CPIL, CAI and others Submit Comment on Rulemaking Re CSAAVE

SAN DIEGO (December 10, 2018) – University of San Diego (USD) School of Law’s Children’s Advocacy Institute (CAI), Center for Public Interest Law (CPIL), and other agencies submitted public comment on Rulemaking to Title 12 California Code of Regulations regarding CSAAVE Title 38 approval of post-secondary institutions.

Representing veterans, consumers, students, and children the groups offered public comment in support of, and requesting modest corrections and additions to, certain sections of Title 12, Division 2, Chapter 3, subchapter 3.6, of the California Code of Federal Regulations. 

The proposed regulations simply memorialize existing applicable law and, thus, offer consistency and transparency to how CSAAVE implements its already-existing duty of approving Title 38 funding to educational institutions. Regulations such as the ones proposed not only promote government efficiency in decision-making but when, as here, significant discretion is given to approving agency, regulations such as the ones proposed are practically required to avoid underground rulemaking banned by Government Code section 11340.5(a).

Title 38 funding is intended to provide education opportunity for American veterans who have often suffered unimagined sacrifices for the common good.  Studies and litigation have shown that a significant number of institutions receiving Title 38 taxpayer funds do not provide baseline education.  The public comment states that government reports examining student for-profit colleges have found lower success rates that similar students at public and nonprofit colleges.  Some of the for-profit colleges with the lowest graduation rates, questionable retention rates, and higher loan default rates are those that that cost taxpayers the most money. Veterans are most aggressively recruited by for-profit colleges with lower graduation rates, lower retention rates, and higher cohort default rates, than other institutions (schools) the veterans could attend if they had the information and counseling to do so.

Although the most serious abuses have centered in the for-profit education sector, they are not confined to that sector and, consequently, the proposed regulations appropriately apply identically to all Title 38 possible institutions.

As part of the public comment, Robert Muth, Managing Attorney on the Veterans Legal Clinic at USD, lays out just some of the stories of veterans harmed by the current practice. The Clinic has assisted hundreds of individual veterans who have lost their precious Title 38 benefits to predatory for-profit education businesses.

The proposed regulations modestly gather in one place and clarify the application of existing federal and state requirements. They offer predictability for institutions and students alike and, with the modest and precedented additions offered in the group’s public comment, will constitute an enduring veteran-protecting legacy for CSAAVE.

Read the full Comments submitted by CAI, CPIL, Veterans Legal Clinic, HERA, Public Counsel, and Public Law Center here.

About the University of San Diego School of Law

Each year, USD educates approximately 800 Juris Doctor and graduate law students from throughout the United States and around the world.  The law school is best known for its offerings in the areas of business and corporate law, constitutional law, intellectual property, international and comparative law, public interest and taxation.

USD School of Law is one of the 84 law schools elected to the Order of the Coif, a national honor society for law school graduates.  The law school's faculty is a strong group of outstanding scholars and teachers with national and international reputations and currently ranks 36th nationally among U.S. law faculties in scholarly impact and 29th nationally in past-year faculty downloads on the Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN). The school is accredited by the American Bar Association and is a member of the Association of American Law Schools. Founded in 1954, the law school is part of the University of San Diego, a private, independent, Roman Catholic university chartered in 1949.