So, thank you.

26 MR. MARTIN: Thank you very much for your comment, 

27 Travis. The Department is aware of the need to work with VA. 

28 We've already, you know, we've been trying to establish some 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 29

1 connections there. You know, it would require, obviously that 

2 the VA begin, DOD begin reporting things to schools at a level 

3 that they that they don't currently do. So, we are aware of 

4 the need to do that and we do have some time to work to work 

5 on that and understand that getting that information forwarded 

6 to schools in a timely manner is important. So, I just want to 

7 make certain that I convey that how important the Department 

8 feels that is.

9 MR. HORR: Thank you. 

10 MR. WAGNER: Thank you for that. Let's see, Carney, 

11 you're next.

12 MR. KING: Yeah, I'm just curious what we would be 

13 waiting on the VA to provide the information for the like as 

14 far as housing allowance goes. Pretty much everyone's getting 

15 the same allowance just based on the school, so if you're a 

16 chapter 33, you're going to get the VA age that's already 

17 assigned. So, I feel like universities can already be 

18 calculating what the VA would be sending directly to the 

19 students, and then I just want to kind of support, including 

20 all the money going to students, especially the housing 

21 allowance, just because oftentimes the total cost of tuition 

22 is more than what the GI Bill will cover. And a lot of 

23 students end up using some of their housing allowance to cover 

24 those gaps. So, a lot of times that money is ending up back at 

25 the university.

26 MR. MARTIN: Thank you. With respect to how much I'm 

27 no expert in VA funding, so I might defer to Travis on that as 

28 far as you know, my understanding is that there are there are 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 30

1 differences in what students receive or that's that that 

2 that's a possibility. So, I don't know that it would be 

3 possible for schools simply to impute those students receive a 

4 certain amount merely because they had they were aware that 

5 the student was receiving a certain VA benefit. But if Travis 

6 if you want to, if you want to talk to that, go ahead.

7 MR. HORR: Yeah, the housing allowance would be based 

8 off the zip code of the school if I'm correct in that 

9 [inaudible] for where your, the school's physical location. I 

10 also just want to be clear that as far as my position goes, I 

11 don't want to for what I was talking about. We're very 

12 supportive of including, you know, the Chapter 35 disability 

13 or the survivor's benefit. Sorry, Chapter 30 Montgomery GI 

14 Bill. The housing allowance, we understand that that is 

15 earmarked not towards tuition. So that's, you know, something 

16 that was discussed earlier or it was in the regulations 

17 earlier. I don't know if we discussed it. So, I was 

18 specifically talking about the survivor benefits on that and 

19 Montgomery GI Bill.

20 MR. KING: Yeah, because I mean, if it's like Chapter 

21 33, the post-9/11 GI Bill, it's going to be basically the 

22 standard housing allowance that for, you know, E5 rank or 

23 whatever. But if it's Chapter 31, then it's like a flat rate 

24 of 600. But I mean, it's all transparent online, and the 

25 universities are going to know which GI Bill chapter they're 

26 using. So, I don't think it would be difficult to at least 

27 have a very solid estimate of where you would be at.

28 MR. MARTIN: I do want to point out that with 90/10 

29 calculations and I'll invite David to come if he wants to, but 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 31

1 it's imperative that that the calculations be done exactly and 

2 be based on the actual student's account so that we're looking 

3 at when he's auditing or when the school, when the school is 

4 doing its 90/10 and then it's being audited by someone, they 

5 have to look, they have to look that exactly the amount of 

6 their student's account in order to do it correctly. So, I 

7 don't know if David wants to comment on that.

8 MR. MCCLINTOCK: Yeah, I turned my video on just to 

9 say that same thing, so the reporting would be needed to test 

10 the calculation to know what the amount is that's included for 

11 each student.

12 MR. MARTIN: And of course, now it's easier now 

13 because all those amounts only Title IV. And so those are on 

14 the account, you can see it on the student account. This would 

15 be the first type of aid that where that wouldn't be on the 

16 account. So, they must be some mechanism whereby the VA 

17 reports to each school, each individual student, and the exact 

18 amount that a student received. Otherwise, it wouldn't be 

19 possible to do the 90/10 calculation correctly. So, I just 

20 wanted to point that out just as a matter of order.

21 MR. MCCLINTOCK: And that's what that creates the 

22 delay that we're talking about getting the report. 

23 MR. MARTIN: Right. So, I just want to say we are 

24 aware of that situation and going to take that back.

25 MR. KING: Gotcha. I hear what you guys are saying, 

26 but I have I have faith that the VA can do one thing right 

27 eventually.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 32

1 MR. MARTIN: Well, it's a faith that the VA will be 

2 able to provide, will be able to provide the information.

3 MR. WAGNER: Anything else, Carney, to add? Okay, 

4 thank you. Let's see, Johnson, you are, you're on. Go ahead. 

5 Take it away.

6 MR. TYLER: Yeah, having been on hold with the VA on 

7 the phone for like an hour and a half to ask some very basic 

8 questions, I appreciate Brad's concern. But on the other hand, 

9 I have had administered contracts and we plan throughout the 

10 year to make the goals of the contract. And I think I'm 

11 hearing from Travis and others that there is data that you can 

12 plan on making sure you don't go you know right up to the edge 

13 of 90/10. So, I would just, you know, to that it's we all must 

14 plan to comply with things. You don't wait till the last month 

15 to say, oh, where am I at? [Inaudible]

16 MR. WAGNER: Thank you, Johnson. Before I get to you, 

17 Brad, Steve, I see your hand up.

18 MR. FINLEY: Yeah, thanks. I just want to note for 

19 this discussion that the proposal from the Department is to 

20 not count designated housing payments as part of the in the 

21 90/10 calculation here. So, I, you know, to the extent people 

22 want to talk about that and make suggestions to the 

23 Department, I don't want anybody to be under the wrong 

24 impression here that those are going to be counted under the 

25 proposed regulation language.

26 MR. WAGNER: Thank you. Brad, you're on.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 33

1 MR. ADAMS: Thank you, Steve. Yeah, no, I agree, and 

2 my reference was what we talked about earlier on the potential 

3 book stipend tied to number one going to the VA. So again, if 

4 that comes off the table and we're not relating to the VA this 

5 this discussion goes away completely and we're back to you 

6 know calculating it on institutional cards. But now VA is part 

7 of the 90. That's really the main change. And the majority I 

8 want to point out to the majority, vast majority. I'm not a VA 

9 expert, but I know the vast majority of VA does come directly 

10 to the institution. And so, we're not we're not talking about 

11 a at least in my institution's case, a material number here by 

12 any means. And I do want to just end my comments around, you 

13 know, I just want to make sure that the administrative burden 

14 tied to someone like the VA or tied to this state thing is 

15 just worth the effort on the 90/10. I understand the 90/10 

16 statute and I want to comply with it. I just want to make sure 

17 that we're able to comply with it in a timely manner. And this 

18 45 day worries me when you're when you're adding in outside 

19 parties and noises and we all lived through the gainful 

20 rollout and it was difficult and it was very burdensome and 

21 HEERF was probably not much better. So, I don't think it's 

22 going to be easy to do with the VA, and that's just my take.

23 MR. WAGNER: Thank you, Brad. Dave, I see your hand.

24 MR. MCCLINTOCK: Yeah, I just want to follow up 

25 quickly about the planning and be able to be ready for it 

26 close to year end. Working with the VA, and I agree, hopefully 

27 we can set up something so there can be timely information 

28 shared but as Greg alluded to, this will be the first time 

29 that there's, there's payments included in 90/10 that the 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 34

1 school doesn't have ready access to. And so as far as planning 

2 and knowing where you are during the year, you're going to be 

3 dependent on getting that from the VA. So, it doesn't mean, 

4 there can be planning, people can calculate it, but it's going 

5 to be the first time that schools won't control all the data 

6 that gets incorporated into it. That'll just be the main 

7 switch.

8 MR. WAGNER: Thank you, David. Okay, Travis, I see 

9 your hand, you're up.

10 MR. HORR: Yeah, just one last thing on this is I 

11 understand that it can be difficult to deal with VA. Trust me, 

12 I understand that and I understand that that this is going to 

13 change how, how things are done. I'm not an accountant by any 

14 stretch of the imagination, but just because this is changing 

15 things or it's difficult doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. I 

16 mean, we need to protect a very, potentially very vulnerable 

17 population as far as we're talking about, you know, survivor 

18 benefits and dependents and things like that that are first19 generation students and not used to this the whole education 

20 process that and they need to be protected. And that's why 

21 90/10 exists, and that's why we got this loophole closed. So 

22 that's all I'll say on that. Thank you.

23 MR. WAGNER: Dave, you're up.

24 MR. MCCLINTOCK: I just want to quickly make sure 

25 that I'm not trying to argue against 90/10 or the treatment, 

26 just discuss the logistics for how that it's happening. That's 

27 all.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 35

1 MR. WAGNER: Thank you. Any other comments? I don't 

2 see any hands. Greg, do you think we have time for a 

3 temperature check? 

4 MR. MARTIN: Yeah, sure.

5 MR. WAGNER: Okay. And that's for C under six. 

6 Correct? Okay. If everyone could vote with their thumbs, hold 

7 them up high so we can all see them. Appreciate it. Jamie, 

8 there you go. And I just see one, Brad, you have any comments 

9 on that? Okay. Does anyone have any other comments on any 

10 other things that were voted down in terms of thumbs down or 

11 anything on 90/10? Okay, I'll defer back to Greg, but I would 

12 propose taking a well-earned last 15-minute break as it is 

13 Friday. Does that make sense, Greg?

14 MR. MARTIN: That makes plenty of sense. I want to 

15 thank everyone for the discussion on this. I think it was very 

16 useful to just take back and thank everyone for the 

17 thoughtfulness of their comments. And yes, we're ready to take 

18 a break whenever you are.

19 MR. WAGNER: Okay, great. So, we can say, why don't 

20 we come back at 2:20 eastern time? Before we go to break 

21 quickly, Johnson, you had a comment.

22 MR. TYLER: When we come back, are we going to go 

23 back and discover, discuss some of the things we didn't spend 

24 a lot of time on? I'm particularly interested in the bright 

25 line gainful employment earnings question that the Department 

26 asked us about in the gainful employment paper.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 36

1 MS. JEFFRIES: That's one of the things that we're 

2 going to talk about on break and how best to break this up. 

3 Okay? We just need a chance to regroup and look at some notes. 

4 Okay? Thanks.

5 MR. TYLER: Thank you.

6 MR. WAGNER: Thank you, Cindy. Thanks to John.

7 MS. JEFFRIES: Hey, welcome back from break, a well8 deserved one as well. So, we met while we were on the break 

9 and we have heard your concerns about wanting additional time 

10 on both ATB and GE. So, what we would like to do is take about 

11 15, 20 minutes to look back at ATB and get additional feedback 

12 for the Department on that. And then the remainder of the time 

13 we would revisit GE, but we want to start with the additional 

14 accountability metrics page because although we visited that, 

15 the Department that is a page where they want and need 

16 additional feedback that you know, they haven't received yet. 

17 So, with that, let's look at ATB and open that that up for 

18 discussion and get some additional feedback. I know there was 

19 some desire to get more information to the Department. And 

20 Carolyn is coming to the table with consumer and civil rights 

21 organizations. Okay. Can we see hands? Anybody want to offer 

22 anything on that? This is your chance. Going and going into 

23 that final week for you to get information to the Department 

24 and David Socolow is coming to represent state agencies for 

25 the ATB piece as they go through the process of preparing the 

26 final amended text for the third session. Greg.

27 MR. MARTIN: Yeah, I don't want to limit 

28 conversation, but I or discussion rather, but I know I noticed 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 37

1 that we noted rather than at the last when we talked about 

2 this earlier in the week, there was there was some interest in 

3 discussing the role of IETs and whether or not that was what 

4 we see Eligible Career Pathways Program should be limited to 

5 IETs, and we're interested in hearing what people think about 

6 that and if and why, what the reasoning for that would be for 

7 those who support it and then to hear any other comments on 

8 the other side of that issue. So, I'll just throw that out 

9 there to start conversation if anybody's interested in picking 

10 up on that.

11 MS. JEFFRIES: David, one second, just a couple of 

12 announcements. Kelli is back at the table for ATB and, as is 

13 Will Durden for two-year colleges, and Michael is in for 

14 proprietary institutions for this discussion. David. 

15 MR. SOCOLOW: Yeah, thanks. So, yeah, I appreciate 

16 the chance to talk about this briefly again. The way I 

17 understand the construct of this new ATB regulation is that 

18 the statutory definition is at the beginning in two, but then 

19 157 are the standards for Title IV for a very specific 

20 population, adults without high school diplomas or a high 

21 school diploma equivalent. And that's a very limited and 

22 specific group of students that the intent of the law is to 

23 cabin and be careful with their eligibility for Title IV. And 

24 so, the purpose of the standards should be to give as much 

25 clarity and guidance as possible for a super high quality 

26 career pathway program. The point is not that you couldn't 

27 have other moderate and low quality career pathway programs 

28 that might satisfy the plain language definition of a career 

29 pathway for other purposes, but that when using a quality 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 38

1 screen for Title IV eligibility for eligible career pathways 

2 for Title IV purposes for this population, that the best 

3 practice and the really good quality screen would be what the 

4 Department's own research has shown is the evidence-based, 

5 robust program that gives students those students their best 

6 chance at academic and career success through dual enrollment 

7 IET coordinated programs that are partnerships between 

8 multiple systems that can't be go it alone, higher ed 

9 institution only career pathways. And so that was the 

10 recommendation that not that that's the only thing to do, but 

11 that it should be the only thing to do for this purpose. The 

12 standard the Department will apply to ATB. So that was just 

13 the clarification. I think that I made that point, but I'm 

14 trying to encapsulate it again. And so, I would just 

15 respectfully request that the Department give that 

16 consideration.

17 MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, David, I'd like to invite those 

18 who had other concerns and were thumbs down on ATB, especially 

19 this piece of it to offer to the Department ideas and 

20 suggestions of what might get you to a, you know, at least a 

21 sideways, if not a thumbs up, so that they can really look at 

22 that because in the third and final week, we will be moving to 

23 consensus, not temperature check. So, we want to be able to 

24 afford you the ability to get that information out to the 

25 Department, even if it's a refresher of what you said before 

26 so that they have that in mind. Johnson.

27 MR. TYLER: Yeah, I would just say that, you know, 

28 making sure that the educational component going towards the 

29 high school degree is actually meaningful and doesn't create 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 39

1 sort of online self-directed education or something like that, 

2 that would really not achieve what's wanted here, so just a 

3 little more thought into how to either be more prescriptive or 

4 just have more safeguards in there so that the educational 

5 component where a student would get a degree, a high school 

6 degree would actually be achieved.

7 MS. JEFFRIES: Can I just ask you a little bit of 

8 clarification on that, Johnson? Do you have an idea in mind of 

9 what that would look like at this point? Or maybe it's 

10 something that you'll be submitting?

11 MR. TYLER: Yeah, I would have to consult with my 

12 expert, David, here on this. But he's got his hand up, so 

13 maybe.

14 MS. JEFFRIES: Great. Great. Alright. Thank you. 

15 David.

16 MR. SOCOLOW: Yeah, I mean, there are three bullet 

17 points in the paper that the Johnson and his colleagues sent 

18 in. I think they all make good sense that they incorporate the 

19 one that I've mentioned. So, I mean, the Department's had 

20 these papers, they understand what we're suggesting. And the 

21 response we got at the beginning of this week was, well, you 

22 know, we don't agree that that's the only way to do it. And 

23 that's not the point we're making. The point we're making is 

24 you need a quality screen here for Title IV eligibility. 

25 That's more than just restating the statute. That's a little 

26 more granular and specific and protective of students. And 

27 we've and we've sent suggestions on that, so I guess what we 

28 ask really at this point is for the Department to respond to 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 40

1 our suggestions substantively rather than the sort of frankly 

2 missing the point statement that we got at the beginning of 

3 the week.

4 MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks, David, I think that's a 

5 helpful clarification. Johnson.

6 MR. TYLER: Yeah, I would just add that I submitted 

7 our comments at the last moment, I don't even think they had 

8 time to be considered, so they're still, they're still out 

9 there.

10 MS. JEFFRIES: Alright, great. Alright, thanks. Greg, 

11 go ahead.

12 MR. MARTIN: Yeah, I would ask, I know, I know, 

13 David, that you submitted information, so has so has Johnson, 

14 but I would for the for the edification of the of the group

15 and I haven't had a chance to, I mostly just sit around and be 

16 nervous about the next day when these things are going on as 

17 opposed to I don't get to spend too much time reading anything 

18 new. So could you just elucidate for us what you would, you 

19 know, you don't have to be specific, but what you would do in 

20 150. So, I imagine these would be these would be changes to 

21 157, correct? That you would want to see incorporated or 

22 additional elements? 

23 MR. SOCOLOW: Yeah, you got it.

24 MR. MARTIN: So, you could you just, you know, give 

25 us a brief overview of what how you would see that working.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 41

1 MR. SOCOLOW: Yeah, I'm happy to walk through it. So, 

2 in 157A, at the very beginning, recommend that what's being 

3 documented to the Secretary demonstrated to the Secretary 

4 through documentation is not that the institution this is the 

5 philosophical question is, is the institution saying we have a 

6 career pathway that we the IHE did all on our own? Or are they 

7 documenting a partnership with multiple systems? And so, the 

8 recommendation is that the documentation is of a partnership 

9 between the institution of higher education and adult 

10 education through the WIOA Title II adult education and 

11 services. So that's what you know, that's what you want is to 

12 do that both in A at the top and in A1 romanette two. If you 

13 look at the Department's definition of IET, which is somewhere 

14 else in 34 CFR, I don't have the number in front of me right 

15 now. But you have your own statutory regulatory definition 

16 already in your regs, your WIOA Title II regs. And so, you 

17 could cross reference to that and put that in here so that 

18 instead of just saying coursework training or other support 

19 services, you say what has been said by OCTAE that in 

20 romanette two that for the purposes of adults without a high 

21 school diploma, that's got to be the WIOA Title II adult 

22 education and services, all the various components of IET. 

23 There are three components of IET, and they are mentioned in 

24 the reg. And so that would be the second change. In the point 

25 about the demand occupations, which is in 157A2, you would 

26 deal with this issue of again showing a documented consulting 

27 with the workforce system, which is a demand driven, employer 

28 led system that's supposed to be figuring out what the labor 

29 market demand is. And so, a connection to that because the 

30 concern is self-created, one-off career pathways, self-
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 42

1 asserted career pathways at the institution of higher 

2 education makes up without talking to other folks in their 

3 area in their state who are talking to employers. It's nice 

4 that you're suggesting they go out and talk to employers 

5 themselves, and I strongly recommend that, but I would rather 

6 they also do that in partnership with the workforce system. 

7 And so, it's already been mentioned by Johnson in six that the 

8 program is designed to lead to a valid high school diploma. 

9 And Johnson's paper has several suggestions for how to make 

10 sure that that is robustly enforceable so that you're not 

11 having fake high school, bogus high schools or other tricks 

12 that are not really leading to a real high school diploma. And 

13 again, going back to five, that's where I found it. The IET 

14 definition is 34 CFR 463.35 coordinated education and services 

15 between the Title IV institution and the WIOA Title II adult 

16 education and services. And so, you would add a reg, a piece 

17 there that makes it quite clear that again, this number five 

18 that you have written is the statutory definition, which 

19 applies to all career pathways. But for this specific kind of 

20 career pathway, which is a partnership between higher ed and 

21 workforce adult literacy. For Title IV purposes, you'll have a 

22 more stringent screen here in number five, and so and then we 

23 have recommended several people have recommended that there 

24 just seems to be a lack of clarity at the very beginning of A 

25 where it says as required under 668.156 A3 of this part seems 

26 to imply that you're only applying 157 to those ATB students 

27 that that use the state process and that you're not also using 

28 the same standards for the other two processes to determine 

29 what's an eligible career pathway. So, you need to strike that 

30 out and then put in B, just make it very clear that when the 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 43

1 Department is determining what's an eligible career pathway 

2 for things that are not for career pathway programs that are 

3 not through the state process, that is through the other two 

4 ATB methods taking six credits or taking a test that they'll 

5 use the standards in 157 A. So, in a nutshell, that's the 

6 that's the list of ideas.

7 MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, thanks. Greg, do you have 

8 something? And I see Steve, your off mute. Did you want to? 

9 Either one of you?

10 MR. MARTIN: Go ahead, Steve.

11 MR. FINLEY: I'm using this as a learning opportunity 

12 as well, so that's why I appreciate the background discussion.

13 MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. I just saw you were off mute, so 

14 I didn't know if you wanted some [inaudible]. Greg.

15 MR. MARTIN: I just wanted David to go through. I 

16 hate to keep asking him for a lecture here, but I just to 

17 help, so, the individual elements of an IET, could you just, 

18 so would you want to see that those incorporated in here or 

19 just the or the reference to the to the regulation you, you 

20 cited? Can you just go over those just review for us a little 

21 bit what those some of those elements are?

22 MR. SOCOLOW: Sure. 

23 MR. MARTIN: -in an IET if you wouldn't mind.

24 MR. SOCOLOW: Or I can, I can do that and I'll look 

25 it up. But I mean, in sum, there are three specific things. 

26 It's a set of services. It's workforce preparation activities, 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 44

1 it's adult literacy, and it's the vocationally relevant, 

2 occupationally specific, vocationally relevant training. So, 

3 all three blended together and done concurrently. And so let 

4 me tell you what we're trying to prevent. So, you know the law 

5 now says you can't do this, but without more guidance, people 

6 are going back to the way ATB existed prior to its being 

7 eliminated in 2011, which was just not really coordinating at 

8 all with the high school or forget high school with the adult 

9 basic literacy part of what's obviously needed for this 

10 specific population. We need them to succeed. We need to give 

11 them a chance to succeed not only in the skills related 

12 training that they're going to be getting from the Title IV 

13 institution, but also in the other portion of a career 

14 pathway. And that was what Congress meant by putting this 

15 back, putting ATB back in the law, but only if it's in a 

16 career pathway. It was to prevent the kind of one-off thing 

17 that you'll see where an institution will pretend it's doing 

18 ATB. They'll pretend it's okay now to just teach the class to 

19 individuals without a high school diploma and say, go over 

20 there and take your GED class self-paced on a computer. We 

21 have nothing to do with it. It's not integrated. It's not 

22 contextualized. It's not coordinated. So, the best practice 

23 IETs tried to build the literacy education into the into the 

24 instruction of the other coursework. That is to say that 

25 occupationally relevant coursework, because what does an adult 

26 without a high school diploma want? They want a job and you 

27 know they're not going to sort of do the training on, it's 

28 harder for people to do these two things separately than if 

29 you combine them. That's what IET does. It integrates 

30 education and training.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 45

1 MR. MARTIN: Thank you.

2 MS. JEFFRIES: Alright. Thank you. Johnson, your hand 

3 was up, now it's down, are you good?

4 MR. TYLER: Yeah, I'll just say we put in language 

5 expanding the definition of the of the training for secondary 

6 school and educational literacy in the paragraph B6 of 668.2 

7 general definitions, that’s kind of the meat of our 

8 contribution. So, we just want it to be a real, you know, a 

9 school that's designed to, you know, it's more robust and 

10 likely to result in some likelihood of success in terms of 

11 achieving the high school diploma.

12 MS. JEFFRIES: Ok, thank you. Will.

13 MR. DURDEN: So just to clarify, you're wanting us to 

14 review proposals we've already made because you're just trying 

15 to kind of collect them moving forward. So, you want me to, 

16 you want me to say again some things I said earlier this week.

17 MS. JEFFRIES: And that's fine, Will. I was looking 

18 back at that at the paper and looking at those who you know 

19 where it comes down on the temperature checks, specifically in 

20 his section and just offering, you know what you know, maybe 

21 drilling home a little bit concisely, what would it take to 

22 get you at least to here for a consensus?

23 MR. DURDEN: Got it. Well, not knowing exactly if 

24 we're focused on one section or a couple, I think to reiterate 

25 our positions, we don't really like the success rate in 

26 general and don't think it's the right approach. To try to 

27 support a success rate, we might look at a lower threshold 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 46

1 than the 95 percent. So that's one consideration is that 

2 success rate. Talking about a 1 percent cap on people enrolled 

3 in ATB. We would want to make sure that that was for the 

4 state, not for the institution. And I and I think that those 

5 were the big ones that we had raised from earlier in the week 

6 on our on our end.

7 MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thank you for that. Oops, Greg 

8 was on and off there.

9 MR. MARTIN: No, no, no. Okay. I clicked [inaudible].

10 MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. David.

11 MR. SOCOLOW: Just a brief clarification on the point 

12 that Johnson made about the protecting against fake high 

13 schools. You know, I mean, I understand that the elegance of 

14 having, you know, to just literally be the statute basically 

15 verbatim. And then again, not restating those. It doesn't do 

16 any good to restate that in 157. 157 is doing something else. 

17 It's creating quality standards. And so, it seems to me 157 A6 

18 is where you put all the language that that Johnson suggested, 

19 relative to making sure that these are real high schools.

20 MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, thank you. Alright. I don't see 

21 any more hands-on ATB, and we did spend about 22 minutes on 

22 it, which is what we had suggested. So, at this point, let's 

23 turn our attention to the GE document specifically at this 

24 point surrounding the additional accountability metrics for 

25 consideration. Greg, do you want to let the committee know 

26 what you're looking for here?
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 47

1 MR. MARTIN: We're talking about on page 18 of the 

2 and I have maybe could have a Renee pull that up, the 

3 additional accountability metrics for consideration. Before we 

4 get to that, I want to thank everybody for the discussion on 

5 ATB. The Department appreciates your comments and6 MR. FINLEY: Greg, could I, could I add one thing to 

7 your thanks on that discussion? 

8 MR. MARTIN: Go ahead, go ahead.

9 MR. FINLEY: To the extent anyone has a suggestion 

10 for how to set a breakpoint below the 95 percent mark, we 

11 would like to have that provided to us to consider as well.

12 MR. MARTIN: Thanks, Steve. As I said when we talked 

13 about this earlier during the week, we didn't give as much 

14 time, this is perhaps we should have and I and you know, it's 

15 a bit of a balancing act trying to figure out while you're 

16 going through these, how much time to devote to each to get 

17 through it and never quite know where you're going to wind up. 

18 But I'm happy to have some time to go back and revisit this 

19 and give people an opportunity to comment on these. So just to 

20 reiterate, we had the issue here is that that we had analysis 

21 that would some showing that some programs that would 

22 otherwise pass the debt to earnings rate because they have 

23 relatively low debt levels, also have very low earnings 

24 levels. And there could be students who have financed the 

25 program, maybe without debt or very low levels of student 

26 loans that are able to pass, whether programs are able to pass 

27 the D/E rates. And there have been some, some of the 

28 negotiators have suggested adding other metrics earning 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 48

1 metrics based on the difference between median earnings and of 

2 program graduates and a threshold of earnings compared to you 

3 know, compared to some other group and we so the threshold for 

4 passing earnings premium could be specific, could be specified 

5 rather in several different ways, and we gave you a number of 

6 those. Just some ideas that we had here. So, the discussion 

7 here would be about should there be an additional 

8 accountability metric in addition to the D/E rates and if 

9 there should be, what be this additional metric? What should 

10 it consist of? So, I just wanted to get some more feedback on 

11 the negotiators' thoughts about this, so I'll open it up for 

12 discussion.

13 MS. JEFFRIES: Go ahead, Brad.

14 MR. MARTIN: You're a mute, Brad.

15 MS. JEFFRIES: We're not hearing you.

16 MR. ADAMS: Thank you. Sorry.

17 MS. JEFFRIES: There you go.

18 MR. ADAMS: I saw Steve's hand up, so I thought he 

19 was in front of me. I just wanted to start before going into 

20 these four metrics just quick on, I wanted to just ask the 

21 Department, you know several community members, including 

22 myself, have asked the Department to provide data on a very 

23 variety of these issues that we're discussing, and I'm not 

24 aware of anyone getting any data they've asked for. I 

25 personally haven't. So, I'd like the Department to let us 

26 know, do you all have, and I can send you my list of documents 

27 that I've requested. But do you have a general timeframe on 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 49

1 responding to some of these requests? Because I do think the 

2 information in these requests could provide valuable feedback 

3 to us before going into week three and week three is the last 

4 chance, we get to investigate these issues, and I'm concerned 

5 that we're going to run out of time. Do we have an estimate or 

6 do you need a list or?

7 MR. MARTIN: We have we're aware of the data request. 

8 We respond to them as quickly as we can. They do often take 

9 time to wherever we, the data is compiled, it must be vetted. 

10 FSA has a group that does that. So, there is a time lag 

11 involved in the data request. But where we're unable to 

12 provide any data, we would tell you that that we were unable 

13 to do that or else provide the request. So, we're in the 

14 process of trying to get that data together. But I don't want 

15 to go out. I don't want to say that, you know, or provide a 

16 specific date on which we'll be able to do that, but we do 

17 make every effort to comply with all data requests. 

18 MR. ADAMS: And I would just recommend, I'm assuming 

19 that will be sent to everyone and when they are available, I 

20 just recommend piecemealing them because if we wait till, 

21 they're all ready, it may be too late. So, as they come 

22 available, I would like them just to be sent out if possible.

23 MR. MARTIN: I think we just generally are our 

24 practice would be to do that.

25 MR. ADAMS: Okay, I'll get back in line for the next 

26 discussion. Thank you.

27 MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you. Amanda.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 50

1 MS. AMANDA MARTINEZ: Yeah, thank you. On these 

2 additional four options that the Education Department has 

3 provided us, I think one on the data point offered up by Brad 

4 and I would say others on the committee would also raise that 

5 issue. We would like to see our data requests be hopefully 

6 answered to the best of your ability. And I think Adam 

7 Looney's presentation was compelling enough time to show some 

8 type of modeling of one of the one of the options here. But I 

9 think any other type of modeling or impacts of the different 

10 types of institutions of each of these different options, 

11 which show would also be helpful specifically for option four. 

12 And I think I would say from my point of view, potentially 

13 option three as well and if possible, not just the federal 

14 minimum wage, but tying that geographically towards different 

15 states minimum wage. I think overall, the concept that the 

16 principals of the education department should be keeping in 

17 mind when figuring out what option makes sense is to ensure 

18 that students or graduates from general education programs are 

19 receiving or will receive a high or at least a livable wage 

20 without any type of debt, right, without taking out any type 

21 of debt, because this would consider a scenario in which debt 

22 is not indicated or considered. And then also, I would hope 

23 that the design of this metric an additional metric to already 

24 the two debt-to-earnings metrics would hopefully be 

25 effectively implemented and that your current data 

26 infrastructure would allow for a robust, you know, yeah, it 

27 would be an effective tool if it has utility and if you all 

28 have the data infrastructure to do that. So, I'm assuming 

29 here, but it would be great to hear if you all think that an 

30 analysis to say that, yes, safely implemented these options, 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 51

1 that it would be able to be run by the Department effectively 

2 just as the other the other metrics in [inaudible].

3 MR. MARTIN: Yes, there would be no issues with our, 

4 applying any of these additional metrics, and we certainly 

5 could do that because they all are all are keyed on earnings, 

6 just just not debt, so there would be no issues with us doing 

7 this and the fourth one simply eliminating one of the annual 

8 D/E metrics and saying with the discretionary debt to 

9 earnings. So that would certainly be very, very easy to do so 

10 I don't think there's any whether anyone was in favor of 

11 choosing any of these or any others would not want any of 

12 these presented here shouldn't be contingent on the 

13 Department's ability to do it because it would be able to do 

14 it.

15 MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks, Greg. Just quick, Johnson, a 

16 couple of things here that I noticed in the chat. Kelli is 

17 back to the table. Nope, she was for ATB. I'm so sorry. It is 

18 Anne Kress is back in for two-year colleges and Debbie 

19 Cochrane is back in for state agencies as well. So, with that, 

20 Johnson, go ahead.

21 MR. TYLER: Can you hear me, okay? My internet's kind 

22 of crazy. 

23 MR. MARTIN: You sound okay. 

24 MR. TYLER: So, the one thing I would my clients 

25 would be in favor of a of some income related metric because 

26 it's really a huge investment of family capital for someone to 

27 go to school, whether it's a night online, when someone else 

28 is going to have to watch the kids or whether it's, you know, 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 52

1 it's just they don't do it again, if that's their one shot and 

2 they're either going to capitalize it or they're not going to. 

3 And so, for to have people go back to the jobs they had 

4 before, which is often the case because the job didn't work 

5 out, the career path didn't work out and not have anything to 

6 show for it is difficult even when the debt is relatively low, 

7 because it's, you know, often that leads to default at which 

8 the debt gets collected. In part, that's because people feel 

9 like they're ripped off. And why should I pay this back? And 

10 when they stop paying back low and behold, nothing happens for 

11 many years until suddenly, they come to me because their tax 

12 refund was taken. Or, you know, in another scenario, their 

13 Social Security years later is being taken for, and I have a 

14 client who's now 73, who has a debt from 1988, going to a 

15 beauty school that ripped her off and that Jessica's office 

16 has gotten lots of relief. But she's not entitled to it 

17 because she went there with a high school diploma, so she 

18 doesn't fit into any of the categories that gets released. So 

19 anyway, I really think it's important to put some level there 

20 and in terms of what should it be? I mean, I think this is a 

21 very difficult question, but there are a lot of people who 

22 have thought about this, a lot of experts and probably Mr. 

23 Looney is one of them. But you know, I just googled during the 

24 break here, MIT has a whole thing on what you need to live by 

25 each state as a living wage, and it's minimum. So, and it 

26 varies from, you know, and it goes by county as well. So, 

27 there's a lot of data that could be used by people who study 

28 this stuff and find something that really kind of makes sense. 

29 But it is an investment, and I think people are entitled to 

30 some relief, you know, even if they don't have debt. And the 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 53

1 last thing I'll say is I ran the numbers once on this and you 

2 know, you could be paying $250 dollars a month and earning 30 

3 grand, and that would pass, as a single person, and that would 

4 pass gainful employment. But in New York City, you know, you 

5 could probably earn almost that much. I mean, they tend to I 

6 mean, the annual the minimum wage is $15 an hour in New York 

7 City. But people don't get 40 hours often. But I mean, it's, 

8 you know, kind of not getting much for a lot of debt that you 

9 must service. That's a, you know, for 10 years, you'd be 

10 paying that amount. That's a lot of that's a lot of wasted 

11 time and energy. So those are my thoughts.

12 MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Johnson. And I'm not I just 

13 want to remind you that I don't know it may be a possibility 

14 some of this data the advisors might be able to help you 

15 assist with, too. So just keep in mind they are there for or 

16 to assist you. Brad, you are next.

17 MR. ADAMS: You know, I'm curious because there's 

18 some specific numbers in these four different proposals that 

19 someone came up with, so I'm assuming there is some data that 

20 the Department has used or developed or is working on that 

21 came up with these numbers. I don't think they were randomly 

22 selected. So, is there, I guess my question is, is there any 

23 data that the Department has been using that we could see to 

24 help us through these four options here?

25 MR. MARTIN: Well, I mean, what's here are just, you 

26 know, fairly standard figures, I mean, you know, nationally 

27 the median high school and graduate rate earned about $20,300 

28 or at least [inaudible] mostly we looked up on the web as far 

29 as you're talking about have we run data as to what the what 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 54

1 the outcomes would be regarding the eligibility of schools if 

2 we if we applied these? What the Fed index [ph] would be, is 

3 that what you're talking about?

4 MR. ADAMS: I'm really asking, has the Department 

5 modeled, I guess, would be the better way to say it, how these 

6 four options, you know, how schools would fare against them 

7 and kind of just in general terms, you know what the impact 

8 would be to institutions?

9 MR. MARTIN: Yeah. I'm not, I don't know. I don't 

10 want to say I have not been privy to it if we've done it, 

11 which isn't to say that we haven't been doing it. Any 

12 specific, as I said before, any specific data requests anybody 

13 wants to put in, we would do our best to comply with. I'm not 

14 aware of anything that we have that we could share right now. 

15 I don't. I don't want to. I don't want to commit to that, but 

16 I certainly will investigate if we have any, any data we've 

17 already done on this.

18 MR. ADAMS: Right, well, you know, maybe there are 

19 questions maybe Adam could model these for if he's got the 

20 data to do so. And then I do want to just a general statement 

21 that you know I'm generally supportive of these options, as 

22 you know, just if they're applied to all institutions. So 

23 again, I want to protect all students and ensure they're 

24 gainfully employed. So, I'm interested to see what others 

25 think about them, but you know I just want to make sure 

26 they're applied to everyone. Thank you.

27 MR. MARTIN: Thank you.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 55

1 MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks, Brad. Anne. Oh, let me say, 

2 Anne, before you start. I keep missing this and I apologize, 

3 Emmanual is back at the table. Thank you.

4 DR. KRESS: So, I think when we look at this metric, 

5 these metrics from the two-year college perspective, and I 

6 think I brought this up before, but we want to make sure that 

7 regional differences are somehow factored into any wage 

8 metric. The other thing is we need to be looking a little bit 

9 at apples to apples. So, you know, most of the high school 

10 graduate wage data that I see, it's not somebody who's 18 

11 years old, it's usually 25 years. So, recognize that that's 

12 seven years working after high school, whereas with most of 

13 these certificates and degrees, you're talking about someone's 

14 first job after getting a finishing a program in gainful 

15 employment. So that would be a couple of concerns we would 

16 bring to the table. And, you know, certainly having some sort 

17 of wage threshold make sense, right? You don't begin any of 

18 these programs without thinking that you're going to increase 

19 your earnings. But as always, the devil is in the details. How 

20 do you calculate that in a way that keeps those programs 

21 available to students while also helping them to advance as 

22 they should?

23 MR. MARTIN: Thanks.

24 MS. JEFFRIES: Jamie.

25 MS. STUDLEY: Yes. This discussion obviously reflects 

26 the extreme difficulty choosing metrics that have meaning and 

27 especially where high stakes consequences are involved. So, I 

28 have a very specific question. Does the Department have a 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 56

1 sense yet of what the downside might be of dropping the 

2 additional calculation of choosing number four? Because there 

3 seem to be some interest in it, but it might help to remind us 

4 all why it's there and what it's supposed to accomplish to 

5 know whether that's an option we should most seriously 

6 consider. Then second, I would just suggest we try and keep it 

7 simple. To the extent that data points that we use here are 

8 things that need to be understood, both on the campuses that 

9 are affected and by students and advisors having as few 

10 metrics as possible to do the jobs that they need to do could 

11 be helpful. Now that the Scorecard has earnings relative to a 

12 high school graduate back in it, is that a reason, if there's 

13 not an obvious perfect one, that is different to try and 

14 converge on some so that people can model plan, explain things 

15 to students? So, I'm not saying it's the right one, but if it 

16 is as good as others, that is certainly a reason to think 

17 about simplicity as much as we can. State versus county level 

18 obviously becomes quite difficult. Each of these has 

19 downsides, so maybe do as little harm and do as much value as 

20 we can to both the regulatory requirement and the student 

21 understanding and the ability to have institutions drive 

22 toward better results and explain what they're using to do 

23 that could be helpful.

24 MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thanks, Jamie. Steve.

25 MR. FINLEY: You know, just to answer Jamie's 

26 question, I think that the material that Adam Looney 

27 presented, the one where he showed two intersecting lines that 

28 started low and went higher. If you, one of those lines was 

29 the debt to earnings threshold, right? And if you take that 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 57

1 out, you'll see that any program that that had earnings that 

2 had no discretionary, no discretionary income will fall out of 

3 being eligible. And I guess the discussion paper here would 

4 suggest that programs that had zero median debt would still be 

5 treated could still be treated as passing. But the reason 

6 there were two metrics in the earlier GE things is there were 

7 just several programs that did not have enough income to have 

8 any discretionary income when you use the poverty guidelines 

9 to set the threshold.

10 MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks, Steve, for that. Johnson.

11 MR. TYLER: I'll be quick. I agree on simplicity, I 

12 think if you can't explain it to someone quickly, it's going 

13 to be complicated. I like the high school diploma or the high 

14 school equivalency, whatever that number would be, even if you 

15 discount it. People are continuing their educations to get to 

16 a new level. It's very comprehensible to lots of people, most 

17 people. So.

18 MR. MARTIN: Along those lines, I want to point out 

19 that the age group we currently use when we look at high 

20 school earnings is 24, age 24 to age 35.

21 MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks, Johnson and Greg. Emmanual.

22 MR. GUILLORY: I just had a quick question regarding 

23 the data, so I kept going back and forth to make sure that you 

24 know I was calculating it right based on the 2015 data that we 

25 have available to us. And previously, the Department put out 

26 data around GE that I've shared a few times, but it showed 

27 that within the private nonprofit sector, we had 16 of our 

28 programs that failed the GE, the 2014 GE rule. And in the data 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 58

1 that Adam had, you know the presentation he'd given us earlier 

2 this week, there was 93. He had calculated 93 programs have 

3 failed within the private nonprofit sector and that we had 463 

4 published GE programs. And so, I just would like at some point 

5 if he could just clarify how he came to those numbers. Because 

6 in looking at the 2015 data, like just the actual raw data, 

7 I'm still seeing that 16 number and I have a list of programs 

8 you know that had failed the 2014 GE rule and just wanting to 

9 make sure I understand where he got those numbers from, 

10 basically.

11 MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. And that was Adam's data, right?

12 MR. GUILLORY: Yes.

13 MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, and Adam is not with us this 

14 afternoon. And so that brings me to something I wanted to 

15 point out. Brad, you had put something in the chat about a 

16 plus one to Amanda, the data modeling from Adam around low 

17 income would be helpful. Is that a request that you'd like to 

18 make to Adam?

19 MR. ADAMS: I think I clarified it in a second chat 

20 when I said, you know, can the Department provide data 

21 applying to each of the four metrics to all programs and all 

22 institutions at the four- or six-digit CIP code with the N23 Size of at least 30 graduates? So, I've changed my request. 

24 You can ignore the first one and just use that one, but I 

25 think it'd be very helpful for us to see using these numbers, 

26 where do programs fall and how effective might they be?

27 MS. JEFFRIES: Is that something you want Adam to 

28 prepare? Because I notice your comment is to the Department.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 59

1 MR. ADAMS: No, the Department, I think the 

2 Department. I'm sorry. I don't know [inaudible] that data. To 

3 be honest, I don't know [inaudible].

4 MS. JEFFRIES: I just wanted to point out that, you 

5 know, since Adam's not here and data requested, the advisors 

6 get sent to me and then I send it on, I'm trying to make sure 

7 I don't miss anything in there that might be directed to him. 

8 So, if any of you have data that that you didn't request for 

9 Adam that you put in there that you want me to forward, please 

10 send it to me in email and I will make sure that he gets it. 

11 Okay?

12 MR. ADAMS: Thank you for clarifying that.

13 MS. JEFFRIES: Sure. Thank you. Johnson.

14 MR. TYLER: Yeah, I was thinking on a data request, 

15 I'll put it in the chat, but I think we're really talking 

16 about for this bright line, you know, earnings thing. We're 

17 talking about how Pell recipients are performing, whether they 

18 take out debt or don't take out debt. So, if there's a way to 

19 get income and earnings of Pell recipients, so you get an idea 

20 of the possibility and the limitations, I think we might be 

21 able to answer some of the questions we have about how this 

22 will be affecting various institutions and whether this is you 

23 know, just a bad idea or a good idea.

24 MS. JEFFRIES: Alright, Emmanual.

25 MR. GUILLORY: One more quick question about the 

26 data. With the proposal to move to the four CIP code instead 

27 of the six, when the data is released, will we still be able 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 60

1 to see the individual programs that passed or failed or would 

2 we just only see it at the four-digit CIP code? I'm assuming 

3 just the four-digit CIP code that we'd see that, but just 

4 thought I'd ask for clarification purposes as I'm looking at 

5 the data right now with the six-digit CIP code. If anyone can 

6 answer that.

7 MR. MARTIN: You mean the data request made 

8 [inaudible]?

9 MR. GUILLORY: So I'm looking at the 2013 data from 

10 the 2014 rule, and I can see by the six-digit CIP code what 

11 programs passed or failed, I'm looking at the private 

12 nonprofit sector, but with the proposal to move to the four13 digit CIP code in collecting data in that in that way, when 

14 the data is released, are we only going to see the four-digit 

15 CIP code you know, overall category that category and just 

16 pass or fail or? And if you can't answer that question right 

17 now, that's okay.

18 MR. MARTIN: I believe it would be the four, under 

19 the four-digit CIP code, but I'll take that back.

20 MR. GUILLORY: Alright.

21 MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks, Emmanual. Greg, let me come 

22 back to you. With no other hands, do you, do you think you 

23 have gotten enough additional information on the additional 

24 accountability metrics?

25 MR. MARTIN: Well, yes, I think I believe so. I 

26 would. I'm certainly heard a lot today if. I would ask if 

27 there's anybody, are there any opinions as far as outright 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 61

1 objections using any additional any additional metrics or 

2 belief that the that the earnings metric as was applied in 14 

3 should be retained without any additional metrics? I just want 

4 to open that that that possibility up as well, so if people 

5 wanted to speak to that because I know we had people speak to 

6 using these additional metrics, but I just want to make 

7 certain that everybody's had an opportunity to express an 

8 opinion on either side of applying an additional metric.

9 MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks. Brad. 

10 MR. ADAMS: Greg, I'd like to clarify what you just 

11 said, you said that any additional metrics to how the 

12 calculations were done in 2014, what we just looked at this 

13 week was very different than 2014. 

14 MR. MARTIN: I didn't mean the exact, I didn't mean 

15 the exact protocol. I just simply meant apply it in as much as 

16 debt to earnings was the only was the only metric that through 

17 which an institution through which a program could lose 

18 eligibility. I'm sorry, I should have put some19 MR. ADAMS: The 24, 2014 rates were calculated in a 

20 more reasonable way than what's been proposed, so you got me 

21 excited for a second.

22 MR. MARTIN: No, no, it's not. I just want to say 

23 using them, using the metric that we applied and in 20 in 

24 2014. And I just was just to go back to the six digits. 

25 Another problem we have with, also more privacy. We have 

26 additional privacy concerns with the using six digits, which 

27 is another reason that while we would go with the four-digit 

28 CIP.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 62

1 MR. ADAMS: Greg, can you explain this? Because your 

2 sample size must be 30 to get data. So, what would be the 

3 concern? I mean, I thought 30 was a statistical sample size 

4 that you all deemed would be appropriate for not having a 

5 privacy issue?

6 MR. MARTIN: I don't know, you know, I just know that 

7 we have some of those concerns, I'd have to go back and see 

8 exactly what those are. I don't know enough about the 

9 statistical unless Steve wants to speak to that, but.

10 MR. FINLEY: I think that we'll look at this issue 

11 because to the extent data is, would still be provided at the 

12 six-digit CIP, we'll, we'll see if that is part of the 

13 proposal.

14 MR. ADAMS: I was just saying, you know, it is hard 

15 on your question, Greg, to really know without seeing the 

16 data. I do struggle a little bit on how to answer it at this 

17 point, so.

18 MR. MARTIN: I just ask it because it is it is a 

19 possible option, so I just want to throw it out there for 

20 anybody to address.

21 MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks, Brad and Greg. Anne.

22 DR. KRESS: So, I want to go back to your notion of 

23 multiple measures, and I want to sort of reference back to 

24 what Jamie was saying earlier about keeping this as simple as 

25 possible. And I do think in our conversation, we're kind of 

26 braiding two different audiences, and I think it's important 

27 for us to keep them distinct. So, when you look at something 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 63

1 like debt to earnings, that makes a lot of sense to the folks 

2 in the Department, right? And so that's about the program 

3 qualifying. But then I want to go back to that whole section 

4 that was added 668.43 D1 and all the romanette below that. So, 

5 I couldn't get out of Friday without saying that. And when you 

6 think about median earnings, for example, that's an audience 

7 metric, right? That's something that students understand. So, 

8 I think when we're talking about evaluating the programs from 

9 the Department's perspective, I wouldn't want to confuse that 

10 with information, essentially consumer information, that we 

11 want to give to students about how to effectively choose a 

12 program or a program provider. I don't want that to get lost 

13 because if we start to combine all these metrics, it will 

14 quite frankly be the same gobbledygook that a lot of 

15 disclosures are, and they're completely incomprehensible to 

16 the folks that they're trying to serve. So, I think we need to 

17 keep that as one of our bright lines as well.

18 MR. MARTIN: Thank you.

19 MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Anne. Debbie.

20 MS. COCHRANE: Thank you. Two quick points. One is 

21 around, I would just echo what others have said on the data 

22 piece, I think when you, until you see the data, it's hard to 

23 know whether you are adding more metrics and for redundancy 

24 sake, because you're trying to get at that same problem in the 

25 same programs would get tripped up or whether you're really 

26 solving for a new problem or whether you can see unintended 

27 consequences from it. So, I just I would echo for those 

28 reasons that call for more data to steer some of this 

29 conversation. And then secondarily, I believe in prior some of 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 64

1 the prior rulemaking there has been consideration of smaller 

2 cohort sizes, so I don't know if that's an issue that's kind 

3 of done and dusted. But as we're talking about four versus six 

4 CIP code level and kind of how do we get the most coverage we 

5 can just wanted to see if there might be room to also go down 

6 to something like 15?

7 MR. MARTIN: I think the 30 was chosen as a due to 

8 statistical validity reasons, and that's why we have chosen to 

9 stick with the 30. I don't, I don't know. There has been 

10 discussion about departing from that that I don't think we've 

11 ever seriously entertained something different than the than 

12 the than the N-Size of 30, but I will check on that. You see, 

13 you would be you would be suggesting having data on more 

14 programs, dropping from 30 to 15?

15 MS. COCHRANE: Or 20 or something else, yeah, as 

16 another way of kind of keeping the level of precision at the 

17 program level, but still ramping up coverage.

18 MR. MARTIN: Okay, thank you.

19 MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, thanks, Carolyn. Brad. 

20 MR. ADAMS: Carolyn hasn't spoken yet, so.

21 MS. JEFFRIES: I'm sorry, I am so sorry, I thought 

22 you were speaking. I apologize, Carolyn. Yes, you are next.

23 MS. FAST: Actually, I had originally [audio] because 

24 I wanted to say what, essentially what Debbie first said about 

25 the point about how it is difficult to evaluate which of the 

26 options for an earning metric might make the most sense, or 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 65

1 even if it makes sense to have one in addition to the debt to 

2 earnings ratio without sort of a little bit more information 

3 about what the impact of those of the metric would be in terms 

4 of the program's effectiveness. That's why it would be helpful 

5 to get data. The other thing I just wanted to quickly mention 

6 about the CIP codes, I think I had been a little concerned 

7 about the change from the six to four, and I had spoken to 

8 others in the meantime about the issue and learned in the 

9 meantime that the change from six to four could be really 

10 helpful in terms of addressing concerns about schools 

11 occasionally trying to sort of game the system by creating new 

12 programs or renaming programs at the six digit level to avoid 

13 consequences of potentially failing the metrics so that the 

14 change to the to the four-digit level might actually help with 

15 that, too, and I wanted to make that [audio].

16 MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Carolyn. Okay, Brad. I 

17 think I got it right now.

18 MR. ADAMS: Yeah, I just wanted to you know drop the 

19 comment, I had mentioned timing earlier, but I just think 

20 personally adding another metric being this substantial. In 

21 addition, at this point in the process, prior to week three, 

22 when the Department didn't propose it this week or week one 

23 and didn't have any data to support it is just setting us up 

24 for trouble. I'm just concerned on the timing here, just to be 

25 honest. Again, I want accountabilities for all students and 

26 protection for all students, but I just feel for everyone here 

27 at this table that we're introducing a new topic that we 

28 haven't seen before we even get right before week three. 

29 That's just my two cents.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 66

1 MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, thank you. Greg, I'm not seeing 

2 any, oh, Jamie.

3 MS. STUDLEY: Would this be the time to speak to 

4 other issues within this issue paper?

5 MS. JEFFRIES: That is just what I was going to ask, 

6 Greg, so if you could just bear with me for a second. And I 

7 know sometimes I'm a little slow getting on my role here. So, 

8 Greg. I didn't see any more hands on the accountability 

9 metrics. There's been some requests in the chat to go to 

10 668.43 briefly.

11 MR. MARTIN: Sure, we can do that in the time we have 

12 left.

13 MS. JEFFRIES: Alright, we have I need to have about 

14 five minutes before public comment starts to wrap things up so 

15 that you're not staying over because several people do not 

16 have the ability to stay past four. So, with that in mind, it 

17 is 3:23. We will take comments for just a couple of minutes on 

18 668.43 or another brief comment you may have. Jamie. You're on 

19 mute, Jamie.

20 MS. STUDLEY: I have a related comment on 409 that's 

21 very quick. I'm going to admit that the first five times I 

22 read it, I didn't realize it applied to all institutions. And 

23 as I go back and see that it is within subpart Q, which is 

24 titled GE Programs, I think the Department may want to 

25 consider whether 409, which is universally applicable, is in 

26 the clearest place. And it followed your thinking, probably. 

27 But it would not be evident to people trying to understand 

28 what their institutional obligations would be if they knew 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 67

1 what [inaudible], they may stop reading and not know that it 

2 was there. That's just a suggestion. On 668.43. I guess my I 

3 think that two and three are understandable. We recognize the 

4 Department's desire to do that. I am not speaking for the 

5 world, but myself think that those are positive directions and 

6 that that kind of consistency would be helpful. I guess what 

7 I'd like to know is whether this is the process by which the 

8 Department expects us expects to be defining the data elements 

9 here. The language says, may be established among other, and 

10 it gives some examples. And what I'm wondering is whether this 

11 is where the Secretary will make the decisions about what 

12 those are or no, those are examples of what he may consider, 

13 among other things. And at some other point, the way the 

14 Scorecard was developed, metrics would be discussed with 

15 community, with students, with people who think about what 

16 supports student understanding and so forth because there are 

17 some concerns about those. So, it's a question about whether 

18 we're trying to at the end of this regulatory process, will 

19 these be defined and locked in or are they just examples here 

20 of what the requirements in two and three will go to? Let me 

21 give you two examples. I mentioned them, but just as we 

22 returned to this topic. What is a program for this purpose is 

23 important because the primary occupation is the program 

24 prepares students to enter? I'll go back to my example. Is it 

25 UCLA's bachelor's programs altogether or their bachelor's 

26 degree in history? And if that's a program, are these the 

27 primary occupations that people go into from UCLA's history 

28 program or from all history programs anywhere or from all 

29 bachelor's programs anywhere? So it may be that and is it in 

30 fact or what the institution proposes? If we don't have to 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 68

1 decide that today we can have those conversations with the 

2 relevant student advocates and policymakers and institutions. 

3 But I can see one school saying. In fact, our history program 

4 prepares people to be federal agency and legislative aides, to 

5 be reporters and to be high school teachers or wait a minute 

6 to be a high school teacher, you need additional 

7 certification. Do you do you need to say that on this list? 

8 It's rife with a lot of issues.

9 MR. MARTIN: I think I take that point, Jamie. I 

10 think we need to look at because you're certainly right that 

11 what, what, what, what is meant by a program can be oftentimes 

12 considered different at different types of institutions. And 

13 certainly, you're talking about a large four-year traditional 

14 type. Is the program the bachelor's degree in you know in arts 

15 and humanities or is it the history major? So, and the 

16 Department has, you know, here we're doing it by SOC code, 

17 which may not be. So, I get I get your I get your point. 

18 We'll, we'll have to since this is for all institutions, we'll 

19 have to take that back and think about it [interposing]. 

20 MS. STUDLEY: And the question is, the simplest one 

21 is if we're not negotiating them through this process and 

22 they're just examples, how specific does it need to be here, 

23 if that will be decided somewhere else and if it is going to 

24 be decided here, we need to know for the next round what the 

25 Department is thinking so that we can negotiate.

26 MR. MARTIN: Well, it will be. These will be 

27 determined through the Federal Register, was published in the 

28 Federal Register and there we would always, you know, give the 

29 ability to comment there. But I think that we should probably 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 69

1 think about the issue of program even outside of that of that 

2 that [interposing] process.

3 MS. STUDLEY: Sorry. Which of the many definitions of 

4 program because accreditors define programs that for certain 

5 review purposes and sub-changes and all the rest you have 

6 definitions of program that have different effects? Thank you.

7 MR. MARTIN: Thank you.

8 MS. JEFFRIES: Alright. Thank you, Jamie. Brad, we 

9 are two minutes from public comment and I need two minutes. Do 

10 you have something very quick to put out there?

11 MR. ADAMS: Yeah, can Steve or Greg just confirm for 

12 certain because I think it was a question 668.409 that does 

13 apply to all institutions. Is that accurate?

14 MR. MARTIN: That's correct.

15 MR. ADAMS: Thank you. And then the last thing, very 

16 fast. On this, where it says as per provided by the Secretary 

17 for debt and earnings, that would imply that I think you're 

18 getting data sent to you. So, we just need to understand what 

19 data do you need and how that's sent to you? And that's my two 

20 questions. Thank you.

21 MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks, Brad. Okay. With that, we're 

22 going to close the discussion on GE. I thank everyone for 

23 that. I want to thank you all for your hard work this week. 

24 But so, in preparation for your third and final session, March 

25 14th through the 18th, I told you this morning we would offer 

26 some additional guidelines to kind of help you in in in the 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 70

1 process between. So, we are highly recommending that the 

2 negotiators strive to have your proposals, be that red line 

3 regulatory text, bullet point, etcetera, preferably in a word 

4 document format to the Department, for the most part by 

5 February 25th. Yes, I realize that is one week from today. 

6 Alright. The reason for this recommendation is that by 

7 submitting them, by submitting them by then, the Department 

8 would then have approximately one week to consider them during 

9 the week of February 28 to 24 as they work on the amended text 

10 towards their aim to have the new amended text documents to 

11 you on or around March 7th, which is one week before your next 

12 session. So, if them being able to meet that goal would then 

13 allow you to have that last week before the session of March 

14 14th, 18th, through the 18th to review them in preparation for 

15 the session. So, the recommendations are built around the bulk 

16 of proposals being submitted one week from today, which is one 

17 week on the negotiators side. The Department would then have 

18 one week to utilize those and give them the consideration that 

19 they deserve and the Department wants to give and then get you 

20 back amended text with approximately one week for you to be 

21 able to review and utilize in preparation for the third and 

22 final session of this. That is not to say that if you have 

23 things after the 25th that you're not allowed to submit it, 

24 you should submit it, just knowing they need that, that that 

25 week. And like Johnson stated just a few minutes ago, it might 

26 be a little, you know he had submitted the one a little later 

27 and wasn't sure if they had time. So, you will be moving to 

28 consensus checks instead of temperature checks and consensus 

29 will be taken on each issue per protocols. There will be no 

30 grouping of issues and you will not have a consensus check on 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 71

1 the entire package. I will have additional opening statement 

2 on the third week to help guide you through that process. In 

3 the meantime, don't hesitate to reach out to me or anyone on 

4 the FMCS team if you need any guidance or assistance, okay? 

5 With that, Brady, can we move to our first speaker?

6 MR. ROBERTS: Absolutely, I just admitted Melissa 

7 Whitehurst, who's here representing themselves.

8 MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, thank you. Hi, Melissa.

9 MS. WHITEHURST: Hi, how are you?

10 MS. JEFFRIES: I'm wonderful. You will have three 

11 minutes to speak today, and that time starts whenever you are 

12 ready. So, the floor is yours. 

13 MS. WHITEHURST: Okay, thank you. I speak to you 

14 today about creating accessible education systems. Education 

15 should not be a one size fits all approach. It should be a 

16 dynamic and constantly evolving to meet the needs of millions 

17 of Americans. The rules and regulations formed at the federal 

18 level need to ensure that access to education is enduring, 

19 consistent and just which is why I'm writing this letter to 

20 you today. As a proud graduate of the University of Phoenix 

21 and as someone who's experienced the challenges and higher 

22 education, I'm grateful for that institution, like the 

23 University of Phoenix, which existed to provide a quality 

24 education on a flexible schedule. I was a single parent when I 

25 attended the university, and not only was I able to graduate 

26 and provide a better future for myself and for my family, but 

27 I was also fortunate enough to serve as an enrollment advisor 

28 for the College of Nursing and HealthCare. The experience gave 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 72

1 me the opportunity to help inspire thousands of others and 

2 encourage them on their path. Hearing their stories and 

3 listening to their struggles helped me realize that education 

4 in whatever form it takes needs to be accessible to everyone 

5 and respectful of all backgrounds. I encourage all elected 

6 officials to hear our stories and understand that higher 

7 education isn't just about graduation. It's about providing 

8 resources for all of us to succeed. Please consider all 

9 students when you decide to change the rules and regulations. 

10 Your decision, I'm sorry, your decisions and committees have 

11 real-world consequences. Thank you for taking the time to read 

12 my story and hear me out. I'd be happy to answer any questions 

13 or have any discussions.

14 MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you for that comment, Melissa, 

15 have a great weekend. Thanks for joining us today. Brady, who 

16 is next?

17 MR. ROBERTS: Cindy, I just admitted Daniel Drazen, 

18 who is a veteran representing themselves.

19 MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks. Daniel, are you there?

20 MR. ROBERTS: It looks like he might be, oh here he 

21 comes.

22 MS. JEFFRIES: Hi, Daniel, can you hear me?

23 MR. DRAZEN: Yes.

24 MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, perfect. Thanks for joining us 

25 this afternoon. You will have three minutes for comment and 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 73

1 those three minutes will start whenever you begin to speak. 

2 So, the floor is yours.

3 MR. DRAZEN: Okay, well, first, good afternoon. My 

4 name is Daniel Drazen, and I'm a U.S. Army National Guard 

5 veteran out of North Highlands, California. After serving 

6 overseas in Kuwait and Iraq, I came home and wanted to pursue 

7 a degree in military social work. I reached out to a few 

8 universities, and the University of Phoenix sold me on a 

9 program that would allow me to obtain this degree within a 

10 four-year period, including the bachelor's, and that I 

11 wouldn't have incur any out-of-pocket expenses. During the 

12 enrollment period, they had me apply for student loans. I 

13 think I got about $11,000 in student loans. And when I went to 

14 finish my bachelors, I inquired about the master's program 

15 because that was my main intent. The program was no longer 

16 around because it was not accredited by the state of 

17 California. Three fourths of my credits could only transfer to 

18 Sac State when I tried to enroll in their program, so I end up 

19 having to go back to school to American River College, which 

20 is a local junior college. My whole plan when I got back home, 

21 which was kind of thrown out the window because of my 

22 experience with University of Phoenix, and it's taken until

23 about this year for me to finally get into a master's program 

24 with the University of Southern California. Seven years later, 

25 after my bachelor's. So, I just wanted to share my story about 

26 the University of Phoenix's deceptive comments and progress in 

27 trying to entice veterans into their school with programs that 

28 do not meet state and national accreditation levels. They 

29 pulled a bait and switch and like, well, we don't have social 

30 work, but we have an MTF program. And my goal was to take the 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 74

1 master's degree so I could be a military social worker and 

2 commission. And you can't commission off the MTF program. [30 

3 seconds] And I just figured I'd share, I just figured I'd 

4 share my comments and experience.

5 MS. JEFFRIES: Great. Thank you, Daniel. Brady, who 

6 is next? 

7 MR. ROBERTS: I just admitted Emily DeVito, who is 

8 representing the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United 

9 States.

10 MS. JEFFRIES: Good afternoon, Emily.

11 MS. DEVITO: Good afternoon. Can you hear me?

12 MS. JEFFRIES: We sure can. Emily, you know, you know 

13 the routine here. You have three minutes to address this 

14 committee and the public, and that begins when you're ready to 

15 speak.

16 MS. DEVITO: Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is 

17 Emily DeVito, and I serve in the Veterans of Foreign Wars or 

18 VFW National Legislative Service. Thank you for the 

19 opportunity to share our comments today on issues being 

20 negotiated that will impact hundreds of thousands of veterans, 

21 military service members and their families who wish to pursue 

22 higher education to accomplish their goals through their 

23 earned Department of Defense and Veteran Affairs benefits. The 

24 VFW was thrilled when bipartisan effort last year to finally 

25 close the 90/10 loophole that long played plagued the military 

26 community and putting a target on their back and subjecting 

27 them to aggressive recruitment from institutions that would 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 75

1 ultimately not fulfill their promises. We thank the Department 

2 of Education and negotiators for their time towards meaningful 

3 and thoughtful rulemaking that will allow the long overdue 

4 closure of this loophole to stand the test of time. It's our 

5 hope that the proprietary institution community will continue 

6 to negotiate in good faith and work collaboratively with the 

7 veteran and military community to ensure language matches the 

8 intention behind the closure, which is to ensure that all 

9 federal tuition revenue collected by the institution is 

10 accounted for when applying for 90/10. We are an active-duty 

11 veteran and survivor community who continue to utilize 

12 education benefits that are paid directly to them. 

13 Specifically, Montgomery GI Bill Chapter 30 and Survivors and 

14 Dependents Educational Assistance Chapter 35, it's critical 

15 these tuition and fees are used in the calculation and the 

16 individuals are not left behind in these negotiations. 

17 Institutions with Chapter 30 and Chapter 35 students are 

18 already required to have school certifying officials who track 

19 the individuals receiving these payments as they certify their 

20 tuition and fees for the VA and are keenly aware of the 

21 student’s entitlements as they must collect their VA 

22 certificates of eligibility. As such, we hope proprietary 

23 institution negotiators will work in earnest to present a 

24 reasonable plan to account for these payments towards federal 

25 revenue. Neither we are nor military and veteran negotiators 

26 are asking for an accounting of housing payments or direct to 

27 student funds above and beyond the VA payments that are 

28 earmarked for tuition, specifically Chapter 30 and Chapter 35 

29 tuition payments, or to the extent that these VA payments 

30 exceed the tuition charged by the institution. We believe this 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 76

1 ask is reasonable, achievable and reflects the intent of the 

2 loophole closure for all students using DOD and VA benefits. 

3 We implore further conversations to not paint accounting for 

4 students using [30 seconds] Chapter 30 or Chapter 35 dollars 

5 as burdensome or unachievable, unachievable and have faith 

6 these negotiations will not leave behind those students. Thank 

7 you for our time to share our thoughts. And again, thank each 

8 of you for your commitment to improving higher education for 

9 all, including the military community.

10 MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Emily. Brady, who do we 

11 have next?

12 MR. ROBERTS: Cindy, I just admitted Linda Lopez, who 

13 is here representing themselves.

14 MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. I think she's connecting to 

15 audio. Good afternoon, Linda, can you hear me?

16 MS. LOPEZ: Yes, ma'am.

17 MS. JEFFRIES: Wonderful. You will have, thanks for 

18 joining us, and you will have three minutes for your public 

19 comment today and those three minutes will start whenever 

20 you're ready to start speaking, and the floor is yours at this 

21 point.

22 MS. LOPEZ: Very good. Thank you. Good afternoon. My 

23 name is Linda Lopez. I graduated from the University of Oregon 

24 at 58 years old, and I'm currently working with at-risk youth 

25 in Southern California. You see, my dreams of receiving a 

26 degree were almost crushed because of University of Phoenix, 

27 where I spent two years and nearly $20,000 dollars. I was a 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 77

1 perfect candidate for University of Phoenix and their 

2 recruiting team. I was their target demographic. I was a 

3 working mother with three kids and a daughter of immigrants 

4 with second grade education. I didn't have the role models to 

5 show me what a good education looks like or what the 

6 graduation or employment numbers mean. All the counselors told 

7 me, don't worry about the finances. You can do that. You need 

8 a break; you can take one. You know what that means. That's 

9 what drew me in. I wanted to move up in my career, and the 

10 school sold me on this idea that I can do it all in the 

11 evenings, maybe even just one evening. That would require less 

12 time for my family, and that would be less disruptive to my 

13 life. The problem is, once the bill starts coming because you 

14 took a break, you start struggling to figure out how to pay 

15 and manage it all. My relationships, my work suffered because 

16 of it. I couldn't afford to keep going and racking up more 

17 debt. I was starting to feel buried in it. When I began 

18 looking at University of Oregon, I learned that I could, I 

19 would need to start completely over. It was heartbreaking. My 

20 heart sank when I heard that not only was I still in debt with 

21 Phoenix, the two years that I spent there weren't even 

22 transferable credits to the to a community college where I 

23 started. With the help of grants and scholarships, I was able 

24 to finish three years of school at University of Oregon with 

25 less debt than what I had racked up at Phoenix. There were so 

26 many programs and resources that were never offered to me 

27 through University of Phoenix, and there were better suited to 

28 help a nontraditional student like me succeed. I'm sharing my 

29 story because my time at University of Phoenix as a Latina 

30 first gen mother working full time was more harmful than not. 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 78

1 Many first-generation Latinos don't have the mentorship or 

2 resources to help navigate them through higher education. I 

3 remember my friends and family felt so lucky just to finish 

4 high school and get a job right away. Just be happy with that. 

5 [30 seconds] When a school starts to target your community 

6 with ads that look or sound like, you think, well, maybe I can 

7 do this. And had I graduated from Phoenix, it used my story to 

8 add to a narrative of Latinas and nontraditional students. But 

9 the truth is that if I finish my degree with Phoenix, it would 

10 have only been because I thought I had no other choice. Thank 

11 you, guys, for your time.

12 MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Linda. You have a great 

13 weekend.

14 MS. LOPEZ: You as well. Bye.

15 MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks. Brady, who is up next?

16 MR. ROBERTS: Cindy, I just admitted Joe Collins, who 

17 is a U.S. Navy veteran and a congressional candidate in the 

18 state of California.

19 MS. JEFFRIES: He's connecting to audio. Good 

20 afternoon, Joe.

21 MR. COLLINS: Hey, how are you?

22 MS. JEFFRIES: Good, and thanks for adjusting your 

23 camera, I thought we were all going to be on our sides here. 

24 Appreciate it. Welcome. And you will have three minutes to 

25 address your public comments and that three-minute starts 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 79

1 whenever you are ready to speak, and I turn the floor over to 

2 you.

3 MR. COLLINS: Okay, yeah, well, I'm ready.

4 MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Go right ahead.

5 MR. COLLINS: Alright, my name is Joe Collins, I am a 

6 13-year U.S. Navy veteran. I sit on a board of a global 

7 development company. I also own a development and contracting 

8 company. And full disclosure, I am a U.S. congressional 

9 candidate here in California's 36th District. I exited the 

10 Navy in 2017 and began the pursuit of higher education 

11 utilizing my post-9/11 GI Bill. During this time, among other 

12 service-related injuries, I found out that my spinal cord was 

13 separated in two different places, rendering me 100 percent 

14 disabled, ineligible and ineligible for gainful employment. 

15 The definition of gainful employment refers to an employment 

16 situation where the employee receives steady work and payment 

17 from an employer that allows for self-sufficiency. Under 34 

18 CFR 668 eligible programs, it insists that gainful employment 

19 is employment in a recognized occupation that a person is 

20 trained in. I also want to speak towards the discharge of 

21 Federal Student Loans. As you know, veterans who are 100 

22 percent disabled will have their Federal Student Loans 

23 automatically discharged without their knowledge. This 

24 automatically, this automatic discharge of Federal Student 

25 Loans ultimately prevents that veteran from continuing the 

26 pursuit for higher education if they run out of VA benefits. 

27 Because once they are discharged, that veteran must get a 

28 letter from a qualified physician stating that that veteran is 

29 able to participate in gainful employment in accordance with 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 80

1 34 CFR 668. So, what I would like to do is encourage the U.S. 

2 Department of Education to do two things. One, regarding 

3 automatic discharge of Federal Student Loans, allow that to be 

4 an option for that veteran to have those loans discharged. And 

5 two, if you can expand the definition of gainful employment to 

6 consider those persons who cannot get employment, but who owns 

7 businesses and who sit on boards of other businesses and 

8 persons who receive other sources of incomes outside of 

9 employment. Thank you.

10 MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Joe, appreciate it, you 

11 have a wonderful weekend and thanks for your service.

12 MR. COLLINS: You as well, thank you.

13 MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks. Brady, who is next?

14 MR. ROBERTS: Cindy, I just admitted Desrine Prayer, 

15 who's here representing Lincoln Institute or Lincoln Technical 

16 Institute. Apologies.

17 MS. JEFFRIES: Connecting to audio. Brady, it looks 

18 like her connection is taking quite a bit of time, could you 

19 let someone else in?

20 MR. ROBERTS: Yeah, I can message her and I can go to 

21 the next speaker. The next speaker is Andrew Gillen, who's 

22 here on behalf of the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

23 MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you. Good afternoon, Andrew, can 

24 you hear me?

25 MR. GILLEN: Yes, I can.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 81

1 MS. JEFFRIES: Wonderful. Welcome, and thanks for 

2 your time. You have three minutes to speak and those three 

3 minutes will begin when you're ready. And so, I'll turn it 

4 over to you. Go ahead.

5 MR. GILLEN: Great. Thank you. So, thank you. I'd 

6 like to discuss the gainful employment potential regulations. 

7 So, we I work for the Texas Public Policy Foundation and we 

8 just put out a report on gainful employment this week. And 

9 essentially what we did was we [background talking] so we 

10 we've got a couple of main findings, so the first thing is we 

11 identified two great improvements that gainful employment made 

12 to the accountability landscape that we would love to see 

13 replicated. So, the first of those was the focus on program 

14 level outcomes. So, program level outcomes are so much better 

15 as an accountability tool and as a consumer information tool 

16 than institutional level data. So, we'd really love to see 

17 that replicated as well. The second thing that we love to see 

18 replicated is incorporating earnings outcomes into results. 

19 This is something that prior to 2014 gainful employment 

20 regulations the Federal Government had not really done. There 

21 had been a little bit of transparency work, but nothing, 

22 nothing on the accountability front. So that was that was also 

23 a refreshing and a great improvement that we would love to see 

24 replicated. The main problem that we saw with gainful 

25 employment was the selective application of accountability. 

26 And of course, this was due to the kind of definition of 

27 vocational which captured all the for-profits and then the 

28 non-degree public and private nonprofit. And what we found 

29 when we when we analyzed essentially what we did was we 

30 applied the old gainful employment rule to the new College 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 82

1 Scorecard data. And when you do that, you can apply it to all 

2 the higher education, not just the traditionally defined 

3 gainful employment programs. And what you find when you do 

4 that is that for-profits, instead of accounting for 98 percent 

5 of failing of programs that fail the original gainful 

6 employment regulations, they account for 11 percent of 

7 programs. And so, what that means is that if you if you just 

8 reissue gainful employment in the 2014 kind of iteration, 

9 we're basically going to miss about 89 percent of programs 

10 that would be failing gainful employment. So, this is this is 

11 kind of my caution to the committee is that we we've got some 

12 things that we should replicate in the program level 

13 evaluation and the focus on earnings outcomes. But [30 

14 seconds] problem. And so that's my that's my recommendation, 

15 and I would be happy if anybody on the committee would like to 

16 see the report, I'd be happy to send it to you.

17 MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you very much, Andrew. Have a 

18 wonderful weekend. Desrine, can you hear me? Can you try and 

19 unmute yourself?

20 MS. PRAYER: I'm unmuted, can you hear me?

21 MS. JEFFRIES: We certainly can. Thank you.

22 MS. PRAYER: Hi. 

23 MS. JEFFRIES: Welcome. You will have three minutes 

24 Desrine to address the committee and that three minute begins 

25 as soon as you are ready to speak, so go for it.

26 MS. PRAYER: Alrighty. Thank you, I'll start now. 

27 Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Desrine Prayer. I am a 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 83

1 current student in the practical nursing program at Lincoln 

2 Technical Institute. Thank you for allowing me to share my 

3 experiences with you today. I always knew I was interested in 

4 nursing and to please my parents, I did pursue a degree in 

5 business administration at Penn State, but I never finished. 

6 Instead, I worked in customer service and recruiting. During 

7 COVID, I lost my job and I was looking for a career that would 

8 provide job stability. I am currently working as a home care 

9 aide Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., except on 

10 Wednesdays when I work a 12-hour shift. Because of my 

11 experience as a home care aide and knowledge of the nursing 

12 shortages, I did decide to pursue my goal of becoming a nurse. 

13 I believe this job will provide me with job stability and 

14 allow me to take care of my family. Now, when I started to 

15 look for nursing programs, I looked at traditional and 

16 community colleges. I tried to enroll in these schools, but 

17 they had long waited lists. And even if you were put on a 

18 waiting list, there was no guarantee that you would even get a 

19 spot. To me, this is very frustrating at 35 years old, as I 

20 did not have years to wait to see if I would be, you know, or 

21 might be admitted into a program. I continued searching and I 

22 came across Lincoln Technical Institute's practical nursing 

23 program. As single parent, flexibility was extremely important 

24 for me. I needed to be able to work to take care of my family 

25 and go to school. Lincoln Tech Lincoln Tech's Program allowed 

26 me this flexibility. Right now, I'm taking night classes on 

27 Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. and I have 

28 classes every other weekend. This flexibility was not offered 

29 at other schools, and without it, I most likely would not be 

30 able to study to become a nurse. Another positive was that I 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 84

1 was able to start the program right away. I'm proud to say 

2 that I'm on the path to becoming a licensed practical nurse. 

3 At this time, I have no free time, but it's all worth it 

4 because I'm working harder than I ever did to gain the skills 

5 that I need to become a nurse. The protections being discussed 

6 today should apply to all students in all sectors. I urge you 

7 to consider listening to students like myself. I chose to 

8 attend the school that best fit my needs and work with my busy 

9 schedule. All nursing students, no matter what type of 

10 institution we attend, we all must pass a state NCLEX exam. 

11 And when I become a nurse, my patients will not care about 

12 what state or what school I went to, but more so about me 

13 passing the exam that I need to show that I am qualified to 

14 work on them as a licensed practical nurse. And that is all. 

15 Thank you for your time.

16 MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you very much, Desrine. You have 

17 a wonderful weekend.

18 MS. PRAYER: You as well, thank you.

19 MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks. Brady, who is next, please?

20 MR. ROBERTS: Cindy, I just admitted Patrick 

21 Thompson, who's the president of the Nurtur Aveda and the 

22 Aveda Fredric Institutes.

23 MS. JEFFRIES: Alright, thank you. Good afternoon, 

24 Patrick. Can you hear me, okay?

25 MR. THOMPSON: I can hear you just fine. Thank you. 

26 Can you hear me?
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 85

1 MS. JEFFRIES: Perfectly. Thank you. Patrick, you 

2 have three minutes for your public comment this afternoon. So, 

3 whenever you're ready, please begin, your three minutes will 

4 start then.

5 MR. THOMPSON: Okay, great. I want to start by 

6 thanking you for allowing me the time to address you today 

7 with some of my concerns about the proposed rules. I think you 

8 introduced that I'm the owner of the Nurtur Aveda Institutes 

9 and the Aveda Fredric's Institutes, and I also own two salons 

10 and spas in the Columbus, Ohio, market. Over the course of the 

11 week, you've heard many of my Aveda colleagues addressing our 

12 concerns with this proposed rulemaking, including the lack of 

13 representation in the negotiations, changes to the allowable 

14 credit hours that conflicts with state law, gainful employment 

15 earnings metrics, the underreporting of income and the lack of 

16 an appeal process. Aveda was founded by Horst Rechelbacher to 

17 encourage a lifetime of learning environmental responsibility 

18 and giving back to society. I expect that many of you are 

19 familiar with Aveda products and salons. You may not be as 

20 familiar with our schools, which are called the Aveda 

21 Institutes. The Aveda Institutes were founded to create 

22 successful entrepreneurs in the hair, skin and nail, 

23 esthetics, makeup, massage, and total body wellness areas. Our 

24 students are educated by experienced and licensed 

25 professionals who teach the theory behind each service, as 

26 well as the hands-on application, blending professional 

27 techniques with innovative curricula to build student 

28 expertise. The Aveda Institute network encompasses 63 schools 

29 across the country, preparing over 9,500 students annually for 

30 careers as cosmetologists, barbers, estheticians, and massage 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 86

1 therapists. As a network of schools, we have strong student 

2 outcomes. Our average graduation rate is 81.4 percent. Our 

3 average licensure rate is 94.2 percent. Our average placement 

4 rate is 69.4 percent, well more than accreditors standards. 

5 These are strong outcomes that demonstrate the success of our 

6 students and our programs. Thus, I question why you would put 

7 in place regulations that place any of these programs at the 

8 risk of being eliminated. The Aveda Institute also has a 

9 shared goal of minimizing student debt. To this, I would again 

10 point to our network statistics. Aveda Institute's average 

11 median debt is $8,633 dollars. The Aveda Institute's average 

12 monthly loan payment is $83 dollars. The committee and allied 

13 research groups have attacked our graduate earnings as a 

14 weakness and have even accused us of gaming audited graduate 

15 earning surveys used in the prior GE appeals process. [30 

16 seconds] [Inaudible] Excuse me? 

17 MR. WAGNER: You have 30 seconds remaining.

18 MR. THOMPSON: Okay, I want you to know that this is 

19 not the case and it's not true. The reality is that two of our 

20 schools filed appeals to the GE earnings data and the SSA 

21 database, and those audited surveys demonstrated earnings at 

22 least 50 percent higher than the SSA earnings. If the 

23 Department has chosen to remove the appeals process altogether 

24 and rely solely on flawed black box data that a court has 

25 previously found to be inadequate for testing purposes. The 

26 real issue here is that if enacted, the proposed rules would 

27 eliminate the right to due process. While this may be more 

28 convenient and efficient for the Department29 MR. WAGNER: Your time is completed.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 87

1 MR. THOMPSON: -of basic constitutional principles. 

2 Thank you very much.

3 MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Patrick. 

4 MR. THOMPSON: Yes.

5 MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, sir. We appreciate your 

6 time and your comments.

7 MR. THOMPSON: Thank you.

8 MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks. Brady, we have time for one 

9 more we're going to squeeze in here.

10 MR. ROBERTS: Alright. I just admitted Valerie 

11 Ferrie, who is here representing the Rizzieri Aveda School.

12 MS. FERRIE: Hi, thank, thank you. Good afternoon. My 

13 name is Valerie Ferrie, and I'm the director of the Rizzieri 

14 Aveda School in New Jersey, and I appreciate the opportunity 

15 to provide public comment. I want to be clear that we support 

16 strong accountability metrics that ensure students achieve 

17 graduation and career goals. We also support transparency and 

18 data transparency that students and their families have the 

19 information they need to make an informed choice. Toward this 

20 end, we applaud the recent updates to the College Scorecard, 

21 in particular the release of institution level earnings data, 

22 which provide an overall sense of career outcome for alumni of 

23 the institution. This transparency is imperative for students 

24 and parents. [Inaudible] in the gainful employment rule, I 

25 would ask that you seek to promote transparency for all 

26 institutions. Why not make debt to earnings metrics a 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 88

1 disclosure under section 668.43 or better yet, an 

2 administrative capability requirement? All institutions, 

3 whether publicly funded or private, that prepare their 

4 graduates to sit for an examination for licensure should be 

5 held to the same standard. Whether a student graduates from 

6 cosmetology school, law school, medical school, etcetera, any 

7 gainful employment criteria that intends to protect students 

8 so that their postgraduate income is sufficient to cover their 

9 educational debt, should protect students of all institutions, 

10 not just students who attend proprietary schools. I'd also 

11 like to address my concerns about student earnings. You've 

12 heard several commenters this week talk about the 

13 underreporting of income. You've also heard of the efforts to 

14 work with the Senate Finance Committee and the IRS to address 

15 this issue. To date, it remains an issue that has not yet been 

16 addressed. Please, consider these concerns and contemplate 

17 ways the regulations can adequately address this issue of 

18 underreporting in a fair manner. I arrive at all these points 

19 from a thoughtful position. As director of our school, I'm 

20 committed to our students and their success. We are a family21 owned operation that opened in 1924 and we were the first 

22 beauty school in the state of New Jersey. Our school has 

23 strong student outcomes. Our completion rate is 86 percent. 

24 Our licensure rate is 99 percent and our placement rate is 69 

25 percent. Our median total debt is $5,500 dollars and our 

26 average monthly loan payment is $55 dollars. These are strong 

27 outcomes, and they demonstrate the success of our students. 

28 [30 seconds] When, thank you. When compared to two and four29 year colleges, our rates are far superior. So, thank you for 

30 taking the time to hear me today, and I hope that you consider 
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 89

1 my suggestions and look for ways to fairly or ensure 

2 accountability and transparency for all institutions. Thank 

3 you so much.

4 MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you very much, Valerie. Have a 

5 great weekend.

6 MS. FERRIE: Thank you, you do the same.

7 MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks. Alright. That concludes public 

8 comment time for today. We want to appreciate everyone who 

9 participated. Committee, you did a fantastic job this week. 

10 Please go have a long, good, nice weekend.

11 STATE OF NEW JERSEY

12 I, Jamie Young, Shorthand Reporter in and for the 

13 State of New Jersey, do hereby certify that the above and 

14 foregoing contains a true and correct transcription of the 

15 public hearing that was held by the Department of Education 

16 virtually, on February 18, 2022.

17 Certified by me this 27th day of February 2022.

18 JAMIE YOUNG

19 Precise Transcripts

20 45 North Broad St.

21 Ridgewood, NJ 07450

22 (201) 677-8496 

23 Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary 

24 Education
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 90

1 Zoom Chat Transcript

2 Institutional and Programmatic Eligibility Committee 

3 Session 2, Day 5, Afternoon, February 18, 2022

4 From Amanda Martinez (P-Civil Rights) to Everyone:

5 I have a process question before we get into this 

6 section

7 From Adam Welle, MN AGO to Everyone:

8 Yael is stepping in for me for state AGs. Thanks.

9 From Carney King (A) Students and Student Loan 

10 Borrowers to Everyone:

11 I second Amanda

12 From Carolyn Fast to Everyone:

13 +1 to Amanda about scheduling for next session

14 From Travis Horr (P) Servicemembers & vets to 

15 Everyone:

16 +1 to Amanda

17 From Anne Kress (P) Comm College to Everyone:

18 +1 to reordering issues as noted by Amanda and Brad

19 From Yael Shavit State AGs (A) to Everyone:

20 +1 to Amanda

21 From David Socolow (A) State agencies to Everyone:
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 91

1 +1 to Amanda's request that March session start with 

2 GE & 90/10

3 From Debbie Cochrane (P), State agencies to 

4 Everyone:

5 David Socolow is coming to the table

6 From Barmak Nassirian (A) Servicemembers & Vets to 

7 Everyone:

8 I think the effort to sort out the federal component 

9 of non-federal grants is likely not to be worth the trouble. I 

10 think Jamie's comment about the state decision process 

11 essentially satisfying the purpose of 90/10 is correct. Trying 

12 to track comingled federal funds is just false precision and 

13 will vastly complicate compliance.

14 From David Socolow (A) State agencies to Everyone:

15 (4)(ii) could also refer to SNAP Employment and 

16 Training and TANF job training funds

17 From Jaylon Herbin (A) Consumer and Civil Rights to 

18 Everyone:

19 +1 to David's comment

20 From Brad Adams (P - Proprietary Institutions) to 

21 Everyone:

22 +1 to Barmak’s comment "I think the effort to sort 

23 out the federal component of non-federal grants is likely not 

24 to be worth the trouble."
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 92

1 From Jaylon Herbin (A) Consumer and Civil Rights to 

2 Everyone:

3 +1 to Yael's comment on ISA

4 From Amanda Martinez (P-Civil Rights) to Everyone:

5 +1 Yael

6 From Travis Horr (P) Servicemembers & vets to 

7 Everyone:

8 +1 to Yael

9 From Carolyn Fast to Everyone:

10 +1 to Yael

11 From Carney King (A) Students and Student Loan 

12 Borrowers to Everyone:

13 +1 Yael

14 From Johnson (P) Legal Aid to Everyone:

15 +1 to Yael on ISA and other fintech ideas that 

16 facilitate 90/10 gaming

17 From Debbie Cochrane (P), State agencies to 

18 Everyone:

19 +1 Yael related to ISAs and that eliminating 

20 ambiguity is critical for the rule to work as intended.

21 From Amanda Martinez (P-Civil Rights) to Everyone:
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 93

1 Support stronger language here given this growing 

2 problem. Many students ineligible for federal or state aid are 

3 extremely vulnerable to rely on these types of products to pay 

4 for their education. ED should get at this problem head on and 

5 up front.

6 From David Socolow (A) State agencies to Everyone:

7 +1 to Yael: ISAs could be the next trick that 

8 institutions use to get around the language in 

9 668.28(a)(6)(vii) about "loans"; don't let this rule open a 

10 new loophole.

11 From Brad Adams (P - Proprietary Institutions) to 

12 Everyone:

13 here is my proposed language that removes words 

14 without recourse. (i)Any amount from the proceeds of the 

15 factoring or sale of accounts receivable or institutional 

16 loans that were sold with recourse.

17 From Amanda Martinez (P-Civil Rights) to Everyone:

18 +1 Jaylon

19 From Carolyn Fast to Everyone:

20 +1 Jaylon. Permitting schools to use the amount 

21 repaid on institutional loans seems to create an incentive for 

22 schools to use aggressive debt collection practices to 

23 address. This is a concern.

24 From Jaylon Herbin (A) Consumer and Civil Rights to 

25 Everyone:
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 94

1 Again, students are free to take out loans from 

2 institutional or private sources. We simply do not want these 

3 revenues to be incentivized in this regulation. We understand 

4 that, but there is ample evidence that institutions are using 

5 extremely aggressive debt collections tactics such as 

6 transcript withholding to collect these loans. 

7 From Johnson (P) Legal Aid to Everyone:

8 on Brad's comment that sale of accounts receivable 

9 should be counted as revenue, I would point out that account 

10 balances can increase after enrollment based on new fees that 

11 were not disclosed adequately to students, so such new debt 

12 could be gamed under 90/10 to the huge detriment of students.

13 From Brad Adams (P - Proprietary Institutions) to 

14 Everyone:

15 some students receive partial GI benefits

16 From Brad Adams (P - Proprietary Institutions) to 

17 Everyone:

18 I do not know how we could possibly know

19 From Brad Adams (P - Proprietary Institutions) to 

20 Everyone:

21 if we messed it up it would be an audit finding

22 From Carney King (A) Students and Student Loan 

23 Borrowers to Everyone:

24 +1 Johnson
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 95

1 From Brad Adams (P - Proprietary Institutions) to 

2 Everyone:

3 +1 to Dave's comment. that is my main concern is 

4 that this would be the first-time money would be included that 

5 is not hitting the student's ledger card.

6 From Johnson (P) Legal Aid to Everyone:

7 +1 Travis on need to protect vets from exploitation

8 From Amanda Martinez (P-Civil Rights) to Everyone:

9 +1 Johnson

10 From Carney King (A) Students and Student Loan 

11 Borrowers to Everyone:

12 Ernest will be returning to the table for 

13 Students/Loan Borrowers

14 From Brady FMCS Facilitator to Everyone:

15 I appreciate the incredulity

16 From Jaylon Herbin (A) Consumer and Civil Rights to 

17 Everyone:

18 Carolyn will be returning to the table

19 From Brad Adams (P - Proprietary Institutions) to 

20 Everyone:

21 Michael will come to the table for ATB
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 96

1 From Debbie Cochrane (P), State agencies to 

2 Everyone:

3 David Socolow will continue to represent state 

4 agencies for ATB

5 From Emmanual Guillory (A-PNPs) to Everyone:

6 Kelli will be coming back for ATB

7 From Anne Kress (P) Comm College to Everyone:

8 Will Durden will be coming back in for 2 Year 

9 Colleges for ATB

10 From Brad Adams (P - Proprietary Institutions) to 

11 Everyone:

12 I am coming back to the table

13 From Ernest Ezeugo (P) Students & Student Loan 

14 Borrowers to Everyone:

15 David's explanations were very compelling. I support 

16 the language he and Johnson submitted on ATB.

17 From Anne Kress (P) Comm College to Everyone:

18 I’m coming back in for Two Year Colleges.

19 From Debbie Cochrane (P), State agencies to 

20 Everyone:

21 I am coming back to the table as well for state 

22 agencies.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 97

1 From Jamie Studley to Everyone:

2 I would like to come back to a brief comment on 

3 668.409, and 668.43, the disc of which was very truncated.

4 From Kelli Perry - (P) Private Non-Profit 

5 Institutions to Everyone:

6 Emmanual will be coming back to table for GE

7 From Brad Adams (P - Proprietary Institutions) to 

8 Everyone:

9 I also agree with Jamie to look at 668.43 again if 

10 there is time.

11 From Johnson (P) Legal Aid to Everyone:

12 +1 on Brad's request for data on GE

13 From Debbie Cochrane (P), State agencies to 

14 Everyone:

15 +1 to Brad's request for data to help guide this 

16 discussion, including on outcomes associated with the 

17 additional accountability metrics being put on the table.

18 From Brad Adams (P - Proprietary Institutions) to 

19 Everyone:

20 +1 to Amanda. The data modelling from Adam around 

21 low income would be helpful.

22 From Anne Kress (P) Comm College to Everyone:

23 +1 to Brad’s request on data
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 98

1 From Barmak Nassirian (A) Servicemembers & Vets to 

2 Everyone:

3 As I mentioned during the GE conversation, I 

4 strongly support the addition of a HS earnings threshold to 

5 passing a.DTE and d.DTE rates as a requirement. Waivers can be 

6 granted for exceptional circumstances.

7 From Yael Shavit State AGs (A) to Everyone:

8 +1 Barmak

9 From Marvin Smith (P) 4 Year Publics to Everyone:

10 + 1 Barmak

11 From Ernest Ezeugo (P) Students & Student Loan 

12 Borrowers to Everyone:

13 +1 Anne on careful suggestion around wage metrics, 

14 that was compelling.

15 From Ernest Ezeugo (P) Students & Student Loan 

16 Borrowers to Everyone:

17 +1 to Barmak as well.

18 From Brad Adams (P - Proprietary Institutions) to 

19 Everyone:

20 +1 on Jamie's to try to keep it simple comment

21 From Brad Adams (P - Proprietary Institutions) to 

22 Everyone:
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 99

1 Can the Department provide data applying each of the 

2 four metrics to all programs at all institutions at the four3 and six-digit CIP codes with a n-size of at least 30 

4 graduates?

5 From Johnson (P) Legal Aid to Everyone:

6 +1 on Jamie's comments

7 From Anne Kress (P) Comm College to Everyone:

8 +1 Jamie

9 From Ernest Ezeugo (P) Students & Student Loan 

10 Borrowers to Everyone:

11 Jamie's comments on simplicity resonate, +1.

12 From Johnson (P) Legal Aid to Everyone:

13 If we could get data on Pell recipients and 

14 earnings, that would be helpful.

15 From Anne Kress (P) Comm College to Everyone:

16 Also want to +1 Jamie’s request to go back to 668.43

17 From Brad Adams (P - Proprietary Institutions) to 

18 Everyone:

19 +1 to Jamie to move 668.409 to 668.43

20 From Anne Kress (P) Comm College to Everyone:

21 +1 Jamie’s question
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 100

1 From Laura Razar King (A) Accrediting Agencies to 

2 Everyone:

3 What if the history program prepares students for 

4 law school?

5 From Carolyn Fast to Everyone:

6 +1 to Jaime that 668.409 should be moved out of the 

7 Gainful Employment Rule, because it applies to all 

8 institutions. May make more sense to include in section 

9 addressing program participation agreements.

10 From Brad Adams (P - Proprietary Institutions) to 

11 Everyone:

12 Cindy, thank you for giving us a deadline. That is 

13 helpful.

14 From Brad Adams (P - Proprietary Institutions) to 

15 Everyone:

16 it will be a busy week, but it is good to know the 

17 date.

18 From Gregory Martin ED Negotiator to Everyone:

19 Thank you everyone. It has been my privilege to work 

20 with all of you this week.

21 From Brad Adams (P - Proprietary Institutions) to 

22 Everyone:

23 Thanks Greg. Hope you have a great weekend and get 

24 some rest.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 101

1 From Ernest Ezeugo (P) Students & Student Loan 

2 Borrowers to Everyone:

3 Thank you, Greg, for your patience and efforts. They 

4 are appreciated!

5 From Emmanual Guillory (A-PNPs) o Everyone:

6 In relation to our conversation about the cohort 

7 size, I just wanted to share what the Department has 

8 previously said regarding it when releasing the 2014 rule, "As 

9 discussed in the NPRM, we believe a minimum n-size of 30 is a 

10 more appropriate threshold for the D/E rates measure when it 

11 is used as an accountability metric—not because it would be 

12 invalid at a minimum n-size of 10, but because even slight 

13 statistical imprecision could lead to mischaracterizing a 

14 program as zone or failing which would precipitate substantial 

15 negative consequences, such as requiring programs to warn 

16 students they could lose eligibility for title IV, HEA program 

17 funds. Given these consequences, we believe it is more 

18 appropriate to set the minimum n-size at 30 for accountability 

19 determinations. So, even though an n-size of 10 would provide 

20 a sufficiently precise measure of D/E rates, our analysis 

21 shows an n-size of 30 is more appropriate because it reduces 

22 the possibility of mischaracterizing a program as zone or 

23 failing in a year. From Emmanual Guillory (A-PNPs) to 

24 Everyone:

25 Thank you, Greg, our facilitators, everyone at the 

26 Department, and everyone on the committee for all your work 

27 this week!

28 From Jamie Studley to Everyone:
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 102

1 Adding to the chorus appreciating Greg and the whole 

2 ED team for your patience, preparation, and responsiveness. 

3 And yeah, for FMCS, too.

4 From Brad Adams (P - Proprietary Institutions) to 

5 Everyone:

6 +1 on Emmanual cohort size comment.

7 From Anne Kress (P) Comm College to Everyone:

8 Thank you, Greg! And thanks to the FMCS team! And, 

9 to our tireless committee!

10 From David Socolow (A) State agencies to Everyone:

11 +1 thanks to ED, FMCS, and all the committee 

12 members!

13 From Sam Veeder (she/her/hers) to Everyone:

14 +1 Anne and David

15 From Ernest Ezeugo (P) Students & Student Loan 

16 Borrowers to Everyone:

17 Thank you to FMCS and to the committee. Hopefully 

18 all of us will commit to getting some rest this weekend.

19 From Johnson (P) Legal Aid to Everyone:

20 +1 to Greg, Cindy and FMS and DOE team

21 From Yael Shavit State AGs (A) to Everyone:

22 Thank you everyone for the hard work.
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 103

1 From Debbie Cochrane (P), State agencies to 

2 Everyone:

3 Thank you everyone, and especially to ED and FMCS 

4 for shepherding us through so much this week.

5 From David Socolow (A) State agencies to Everyone:

6 +1 thanks to ED, FMCS, and all the committee

7 members!

8 From Sam Veeder (she/her/hers) to Everyone:

9 +1 Anne and David

10 From Ernest Ezeugo (P) Students & Student Loan 

11 Borrowers to Everyone:

12 Thank you to FMCS and to the committee. Hopefully 

13 all of us will commit to getting some rest this weekend.

14 From Johnson (P) Legal Aid to Everyone:

15 +1 to Greg, Cindy and FMS and DOE team

16 From Yael Shavit State AGs (A) to Everyone:

17 Thank you everyone for the hard work.

18 From Debbie Cochrane (P), State agencies to 

19 Everyone:

20 Thank you everyone, and especially to ED and FMCS 

21 for shepherding us through so much this week.

22 From Cindy-FMCS Facilitator to Everyone:
Committee Meetings - 02/18/22 104

1 Thank you all for your kind words and recognition.

2 It is our pleasure to work with all of you and look forward to 

3 the March session.

4 From Kelli Perry - (P) Private Non-Profit 

5 Institutions to Everyone:

6 Thank you everyone! Good conversations. Hope you all 

7 have a great weekend!

8 From Desrine to Everyone:

9 yes