Addressing Gainful Employment « EMSI | Economic Modeling Specialists Inc.

Gainful Employment: How EMSI Can Help

New gainful employment regulations from the U.S. Department of Education -- what the Chronicle of Higher Education has called "a game-changer for all in higher education" -- have already begun to take effect. The underlying goal of the new rules is to push for-profit colleges and non-profits with vocational programs to become more responsive to the needs of their markets. Which is exactly why EMSI developed Career Coach, our career guidance web tool, several years ago.

This page is devoted to showcase what EMSI has developed to help colleges comply with gainful employment regulations. For more, watch the video below or email Rob Sentz. EMSI GE Video

Our Solution

With Career Coach and our custom program-to-occupation mapping, EMSI has created widgets aimed at displaying the mandatory disclosure information on relevant program pages that the Department of Education has outlined to remain Title IV compliant. This information includes:

  • The occupation(s) by SOC code each program trains for;
  • Links to occupational profiles on O*NET;
  • Costs associated with each program;
  • On-time completion and job placement rates by program;
  • Median debt load incurred by students to complete the program.

Colleges across the U.S. have implemented the simple widget on each of their GE program pages. Placing a widget on your site is as simple as cutting and pasting one line of HTML code that we provide, similar to embedding a YouTube video.

You’ll notice that the template doesn’t actually include a space for the college to enter the occupation code and links to O*NET that the program trains for. That’s because we automatically take care of those elements for the colleges who have purchased the GE program widgets.

Widget Example

To see an example of how this looks once implemented, please visit Montgomery County Community College’s website. You can see the gainful employment widget below or by clicking here, and MCCC's Career Coach here.

Helpful Links

Here are a number of other links and resources surrounding the gainful employment issue:

Important update: The reporting deadline for information on GE programs for 2010-11 has been pushed back from October to November 15, 2011. The original date of October 1, 2011 still stands for program years 2006-07 though 2009-10, although the Department of Education will accept data through November 15 for previous years as well.

The LinkedIn group led by Marylin Newell has been a great source for info.

The Information for Financial Aid Professionals (IFAP) site has a lot of great information about gainful employment. The following are some of the most pertinent pages:

Is a program a "gainful employment" program? This series of questions helps you to determine if the gainful employment rules apply.

The GE User Guide, is a handy summary and guide to the new rules - along with very detailed templates for reporting.

This page features more summaries on the definition of GE programs.