Oversight of Trade Schools
Your editorial titled “A Lesson in Overkill” (March 27) is a perfect lesson in overkill itself. You overstate the positive impact of the 1989 Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education Act and understate the onerous burden that law has imposed on private, taxpaying post-secondary institutions.
These institutions are not advocating the elimination of the 1989 act. We want a state agency to keep the schools on their toes and implement the law fairly.
However, The Times confuses “aggressive” regulation by the American Council on Education with firm, fair and functioning oversight. If the Legislature adopted all of the changes that the California Assn. of Private Postsecondary Schools advocates to the law and to AB 71, a bill promoted by the critics of private post-secondary education, California would still have the toughest state licensing law in the United States.
Private post-secondary institutions annually train more than 440,000 students, generate approximately $1.4 billion in local economic activity, pay more than $121 million in state taxes and save the state $243 million in funds that would otherwise have to be appropriated to serve just the 113,000 students enrolled in degree programs alone.
No one is trying to “turn back the clock” or end “oversight of trade schools” as you suggest. We are proposing to make the clock work properly.
WILLIAM C. CLOHAN JR.
Executive Director
CAPPS, Seal Beach
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