Update: Career College Lobbyists Finally Admit Defeat in Budget Battle

For-profit college lobbyists finally admitted defeat today in their effort to get Congress to include a controversial provision blocking the U.S. Department of Education from issuing a final regulation on “Gainful Employment” in the spending bill it will be voting on this week to finance the government for the remainder of the 2011 fiscal year.

“It’s unfortunate that there wasn’t majority support in the final Continuing Resolution negotiation for pushing the pause button on this rush to misguided regulation that unfairly singles out our schools,” Harris Miller, the president of the organization formerly known as the Career College Association, stated in a press release the group issued this afternoon.

On Saturday, Higher Ed Watch broke the news that the budget deal that the White House and Congressional leaders reached did not include the provision, which would have prohibited the Education Department from finalizing a rule rule that aims to prevent unscrupulous for-profit colleges from overloading financially needy students with unmanageable levels of debt. This was one of several hot-button policy riders House Republicans were pushing that the White House rejected.

At first, the career college group refused to acknowledge that the battle was over. On Saturday afternoon, the career college group sent out an alert to its members saying that the issue was “NOT yes resolved,” and urged them to redouble their efforts to contact key lawmakers.

But aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) made clear in interviews with journalists (see here and here) that the issue had been resolved and that the provision was dead.

While CCA’s Miller finally threw in the towel today, he made clear that he saw this as only a temporary setback in the group’s efforts to push this provision. “It won’t stop our efforts to fight for our schools and our students,” he stated.