Under the Obama administration, the Education Department discouraged students from attending for-profit colleges, arguing recently
that the data showed “community colleges offer a better deal than comparable programs at for-profit colleges with higher price tags.”
The for-profit sector has about 8 percent of those enrolled in higher education, according
to the Education Department, but it has 15 percent of subsidized student loans.
In addition, Jerry L. Falwell Jr., an evangelical Christian leader who is president of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va.,
said he had been asked by Mr. Trump to lead an education task force dedicated to limiting “overreaching regulation.”
“The goal is to pare it back and give colleges and their accrediting agencies more leeway in governing
their affairs,” Mr. Falwell said in an interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Mr. Gunderson said his group also wanted to overturn the decision to shut down the largest accreditor of for-profit colleges, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, and give it a year to repair the failings
that prompted the Education Department to shut it down last year.
Barmak Nassirian, director of federal relations and policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, said Mr. Trump had made several encouraging general comments about higher education —
that tuition is too high, that free speech should be protected and that student debt repayment should be based on income.