The Department of Education rejected two recent calls to improve its monitoring of the financial health of colleges and universities -- despite findings that its metrics predicted only half of institutional closures in recent years.
A Government Accountability Office report released Wednesday found that the risk measure the department uses to assess colleges' financial health is badly out of date. While the department agreed to improve communication about how it calculates that measure, it rejected a call to improve the metric. And the Office of Federal Student Aid separately turned down recommendations to strengthen the data it collects for oversight of institutions.
Both developments came weeks after Secretary Betsy DeVos and her Federal Student Aid chief, A. Wayne Johnson, announced with few accompanying details that FSA was taking a more "comprehensive" approach to oversight. Departmental oversight applies to all colleges that receive federal aid, but those seeking more scrutiny have been concerned about for-profit institutions and some financially troubled small private nonprofit colleges at risk of closure.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/21/department-ed-rejects-calls-update-oversight-measures