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August 20, 2008
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News, Views and Careers for All of Higher Education
Aug. 1
HEA: A Huge, Exacting Accountability Bill
If a bill’s impact or importance were measured by its length or the amount of time Congress spent working on it, the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HR 4137) would be one for the ages. At more than 1,150 pages, the bill is about 20 times longer than the Higher Education Act of 1965 that it modifies, creating 64 new programs and touching on issues as diverse as the availability of Pell Grants and illegal downloading of digital music and video. And the legislation, which finally passed both the House and the Senate by overwhelmingly margins on Thursday, has been in discussion on Capitol Hill, in one form or another, for most of this decade. It is five years overdue.
Related stories
- NIH’s Billion-Dollar Boost Gains Ground, June 25
- Demise of a Good Idea, May 22
- Top U.S. Higher Ed Official Resigns, May 15
- Fundamental Differences, Dec. 20
- Rate of Tuition Increases Is Up, Oct. 23
Of course, neither length nor gestation period matters a whit in assessing the significance or quality of a piece of legislation. What counts is how much the measure does to fix the problems or improve the situation it is designed to address, and that, in many ways, cannot be meaningfully gauged until the bill has become law and had a chance to play out for a few years.
But that shouldn’t (or, in this case, won’t) stop the intrepid journalist from engaging in a little instant analysis. Do the bill’s pros outweigh its cons? Does it attack the major problems facing higher education and the country, and are its solutions likely to make a difference? And does the legislation’s approach represent a change — positively or negatively — in the U.S. government’s relationship with higher education, in ways that are likely to affect colleges and students?
It’s no surprise that the legislation’s framers offer a glowingly positive assessment. “Today’s students face daunting obstacles on the path to college, from skyrocketing tuition prices to predatory student lending tactics,” said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House of Representatives Education and Labor Committee. “This landmark bipartisan legislation will address these challenges and create a higher education system that is more consumer-friendly, fairer, and easier to navigate.” Combined with the budget reconciliation legislation that Congress passed last year after splitting it off from the Higher Education Act renewal — the budget measure shifted more than $20 billion in student lender subsidies to bolster grant and loan support for students — Congress has made it significantly easier for Americans to enroll in and afford college, Miller said.
In their comments about the legislation, Congressional sponsors very much wrapped the bill in the shorthand language that has increasingly become in vogue to use to describe the problems facing higher education today, focusing on “accessibility,” “affordability,” and “accountability.” To expand access and make college more affordable, the bill aims to simplify the process of applying for federal student aid, make Pell Grants available year-round, forgive loans for students who enter high-demand fields, and pressure colleges to keep their prices in check, among other things.
And on the accountability front, the legislation requires colleges to collect and publish a dizzying array of data and information about their textbook prices, student loan policies, and tuition increases, to name just a very few.
Praise and Reservations
Whether college leaders support the bill — and how enthusiastically — varies greatly on where they sit. As many of Washington’s higher education associations and student groups weighed in Wednesday and Thursday with letters expressing their views, some, like the Career College Association and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, endorsed the bill rather enthusiastically. Others, like the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities and a coalition of student groups, urged support for the bill but with significant reservations.
Four of the six major associations of presidents (plus several other traditional college groups) signed a letter that pointed out pros and cons but purposefully did not take an overall stance on the bill. And at least one major Washington group, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, was silent, seemingly adopting the advice of Thumper’s parents in “Bambi”: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.” Officials of the private college group said the legislation had improved enough from earlier iterations that they had decided not to oppose the measure outright.
Most higher education and student groups cited many of the same elements to praise, such as the year-round Pell Grant, the planned simplification of the financial aid process, efforts to cut textbook prices, and the proposed continuation of most existing federal grant and loan programs (some of which, like Perkins Loans and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, the Bush administration has sought to eliminate).
But in other cases, particular pet issues either drove college leaders to support the bill or to withhold their backing. For example, the Jesuit college group was especially enthusiastic about a newly created emergency loan program it pushed for to help institutions (like Loyola University New Orleans, one of its own) recover from natural disasters, and that tipped the scales for it to endorse the HEA legislation. The Career College Association embraced the bill in part because it would ease rules that require colleges (especially for-profit institutions) to derive at least 10 percent of their revenues from sources other than federal financial aid; those very provisions were among the objections raised by the student groups and some higher education leaders.
And Congress’s decision to prevent the U.S. education secretary from issuing regulations (governing higher education accreditation) designed to ensure that colleges are measuring student learning outcomes drew praise from groups like the Association of American Universities, but criticism from the U.S. Education Department.
The Broader, Longer Term View
Just as views are divided on the bill’s practical implications, so too do college officials and friends and critics of academe have differing perspectives on what the Higher Education Act legislation, in toto, says about the state of public policy on higher education.
The biggest knock against the higher ed bill, probably, is that it is a visionless, unwieldy, sprawling mishmash of new programs and intrusive regulation into areas (such as illegal file sharing and vaccines) that are inappropriate terrain for a bill supposedly about student aid. The every-five-year renewals of the Higher Education Act, like the underlying 1965 law, have historically been about access to college, argues Sarah A. Flanagan, vice president for government relations and policy development at the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.
“This bill is not fundamentally about access,” she says. “It is about Congress’s idea about how colleges could be better run. I think that’s been a lot of the tension: Traditional colleges see the utmost importance of the federal role being focused on access, and on the government’s very successful partnership with colleges on ensuring access. This bill is not about a partnership with colleges; it’s about Congress mandating its members’ ideas on colleges.”
Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education, notes that this Congress has done quite a lot — “perhaps more than any Congress in a decade” — for college students, most notably with last year’s budget reconciliation measure and this spring’s major expansion of veterans’ education benefits. The Higher Education Act renewal contributes to that — but in a less significant way, Hartle says. “I don’t think there was a coherent vision behind the bill that says, ‘We want to do these three things.’ It is really a lot of very specific ideas stapled together.”
Even some who agree that the bill is mostly a scattershot compilation of disjointed ideas and programs see some common themes in the bill — even if they disagree about whether the approaches are entirely welcome ones.
“The issues Congress is focusing on are clearly about more reporting and more transparency by colleges,” says Harris N. Miller, president of the Career College Association. “Higher education has been used, for so long, to hearing how wonderful it is. But at the end of the day, the questions now are about the correlation between federal dollars spent and the return. There is general unhappiness with what the higher education system is producing, and they’re not going to blame students or parents. This is all about modifying schools’ behavior.”
Higher education has brought some of that scrutiny on itself by having been “slow to grasp” how “exasperated the public is by the costs of higher education and the resulting debt loads that are carried by graduates,” asserts Constantine D. Curris, president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. When Congress, then led by Republicans, began work on the Higher Education Act earlier this decade, lawmakers like Rep. Howard P. (Buck) McKeon of California made a lot of noise about tuition prices, Curris says. “It was basically disregarded by the higher education community who felt like it was part of a Republican agenda rather than the sentiment of the public. One of the surprises of the last couple years was finding key aspects of Buck’s bill included in this document and supported by both parties.”
College leaders succeeded in fighting more aggressive proposals that might have set specific requirements on colleges’ spending, opting instead for significantly more reporting and lists designed to embarrass institutions that raise their tuition the most. Unpleasant as that is, Curris says, it could get worse. “This is a very polarized Congress over all, but on this piece of legislation, we have bipartisan consensus in both houses,” he says. “For the higher education community to ignore that raises the risk of additional legislation that may be far more painful than shame lists and burdensome reporting requirements. I personally believe that if we don’t respond to the message that is there, we will see, maybe two years from now, significantly more control being exercised by the federal government, possibly even tying it to the provision of money to higher education.”
Although some of his peers in Washington’s higher education establishment see Congress showing little restraint in its willingness to expand its regulation of higher education, Curris sees a lesson in how the Higher Education Act deals with issues of pricing and student learning outcomes. The bill, he notes, bars the Education Department from taking steps to pressure accreditors on how they assess colleges’ performance on student learning — a step Congress took, in part, Curris asserts, because several college associations (including his) undertook well-publicized efforts to push the issue on their own.
“There was a feeling among the Congress and staff members that looked at what we were doing that, ‘Here higher education is trying to be accountable, trying to be transparent,’ ” he says. “I view that very positively. Congress did not want to intrude in areas where it felt higher education was trying to do the right thing.”
Unhappiness From the Other Side
College leaders may be somewhat divided on whether Congress went too far in pushing for changes in higher education. But for those who’ve been pushing higher education hardest in recent years — the Education Department and those affiliated with its Commission on the Future of Higher Education — the Higher Education Act is a disappointment because it did not go far enough.
“While the legislation takes some positive steps forward, it fails to create the necessary reforms in accessibility and affordability, and it falls short on strengthening accountability,” Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said in a prepared statement late Thursday after the Senate approved the compromise legislation. “More work can — and must — be done to make achievement outcomes more transparent to students and families.”
“I think they tweaked a lot of things, but they took small steps when giant steps were needed,” says Charles Miller, who headed the secretary’s commission. The bill imposes a bevy of new information requirements on colleges — “some of them pretty onerous,” he acknowledges — but fails to recommend the kind of coordinated information system that the commission recommended. To have a truly useful system of tracking students’ progress through higher education, Miller says, “a unit records system” — which private colleges vehemently opposed, as did some Republican members of Congress — “has to be part of that.”
In addition, “the entire financial aid picture needs serious attention and the small tweaks represented by the HEA and other recent actions by Congress are wholly inadequate for the situation we are facing,” Miller says. “What is needed is a full-scale reform and redesign of financial aid: simplification, elimination of inefficient programs and a coherent integration of aid with the broader financing system for higher education.”
The question of whether major reforms like the ones Miller envisions raises a more fundamental question: whether a bill as big and broad as the Higher Education Act renewal can continue to be a venue for meaningful public policy on higher education. Given that the bill by its nature has such a sweeping agenda, and that it becomes a magnet for proposals from the increasing numbers of federal lawmakers who are interested in education policy and have their own ideas for what to do, it may be almost inevitable that the Higher Education Act renewal ends up being disjointed rather than full of vision.
“If there are some issues du jour that really are pressing, Congress is increasingly unlikely to say, ‘we’re going to wait until HEA comes up,” says Cynthia A. Littlefield, director of federal relations for the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. “The Higher Ed Act [reauthorization] may no longer be the definitive policy forum for higher education.”
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Comments
HEA 2008 — The Mother of All Re-Authorizations
I have not read the new HEA (it IS 1,150 pages), but judging from Doug Lederman’s article, it sounds like a full employment act for college administration and financial aid officers. Leave it to Congress to make a mountain range out of a mountain and call it progress! I will reserve judgement however until I find out more about it.
If anyone knows, does the new HEA call for mandatory posting of the Cost of Attendance by program? For years, I’ve wondered why we have students graduating with mortgage-sized debt loads who majored in such things as interior design. I have to believe that the financial aid offices at these schools leave a lot to be desired, or that the school itself is simply wildly over-priced. There is a set formula in the old HEA that mandated how schools determine unmet need. The problem was that no one in government or outside of government actually monitored this process. Does the new HEA address this most basic question of cost, or does it paper it over with more needless, expensive reporting that will only serve to drive up our cost even more?
We’ll soon see, I guess, but this new HEA Act does not sound like such a good thing to me, even if it does guarantee me employment until my retirement.
feudi pandola, at 9:50 am EDT on August 1, 2008
After having worked several years in the financial aid office at one of the most expensive schools in the country (no longer there), I have to say that there is certainly much to be desired of such offices. At institutions where 75%+ of operating revenue comes from tuition dollars, making provisions for helping students pay up isn’t quite an administrative priority. I can only hope that such mandates as these enforce our HEIs to really think more about the students’ needs, and not simply as cost input/outputs.
While this is a beast of legislation, it had to get done. After lapsing for years, is it better to continue not addressing newer issues at all or to address them quicker but imperfectly? We’ll all have to wait and see how it is actually carried out into law.
Former Aid Counselor, at 12:10 pm EDT on August 1, 2008
For Profit Institutions
Calling proprietary institutions “career colleges” is like putting lipstick on a pig.
Until these institutions are required to have oversight through an academic accreditation process they do not deserve one cent of any form of federal tax dollar support.
James Cebula, Professor of History at University of Cincinnati, at 12:10 pm EDT on August 1, 2008
Senator Alexander got it about right
Senator Alexander said, about the bill ““After four years of work, the Senate has spewed forth a well-intentioned contraption of unnecessary rules and regulations that waste time and money that ought to be spent on students and improving quality. It confirms my belief that the greatest threat to the quality of American higher education is not underfunding. It is overregulation. The current stack of federal rules for higher education institutions is nearly as tall as I am, and this bill more than doubles it, creating 24 new categories and 100 new reporting requirements.”
Jonathan Brown, President at AICCU, at 12:10 pm EDT on August 1, 2008
Lipstick Belongs on the Mandarins
Professor Cebula would be well advised to be less arrogant and do his homework on accountability.
Career schools (i.e., nationally accredited, generally award certificates and diplomas, etc.) serve the underclass in large measure where a good outcome is moving from unemployment and public assistance to becoming a taxpayer and member of the middle class via an entry level career such as dental assisting, LPN, etc. The value these institutions confer is to souls whom professor Cebula’s institution ignores or rejects out of hand.
More to his invalid point, career schools are already substantially more accountable for documenting learning outcomes and impact than are regionally accredited schools whose accreditation standards still serve to reinforce the production of teachers who look like us and who teach the same way our great grand-professors taught, ignoring 50 years of applicable learning and measurement sciences.
Will professor Cebula and his institution suffer sanctions and economic consequences if his students fail to become employed as historians? Does professor Cebula even know what the successful employment rate is for his students? The “pigs” professor Cebula so arrogantly refers to are required to demonstrate learning outcomes and employment appropriate to the diploma conferred (e.g., LPN graduates are required to demonstrate a benchmark pass rate for licensure. In professor Cebula’s world, learning is whatever he decides it is and he alone gets to determine if he did a good job. Not surprisingly, his type concludes that they are doing brilliantly! Ted Manning, the visionary Executive Director of North Central in the 1980’s once remarked, “I have never worked with a school that wasn’t’ sure it has a surplus of quality and not one of them could prove any of their claims.”
Gradually, higher education is becoming accountable. It is a long, hard, sometimes bloody battle with the Mandarin’s who have a great deal to lose by being required to demonstrate, specifically, what it is that they do so that we can find value much the same as we do when we shop for other knowledge brokers.
When is comes to accountability, career schools and regionally accredited degree granting institutions face commensurate but distinct problems owing to their different inputs and missions. There is much to be debated, but there is no room for ignorance and arrogance, especially when emanating from the same source.
Senior Professor, at 1:25 pm EDT on August 1, 2008
SO we finally got Reauthorization all 1100+ pages. Bot bad for 8 years work. The regulations implementing it should run several thousand pages. Well kids don’t spend your Pell Grants yet—auhorized is not appropiated.
Rob, Executive Director at University of Houston_Downtown, at 4:05 pm EDT on August 1, 2008
Financial aid
I think the new requirement to report tuition net of discounts is absolutely fantastic. Colleges, for too long, have been increasing their “published” tuition figure only to decrease the actual cost on he backend by using grants and scholarships.
There are consultants dedicated to this business. They use complex data mining models to figure out how much to offer and to whom in order to get them to enroll. In the meantime there are some students being required to pay the full sticker-price. It is a market with pricing that is utterly opaque and colleges have grown to like it that way. One can imagine the uproar if ANY other industry tried to price their produce using such methods. I find it distasteful.
So that part, at least, I welcome. I guess the question is how will I find the time to read the other 1,140 pages.
Joe, at 10:20 pm EDT on August 1, 2008
The Reality Is.....
that our college system is one of the biggest culprits in driving a two class society. Private and public universities who are well funded with alumni support continue to build country club facilities and high-end student housing. Our politicians and school administrators need to work harder to improve the United States abysmal college attainment rankings. The Pell Grant increases are welcome, but much more needs to be done. It is probably much more about accountability than affordability based upon how low our are graduation rates are. Let’s first figure out how to help more students graduate amd make a living, before we try to get every 18-year old into a college.
It is also very sad that our politicians spent time on issues like textbook prices, file sharing and vaccinations, when they have no clue about how to help improve our nation’s education level and graduate more qualified workers.
Ed Meehan, Partner at Rittenhouse Capital, at 10:25 pm EDT on August 1, 2008
diploma mills and HEA
Nearly all provisions of the Higher Education Act that had focused on problems associated with diploma mills were removed from the final version of the bill. The original content was carried by House Resolution 773, the “Diploma Integrity Protection Act of 2007″ submitted by Congresswoman Betty McCollum (MN 04) to the 110th Congress.
Here are highlights of the diploma mill aspects of the version of the HEA that went to the conference committee as House Resolution 4137. (The House passed this version of the bill 354-58.) See Title VIII, Part H— “Diploma Mill Prevention,” available online at “http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/que...:4:./temp/~c110t4EWV7:e844958:” I also compare this version with the bill actually passed by both houses a few days ago.
Sec. 851. Purpose; Definitions. Section 851 carried a reasonably clear definition of the term “diploma mill":
============================"(2) DIPLOMA MILL- The term ‘diploma mill’ means any entity that—
“(A) lacks valid accreditation by an agency recognized by a Federal agency or a State government or other organization or association that recognizes accrediting agencies as a valid accrediting agency of institutions of higher education; and
“(B) offers degrees, diplomas, or certifications, for a fee, that may be used to represent to the general public that the individual possessing such a degree, diploma, or certification has completed a program of education or training beyond secondary education, but little or no education or course work is required to obtain such a degree, diploma, or certification."============================
The version of the HEA passed by both houses of Congress also contains a definition of “diploma mill":
============================"(20) DIPLOMA MILL.—The term ‘diploma mill’ means an entity that—
“(A)(i) offers, for a fee, degrees, diplomas, or certificates, that may be used to represent to the general public that the individual possessing such a degree, diploma, or certificate has completed a program of postsecondary education or training; and
“(ii) requires such individual to complete little or no education or coursework to obtain such degree, diploma, or certificate; and
“(B) lacks accreditation by an accrediting agency or association that is recognized as an accrediting agency or association of institutions of higher education (as such term is defined in section 102) by—
“(i) the Secretary pursuant to subpart 2 of part H of title IV; or
“(ii) a Federal agency, State government, or other organization or association that recognizes accrediting agencies or associations."============================
The phrase “or other organization or association that recognizes accrediting agencies or associations” is vague. I do not see how it would disqualify a fraudulent organization that “recognizes” accreditation mills. I am glad that HEA defines the term “diploma mill” and hope that this provision of the law carries legal utility in enforcement efforts in spite of a minor lack of clarity.
The earlier version of HR 4137 contained the following additional sections.
============================Sec. 852. Recognized Accrediting Agencies and Institutions.
Section 852 instructed the Department of Education to assemble, maintain, and update lists of recognized accrediting agencies, legitimate U.S. postsecondary institutions, and legitimate foreign postsecondary institutions. The list was to be distributed to federal departments, including Homeland Security. In order to be eligible for Title IV funds, recognized schools would (in addition to other requirements) need to place a (legally protected) mark of recognition on their websites. This section would have allowed the Secretary of Education to deny legitimacy to entities like St. Regis University which obtain foreign government credentials through bribery.
Nothing from Section 852 made it into the diploma mills section of HEA.
============================Sec. 853. Accrediting Agencies.
Section 853 declared that an accreditor is not to be considered a reliable authority for Federal purposes unless the accreditor is recognized by USDE. However, imprecise text regarding CHEA suggests that CHEA recognition also conveys the status of “reliable authority” to an accreditor. This section would have protected, for federal purposes, the meaning of “accreditation.” It could have been further strengthened to define accreditation in the same sense as appears in the Federal Trade Commission’s “Guides for Private vocational and Distance Education Schools” (see http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/vocation-gd.htm ) so that it would be a legal violation to issue, or claim, accreditation without proper federal authority.
Nothing from Section 853 appears to have made it into HEA.
============================Sec. 854 Task Force.
Section 854 instructed the Secretary of Education to convene a task force to address “issues related to... the detection of new and existing fraudulent degree-granting institutions; recognition and prevention of the practices used by such fraudulent degree-granting institutions to avoid detection; the enforcement of laws and regulations prohibiting such fraudulent degree-granting institutions and practices and the use of fraudulent degrees; andthe prosecution of such fraudulent degree-granting institutions and practices and the use of fraudulent degrees”
The other issues to be considered by the task force included foreign diploma mills, public awareness, advocacy for improved state legislation, and participation of the Federal Trade Commission in enforcement efforts.
My sense of things, from attention to the long St. Regis investigation and prosecution, is that enforcement is the most important axis in diploma mill suppression. It is also the most neglected dimension in the legislative process.
Almost nothing from the old version’s Section 854 is in HEA, although the new bill’s Section 123 does instruct the Secretary of Education to continue to collaborate with federal agencies that might choose to pay attention to diploma mills. I cannot read this as instructing the Secretary to do anything other than continue her/his efforts at the previous level.
============================Sec. 855 Sense of the Congress
Section 855 expressed the sense of the Congress that the states should adopt standards regarding diploma mills that were at least as stringent as the proposed federal standards.
Nothing from Section 855 appears to have made it into HEA.
============================Sec. 856 Unfair and Deceptive Acts and Practices regarding Diplomas and Professional Certifications
Section 856 instructed the FTC to develop a plan within 180 days to combat diploma mills.
Nothing from Section 856 appears to have made it into HEA.
============================I am disappointed. Nothing is left except for a definition. With the publication of the St. Regis buyers list we see something of how diploma mill degrees are used: in Medicine, Engineering, Education. Good heavens, one of the St. Regis “nuclear engineers” is working in the control room of a nuclear power plant in Wisconsin.
We would benefit from a federal criminal statute that covers directly and clearly the offenses of operating a diploma mill, operating an accreditation mill, and knowingly issuing the wildly inaccurate foreign credential evaluations that were used to land St. Regis customers substantial raises and new positions.
Why should we tolerate the projection into our world of untrained teachers, engineers, and health care workers? Do we care so little for the consequences as to willingly succumb to paralysis?
George Gollin, Professor of Physics at University of Illinois, at 12:20 pm EDT on August 2, 2008
Response to Joe
Joe,
You wondered whether any other industry handles their pricing/discounting in the way that colleges do. Have you flown anywhere in recent history? Go ahead and ask your seat mates what they paid to fly on the same flight. Perhaps you are also one of the few who pay the sticker price on the vehicles you purchase. As for college pricing and discounting, unless institutions do away with all forms of institutional merit aid and/or only use funded scholarships from their endowments or annual gifts, then there will be discounting going on. Since that is unlikely to happen the only question remainging is whether the discounting will be done in a sophisticated way or based on a whim.
Matt, at 4:35 am EDT on August 3, 2008
Matt what airline are you flying?
Um, Matt, last time I checked, the airlines I employ don’t ascertain my income, assets, number of children, and a host of other considerations before they tell me how much my ticket will cost.
finaidfollies, at 12:30 am EDT on August 4, 2008
Cost transparency in the new HEA bill
I am intrigued by many of the comments here about the cost of higher education. My original comment was about mandatory posting by schools on the Cost of Attendance by program. Tuition and fees ought to be one aspect of college that is easily discernible by students and parents at a glance. Cost is not something that ought to vary from student to student. If it does, then there’s something terribly wrong with a law that would permit such manipulation of the consumer. This sort of practice is what is killing the healthcare system. It should not be permitted in higher education and I hope that the new HEA stops this sort of dishonest business practice. At over 1,150 pages, I can’t imagine that this issue is not addressed, but then, we are dealing with Congress...
feudi pandola, at 10:10 am EDT on August 4, 2008
Let’s Party!
Why is it so hard for the media to pin the real tail on this great big donkey’s butt? This bill is nothing more than pork-barrel politics in an election year. Look how many votes were just bought with your hard-earned taxes. Thanks, Congress.
Shazamm, at 5:35 pm EDT on August 5, 2008
cost of education
It always makes me laugh (and then cry on the inside) when people outside of the system decry the “rising costs” of higher education. Every year there are more students wanting to go to college, higher costs, and more services, but the taxpayer-supported governments of this country continue to underfund or cut funding. Other than taking massive strides in development, there simply isn’t another way to get money into a system without raising tuition.
Maybe we need a better measure of inflation that includes food, gas, and college tuition.
eb, at 9:55 am EDT on August 8, 2008
Demise of Diploma Mill provisions
It is certainly a good thing that the so-called Diploma Mill Prevention Act was never included in the reauthorized HEA, and interestingly, this outcome something that I predicted at the end of last year when I wrote:
“There are a number of reasons why this provision should — and will — ultimately fail.”http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/12/hea
Someone on Capitol Hill has more sense than I have given them credit for.
Of course, the increased barriers erected by Congress regarding the Transfer of College Credit is far less brilliant. As is the further politicizing of NACIQI appointments (why on earth does Congress think it will all go away on Sept 30, 2014 — is that when the US Treasury runs out of Title IV funds to give to eligible institutions?)
So, there is something here for all the special interest groups, even if the accrediting guilds didn’t get everything that they wanted.
Glen S. McGhee, Dir., at Florida Higher Education Accountability Project, at 9:20 pm EDT on August 9, 2008
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“Affordability” Just Got More Expensive
With all the new reporting requirements, most colleges will have to hire new staff to meet the new mandates (or cut other programs). Add to that the mandate to pay extortion to the RIAA and MPAA (via pseudo agents like Audible Magic) and yet more money goes out the window for things that are not student focused. I fail to see how that is going to help colleges hold tuition down.
Kyle Johnson, at 9:15 am EDT on August 1, 2008