Obama's War on Workers

The Obama Administration wants to eliminate jobs and make more people dependent on the government.  There simply isn’t any other way to put it.  They have turned their sites on for-profit, non-traditional colleges, like trade schools and continuing-ed programs for those who are seeking additional skills or training in a competitive job market.  From Derek Hunter at Townhall:

For the last few years, the Obama administration has waged a war against for-profit colleges, higher education institutions whose student body is made up of non-traditional students – older and poorer – seeking to obtain marketable skills in this weak economy. The Department of Education has been attempting to impose new regulations on these schools, restricting student loans for applicants, which would shut many of them down and limit higher education options for millions of students.

While every college-bound student would undoubtedly love to attend Columbia or Harvard, that’s simply not in the cards for most people. For the rest of us, it’s smaller schools, cheaper schools, state schools.

But a four-year college isn’t for everyone, especially right out of high school. Some people, myself included, aren’t mentally ready for college right out of high school, and many more simply want to learn a trade. That’s who the Obama administration is targeting with their latest attempt to regulate for-profit schools out of existence.

Dirty Jobs‘ Mike Rowe has said, “Today, skilled trades are in demand. In fact, there are 3 million jobs out there that companies are having a hard time filling.”

So, why is the Obama Administration targeting these schools providing the skills for these jobs?  As usual, liberals want to be the ones who pick winners and losers in business, education and income.  More from Hunter:

But this isn’t a simple rule, it’s 845 pages of regulations. And it’s not meant to stop students from making bad decisions. It is a series of flaming hoops for-profit colleges will need to jump through, meant to make it impossible for students to choose a school the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue deems unworthy. As is always the case with these massive regulations, they’re written without regard to the fact that these schools are the prefect fit for millions, and the only option for many.

Even the Washington Post agrees that these regulations will be devastating to these educational institutions.

It is hard, though, to see the logic of requiring schools that serve a challenging population of poor and working-class students to meet 845 pages of cumbersome standards that even many traditional schools would be hard-pressed to meet, particularly since the wrongdoers are in the minority and new protections have already been put in place.

…

Public comment on the draft ends May 27. Administration officials told us that they are open to all ideas and that nothing is set in stone. We hope that’s so, because the likely outcome of implementing the draft as written is that schools will admit only students who pose the least risk. That will make it harder for minorities, poor people and nontraditional students to get the kind of post-secondary education that might help them improve their lives.

Comments for the regulations reports, ironically called “Gainful Employment,” can be posted here.