The secretary of Wisconsin’s Department of Safety and Professional Services sought to reassure the state’s for-profit college oversight board Tuesday that a proposal to shift responsibility for regulating those schools to her agency would not weaken supervision of the industry. But members of the Educational Approval Board were skeptical of whether the state department would have the expertise to scrutinize for-profit schools and protect their students, and voted to oppose the plan in Gov. Scott Walker’s budget. “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” board chairman Don Madelung said. “We’re not broken.” Walker’s proposal would eliminate the agency’s board and shift its staffers’ jobs to DSPS. Speaking to EAB members, DSPS officials pitched the move as a way to complement the agency’s efforts by maintaining its 6½ full-time staff positions and pairing them with the larger department’s legal counsel, investigators, consumer complaint division and other resources. “If the EAB does go away, nothing else would,” Secretary Laura Gutierrez said. “I don’t think the regulations, I don’t think your best practices (or) the way you do business would go away. “We would be protecting the students, and that would be our focus.” Consumer advocates and government regulators have been critical of the for-profit college industry, saying some of its schools use misleading marketing and offer expensive programs that are of questionable value to graduates on the job market. After facing increased scrutiny during the Obama administration, experts anticipate for-profit schools will experience less federal oversight under President Donald Trump, which could make the role of state regulators more significant. Walker advanced a similar plan two years ago to shutter the EAB, which legislators later removed from the budget — something Madelung praised Tuesday as “common sense.” Unlike the proposal Walker announced this year, that plan would have consolidated the work of the EAB’s staff and board into a single part-time employee. Sti