The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, U.S. Department of Education held its Winter 2023 meeting from February 28 to March 2. Committee members raised various questions and concerns about the processes and policies of accreditor recognition. During the discussion, the establishment of a subcommittee was proposed to explore and report back on various topics. During the subsequent four months, this subcommittee quickly agreed on the topics on which to focus, drafted issue papers, sought input from Department staff, and discussed the topics at several meetings. The group also reached out to institutional accreditors, including both former regional and national accreditors, programmatic accreditors, faith-based accreditors, and consumer representatives to seek their thoughts on policy areas of interest. A report was prepared that included the following topics: accreditor complaint policies, the federal link, public members, and outcomes/student achievement.
Each item was discussed from the perspective of: Concerns and Recommendations. For example, a Concern regarding outcomes/student achievement is that rather than requiring the accrediting agency to “assess” an institution’s success – as required by the statute – the regulations simply require the accrediting agency to “set forth clear expectations.” The regulation’s wording anticipates no follow-up by agencies on the question of whether expectations were met. (The change from “assess” to “set forth…” could be a violation of the prohibition on regulations regarding the standards). A Recommendation is that the regulations should be amended to mirror the statutory requirement that an accrediting agency’s standards “assess” institutions, in addition to setting clear expectations. The Subcommittee believes a simple and clear way to make both the statute and regulation more effective would be to better clarify what it means for an agency to have a standard (or standards) that “assess” an institution’s success with regard to student achievement. The report can be obtained at https://sites.ed.gov/naciqi/files/2023/07/Regulations-Subcommittee-Draft-Report_Final_2023-07-17-004.pdf.
National Postsecondary Student Aid Study
A report issued by the U.S. Department of Education in July 2023 represents a First Look at Student Financial Aid Estimates for 2019–20. The most comprehensive national study of student financing of postsecondary education in the United States, the document includes information for about 80,800 undergraduate students and 19,700 graduate students attending 2,200 postsecondary institutions in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. This report also describes the percentages of students receiving various types of financial aid and average amounts received, by type of institution attended, gender, race/ethnicity, attendance pattern, and income level. Percentages and average amounts additionally are described by dependency status for undergraduate students and by graduate program for graduate students. Supplemental tables feature state-level percentages of students receiving aid and average amounts received by undergraduate students. The report is available at https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2023/2023466.pdf.
Proposed Regulations On Distance Education And State Authorization
The American Council on Education on July 18, 2023 in collaboration with the Presidents Forum hosted a discussion on Capitol Hill to examine the Department of Education’s (ED) draft regulations regarding distance education and state authorization. Panelists explored how ED’s proposed rules to upend the current state reciprocity agreement would create challenges for institutions offering distance education courses and their students, while also discussing a better way forward. As part of a more than 1,000 page draft rule released in May 2023, ED proposed undoing the state reciprocity agreement by requiring institutions to meet all state consumer protection laws related to recruitment, closure, and misrepresentation where distance education is offered, regardless of National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (NC-SARA) participation. Forty-nine states participate in NC-SARA, a voluntary agreement that provides national standards for interstate postsecondary distance education. The Association of Schools of Advancing Health Professions (ASAHP) joined with other organizations in sending a letter to the ED Secretary on June 20, 2023 warning that some of the department’s proposals would be problematic.