Dive Brief:

• The for-profit college industry’s trade association is calling the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed gainful-employment regulation "flawed, arbitrary, and biased."
• The gainful-employment rule would cut federal student aid for career-focused programs — including those at non-profit colleges — where the default rate on student loans or the student loan debt relative to students' income are too high.
• The Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, or Apscu, says the proposal will deny access to education for as many as 7.5 million students over a 10-year period, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

Dive Insight:

Today is the deadline for public comments on the proposal. The American Council on Education says the regulation falls short and asks for exemptions for when a program has few students who borrow and then default, and when the loan amounts are small. Also, the council questions the number of reporting requirements that would be imposed on colleges. Three dozen members of the U.S. House of Representatives, on both sides of the aisle, are seeking to bar the department from implementing the rule. And a coalition of student, veteran, and consumer-advocate groups, and Democratic members of Congress, are asking the department to make the proposed rule stronger.