Dive Brief:

• The Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities has filed a lawsuit challenging the U.S. Department of Education’s gainful employment regulations.
• The industry group argues in the lawsuit that the new regulations, issued last week, will limit student access to education, Reuters reports.
• The new rules also seek to regulate institutions for outcomes that are beyond their control, according to the association, because of the individual employment choices of students, job-market conditions, and the financial circumstances of the students.

Dive Insight:

The gainful employment rules are an attempt by the education department to hold colleges — mostly for-profit schools — accountable for the employment success of their students after graduation. For-profit schools have been inundated with criticism about saddling their students with debt and providing an education that does little or nothing to improve their employment prospects. A legal challenge was expected — a previous attempt to create stricter rules for for-profit colleges was struck down by a U.S. district court in 2012 — and the new rules were softened from earlier proposals, in part to help them withstand a lawsuit.