(Congress Report) – A former official with the Department of Education has expressed deep concern over a new regulatory agenda that has been put out by the Biden administration that he believes could have an adverse impact on religious colleges and universities that are involved in the student loan program. And that, of course, would likely be the entire point of such an agenda, as religion, particularly the Christian faith, is a huge impediment to the furthering of the radical progressive agenda, which involves brainwashing young people to view the government as their surrogate parent as a means of creating loyalty.
Sounds nutty when you say it out loud, but if you are familiar with the strategies employed by the left, and if you aren’t you should be, they state fairly clearly this is their goal.
Jeremiah Poff, an Education Reporter for the Washington Examiner, reported that the Biden administration announced a week ago that it plans to revisit the Department of Education regulations concerning a whole host of issues this year, including the topic of accreditation, student loan deferments, distance education, and several others, according to Inside Higher Ed.
“Bob Eitel, the co-founder and president of the Defense of Freedom Institute and a former senior counselor to the secretary of Education, said the decision to revisit the accreditation rule is notable because the rule implemented in July 2020 by the Trump administration was the product of a lengthy rule-making process that achieved consensus from stakeholders,” Poff commented.
“That the Biden Education Department would take it upon themselves to undo that consensus doesn’t make any sense,” Eitel stated during an interview with the Washington Examiner. “[And] given some of the anti-faith postures taken by the department in the Biden administration on issues of religion and faith and culture, anybody who attends a faith-based institution should be very concerned about what the department might do.”
“The former education official explained that the regulations implemented in 2020 by the Trump administration and then-Secretary Betsy DeVos contained a number of ‘important changes’ that were aimed at protecting religious colleges and universities from accrediting agencies that sought to force such schools to adopt curriculum requirements that violated their religious beliefs,” Poff continued.
Eitel noted that he fully expects the current administration to get rid of those protections “because these issues bleed into their priorities regarding gender identity and the rights of transgender students and individuals.”
With these protections gone, religious colleges and universities that object to certain requirements from the accrediting agency on religious grounds might end up disqualified from Title IV funding, the federal financial aid program, which requires institutions that participate in the program to be accredited in order for students to be eligible for federal student loans.
“The issue here historically has been that accreditation agencies — whether they are agencies that accredit institutions or whether they’re agencies that accredit certain programs — often will require faith-based schools to adhere to accreditation requirements that are based in diversity, equity and inclusion or affirmative action, or directly implicate issues of LGBTQ rights in a way that contradicts the faith or the teachings of that faith-based institution,” Eitel explained to the Washington Examiner.
“Potentially problematic requirements pushed by accrediting agencies had previously ranged from curriculum standards to student and residential life policies, Eitel said. The DeVos-era regulation prohibited such requirements, thus protecting religious schools from accrediting agencies that would have otherwise refused to accredit them and thus disqualifying the institution from Title IV funding,” Poff added.
Eitel then explained that being disqualified from Title IV could be a total disaster, going on to refer to the student loan program as the “lifeblood” of these kinds of institutions.
“The current rule reads that a creditor must respect the institutional religious mission of a faith-based institution,” he declared. “My concern is that the Biden Education Department will work to undo that protection for schools controlled by religious organizations.”
However, while he’s worried about the content of the regulatory agenda, Eitel also remarked that he has doubts about whether or not the department will actually have the time needed to implement it before the end of Biden’s term.
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