I’m hearing a lot of denial around this. People are saying “it won’t happen, there will be a lawsuit.” Even if there is a lawsuit that moves forward…I think this post should make it clear to anyone that the damage is going to be done before anything could “fix” it. Once a school closes, it’s really hard to come back and say “whoops, well the rule is now changed so let’s reopen.” And regardless, these accountability metrics are not going to go away. It may be changed to something else by a new administration… but students aren’t paying their loans back! Everybody is on income-based repayment (IBR) and it doesn’t make sense for the government to loan money that it’s not going to get back. So if it’s not the earnings premium metric, it will be the gainful earning metric in its place. The problem must be solved.

And for schools who think they will not be affected by this because their enrollment numbers are too low for them metric to be applied or because they don’t take Title IV money — if you’re in a state that only allows an ACAHM-approved route, and more than ten schools close, the program is also not viable towards licensure because the accreditor will be in financial crisis.

The smart move here is a CONTINGENCY PLAN. Make a life raft. How can you do that right now? You can work to make sure that we’ve got non-ACAHM routes forward to licensure in each state AND pivot your program. Night classes and weekend classes allow students to work while going through the program and that’s how it was done in the 80s. It’s time for some out of the box thinking here.