Tag: UPCEA

Now witness the firepower of this fully written and delivered WCET / UPCEA /Sloan-C letter!

– D. Poulin

One of the policies that we’re tracking at e-Literate is the proposed State Authorization regulation that the US Department of Education (DOE) has been pushing. The latest DOE language represents a dramatic increase in federal control of distance education and in bureaucratic compliance required of institutions and states. In the most recent post we shared a letter from WCET, UPCEA and Sloan-C to Secretary Duncan at the DOE.

What does it take to get all of the higher education institutions and associations to agree? Apparently the answer is for the Department of Education to propose its new State Authorization regulations. [snip]

Here’s what is newsworthy – the idea and proposed language is so damaging to innovation in higher ed (which the DOE so fervently supports in theory) and so burdensome to institutions and state regulators that three higher ed associations have banded together to oppose the proposed rules. WCET (WICHE Cooperative on Educational Technologies), UPCEA (University Professional and Continuing Education Association) and Sloan-C (Sloan Consortium) wrote a letter to Secretary Arne Duncan calling for the DOE to reconsider their planned State Authorization regulations.

While it is unclear how direct an impact the letter had, yesterday brought welcome news from Ted Mitchell at the DOE: they have effectively paused their efforts to introduce new State Authorization regulations. As described at Inside Higher Ed: (more…)

What does it take to get all of the higher education institutions and associations to agree? Apparently the answer is for the Department of Education to propose its new State Authorization regulations.

As part of DOE’s negotiated rulemaking process over the past half year representatives from schools (Columbia University, Youngstown State University, Benedict College, Santa Barbara City College, Clemson University, MIT, Capella University) to higher ed associations (WCET) were unanimous in their rejection of the proposed State Authorization rules. As Russ Poulin wrote for WCET:

On Tuesday May 20, the Committee we had our final vote on the proposed language. I voted “no.” I was joined in withholding consent by all the representatives of every higher education sector. Nine out of sixteen negotiators voting “no” is a high ratio.

Note that only one of the mentioned groups is a for-profit university – the purported offenders causing the need for the regulations. I wrote a post arguing that the proposed rules represented a dramatic increase in control over distance education that would cause a significant increase in compliance and administrative overhead for both colleges / universities and for states themselves.

In the end, predictably, the rulemaking process ended in a lack of consensus that allows the DOE to propose whatever language they desire. The latest proposal was from DOE, and it would make sense for the final proposal to follow this language closely.

Here’s what is newsworthy – the idea and proposed language is so damaging to innovation in higher ed (which the DOE so fervently supports in theory) and so burdensome to institutions and state regulators that three higher ed associations have banded together to oppose the proposed rules. WCET (WICHE Cooperative on Educational Technologies), UPCEA (University Professional and Continuing Education Association) and Sloan-C (Sloan Consortium) wrote a letter to Secretary Arne Duncan calling for the DOE to reconsider their planned State Authorization regulations. As the intro states [emphasis added]: (more…)