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Will Hubbard Unfortunately, it seems the department is more focused on culture war type topics versus up their sleeves and getting the real work of accreditation reform done. The reality is culture wars, you know, it affects such a small percentage of the population and not an unimportant percentage, but that’s not how you’re going to fix the system by addressing issues related to these topics. So we just really would like to see accreditation actually focus on real standards and real outcomes, more so than having these strange culture war competitions and the department’s approach largely to this issue has been to focus on adding more accreditors. And the reality is that it doesn’t matter if there’s five accreditors or 5,000 accreditors. It’s the standards that ultimately are what’s important.

Terry Gerton Is the Department of Education taking in voices like Veterans Education Success as they’re considering accreditation?

Will Hubbard We brought two student veterans to town recently and have more coming. One was a veteran themselves and one was a military spouse. And they tried to speak at the Department of Education proceedings in the first round of negotiations on the rulemaking and they were denied the opportunity to speak, which is atypical. Normally what the department allows at the end of each day is a public comment period so that anybody following the proceedings and any member of the public can share their particular perspective or voice on the issue, and that was something they were denied. So we were incredibly, you know, disappointed to see that, but it frankly, it wasn’t quite a surprise that this department is continuing to not allow for a wide variety voices in the conversation.

Terry Gerton While these hearings are unfolding, veterans and military spouses and children are still choosing schools and spending benefits that they can’t get back. So what does all of this uncertainty mean for folks who are trying to rebuild their careers and families right now using GI Bill benefits?

Will Hubbard You highlight a critical point, which is, if an individual uses their GI bill and finds themselves in a situation where they realize it was a scam operation or it was a very low quality experience and the marketplace is not reacting to their degree or credential, there’s nothing for them to do except try to move on with their life. There’s no way for them to get their benefits back, unlike traditional students that may be using a Department of Education money or grants or loans. There are processes for them to get them restored, if, for example, courts find that it was fraudulent, so they can get their benefits back. But veterans and their family members are actually the only ones that are left out of that equation, because right now there’s no statutory authority for the Department of Veterans Affairs to actually give those GI Bill benefits back, and that’s something we’re working very hard to change.

Terry Gerton Will, walk us through a couple of examples of what this feels like from someone who’s in the middle of it. You say you brought those two folks in to speak in the hearings. What was their experience like?

Will Hubbard It’s incredible to see these individuals who’ve had such difficult experiences with higher education, to see them advocate to legislators and their staff on Capitol Hill and in various departments and agencies. And there’s such pain, but also passion to make it different because they know that they’re speaking on not only their behalf, but also their family, their friends, colleagues they’ve worked with, and frankly, everybody else that’s coming behind them. So, it’s powerful to watch, but it’s difficult to see it and understand that the system right now is not recognizing these concerns as valid, and that’s something that we’re working very hard to affect in a positive way, and we’re always grateful for students who are willing to speak up because that’s how you get it done.

Terry Gerton From the advocacy community’s perspective, like yours, what kind of changes would you hope might be put in place to prevent the challenges we’ve just been discussing?

Will Hubbard There’s a number of very common sense changes that need to happen on the front end. For example, if a school is about to go out of business and collapse suddenly, there’s nothing stopping that from being the case for GI Bill benefits purposes. Or if a individual is teaching a class under Title 38 benefits, there’s no requirement that they have any expertise whatsoever in the material that they’re teaching. You can quite literally pluck a person off the street and have them teach advanced physics. And there’s nothing saying that that’s not a problem under Title 38 right now. So, there’s a number of very common sense changes we’d like to see. And that’s, you know, we call that program approval standards. For a program or a school to be approved in the first place for GI Bill eligibility, they should meet very basic criteria. And there are, frankly, very minimal standards at present. So, that’s something that we would like to affect.