Because nothing in this country can be “for profit”, the Obama administration just proposed set of rules on for-profit colleges.

Turns out the new ones are based on others tossed out by a federal judge as “arbitrary” and “capricious”.

Michael Stratford of Inside Higher Ed files this report:

The Obama administration’s unveiling Friday of a proposed set of rules aimed at clamping down on career education programs, mostly at for-profit colleges is, in some ways, just the latest flashpoint in a years-long battle with the controversial sector of higher education.But the proposed rules also tee up what is expected to be another round of voracious debate and intense lobbying to influence the final regulations that the administration plans to issue by November, so that they will take effect next July.

The 841-page proposal is the Department of Education’s first official attempt at rewriting “gainful employment” regulations that were largely gutted in 2012 by a federal judge, who ruled that some aspects of the rules were illegal because they were arbitrary and capricious.

As soon as the new proposal is published in the Federal Register — which could happen in the next several days — it will kick off a 60-day public comment period that will be followed by another White House review of the impact of the regulations.

And in a sign of how contentious and charged the coming months may be, the only thing that all sides agreed on Friday was just how much they didn’t like the administration’s proposal.

Consumer advocates and critics of for-profit colleges blasted the proposal as not going far enough to snuff out what they see as predatory practices in the industry. For-profit college supporters also sharply criticized the rules, but said it was too harsh and would harm the millions of students who rely on their institutions.

Under the proposal, the Education Department would kick vocational programs out of the federal student aid program if they don’t satisfy two different standards relating to student loan debt.

…Programs would have to fail one of the standards for at least a couple of years before being cut off from federal student aid. But in a one-year snapshot the department provided Thursday, nearly one in five vocational programs would either fail the metrics outright or be in the warning zone, bumping up against the thresholds.