End Washington’s war on technical schools
This month, I introduced the Promoting Access and Revenue Integrity Through Institutional Transparency Act, the PARITY Act. The bill does one thing: It repeals the federal government’s discriminatory 90/10 rule and finally puts technical schools on a level playing field with the rest of higher education.
For years, federal regulators have bent the rules to serve political interests rather than students, and the 90/10 rule is a textbook example. It applies to one narrow slice of higher education, the institutions that train America’s nurses, electricians, mechanics, and welders. They alone must prove that at least 10% of their revenue comes from nonfederal sources. Public and private nonprofit universities are exempt.
If the same rule were applied across the board, 80% of public two-year colleges and 40% of public four-year institutions would fail. The 90/10 rule was never an honest measure of program quality. It was a tool the Obama and Biden administrations used to suppress competition and steer students toward more expensive and more liberal universities.
In other words, the same schools that bear primary responsibility for the $1.8 trillion student debt crisis, many that manage endowments worth billions of dollars, got a carve-out from their allies in Washington.
The damage falls hardest on the students Washington claims to protect. Career colleges disproportionately serve veterans and working-class people. They are not shopping for a luxury campus experience. They want affordable, practical training that fits around a job and doesn’t leave them deeply in debt. The 90/10 rule pushed them out of programs that fit their lives.
Nowhere is that paternalism more damaging than in how the rule treats our veterans. GI Bill benefits belong to veterans, not bureaucrats. Yet, thanks to a Biden administration rule change, the 90/10 rule now restricts where veterans can spend the education benefits they earned. Telling a Marine veteran who wishes to pursue a career as a plumber or a welder that he can only use his benefits at a four-year university only puts him deep into student debt and delays his career.
Congress has already moved past this rule. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Donald Trump last year, built an outcomes-based education framework that applies to every institution, regardless of structure. We now measure whether students graduate, get hired, and enroll in programs that pay off. With those guardrails already in place, the 90/10 rule is not just unfair, it is redundant.
Repealing the 90/10 rule is also what the workforce needs. Career colleges train more than 7 in 10 medical assistants, nearly 1 in 5 nurses, and over a third of electricians. Enrollment at these schools grew over 20% between 2019 and 2024, the fastest rate in all of higher education. Politicians need to realize that a credential that leads directly to a skilled job is worth more than a debt-financed degree.
The PARITY Act reflects a broad consensus. Veterans organizations, including the National Defense Committee, the American GI Forum, Vietnam Veterans of America, and the Korean War Veterans Association, have endorsed the bill, alongside Consumer Action for a Strong Economy, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, and the 60 Plus Association. They agree here because the 90/10 rule fails students, fails veterans, and fails the workforce.
With outcomes-based accountability already in place, anyone still defending the 90/10 rule is no longer defending students. They are defending university professors and administrators. Congress should send the PARITY Act to Trump’s desk.
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