WCET Testimony on Proposed Distance Ed. Federal Regulations

As previously reported, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) recently revived the regulatory process it began last summer to address financial aid fraud concerns related to distance education and expanded it to resurrect the department’s previously overturned distance education state authorization regulation. Our colleagues at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) and the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET) testified at a May 30^th public hearing about the process, with Russ Poulin, WCET’s deputy director for research and analysis, specifically addressing the regulatory areas the pending rule-making process will cover. The testimony Poulin provided on behalf of WCET addresses a number of key points, including the following:

• WCET urged federal regulators to adopt a principle for distance education regulation that I believe the EDUCAUSE community would generally support—“Regulations should not differentiate by mode of instruction unless the regulations are actually about the tools used in the mode of instruction.” In essence, WCET makes the argument that technology and distance education modalities are so intertwined with “the traditional academic program” that it no longer makes sense to consider regulations on financial aid, for example, that differentiate how students are treated based on the way in which they pursue their coursework. Instead, federal regulators should focus on helping the higher education community to ensure high-quality, effective, and affordable educational options in whatever ways best meet students’ needs.
• On the effort to restore the federal regulation on distance education state authorization, WCET stressed the importance of providing a multi-year time horizon for implementing any regulation. In part, this recommendation is based on the continuing challenges institutions face in achieving state authorization across the myriad of processes and standards that the different states require. However, it also relates to the ongoing effort to establish a state authorization reciprocity agreement (SARA), which would facilitate the goals of all of the stakeholders concerned—institutions, states, and federal regulators—in advancing effective and appropriate state and federal oversight. In this context, WCET urged ED officials to make good on their expressed support for the SARA process by allowing the time necessary to implement it, and thus enable states and institutions to thereby meet the proposed federal requirements.
• In addition, WCET endorsed the comments EDUCAUSE had previously submitted on the financial aid fraud rule-making process prior to its recently announced expansion. They re-emphasized the concerns EDUCAUSE expressed about the technical steps to combat financial aid fraud that the department’s inspector general had proposed. They also highlighted our recommendation that ED look to potential higher education-based, higher education-led solutions on identity verification and management, such as the CommIT project, for more appropriate, effective, and cost-effective ways of addressing shared needs in this space.

The public comment period is now closed. However, the ED web page for this process identifies how one may access the public comments submitted for it, and the page is likely to be a good source of information on the rule-making process as it proceeds. The next step will entail a request for nominations of community representatives to serve on the rule-making team, which should come fairly soon since ED would like to start negotiations on possible regulations this September.