California Requires Pro Training Standards That Don’t Involve Stick & Rudder Education

On October 11, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill 48, the California Private Postsecondary Education Act of 2009. To summarize the act’s 57 pages of tiny type, it gives students a financial parachute should the private school they attend run out of gas or suffer an operational or structural failure. 

Most public and private schools accredited by agencies recognized by the Department of Education are not affected by new California requirements because they are imposed by the accrediting agency, all of which charge hefty fees for the service. The Act is for schools with no outside oversight of their business operations.

Which might be why the proposed regs that put the Act to work lift the exemption once enjoyed by FAA-approved  flight schools. If approved, says National Air Transportation Association, to operate in the state, schools that train commercial pilots must  pay a $5,000 fee and earn approval from the Bureau of Private Postsecondary  Education, just like every other private school that educates people for a profession.

This application for approval requires third-party audited financial statements showing that the school has at least a 1:1 asset to debit ratio and requires it to pay 0.75 percent of its annual revenue to the California Student Tuition Recovery Fund, along with with other admin and recordkeeping requirements.

Understandably, this doesn’t sit well with flight schools. NATA President Jim Coyne wrote Governor Schwarzenegger a letter urging him to reconsider the flight school requirements:

“This legislation and the ensuing regulations are intended to ensure that students pursuing post-secondary education in the State of California are treated fairly and receive a quality education,” writes Coyne. “My concern arises from the fact that AB 48 removes the exemption for FAA-approved pilot schools….The inclusion of flight training…imposes a series of requirements, designed for larger classroom-type institutions on the unique and primarily small business-owned flight training industry.”

Not to go all Jon Stewart here, but isn’t this just another example of the bifurcated logic that has kept professional pilot training trapped in the 1950s? We want students to get a good education and to be treated fairly by schools, except when someone asks us to grow up and walk our talk of being credible institutions that provide a top notch education for serious students who want to be a professional pilot.

Yeah, the requirements are tough, demanding, and expensive. So what? Nobody ever said education was easy. As highlighted in the ongoing discussion in Pro Pilot Training Evolving to Industry Needs, what makes pilot training any different than the education required for other professions, from medicine and the law to plumbing and cosmetology?

Absolutely nothing.

Some schools have a lot of money tied up in classrooms. So do flight schools, except that some of their classrooms fly. It’s still a classroom. What matters most to any profession is the quality of education delivered in it. There’s no denying that toeing the line on California’s new requirement will hurt, and it will kill some schools, but if it makes for better professional pilot training, and improves the reputation of the industry that provides it, aviation will be the better for it. — Scott Spangler