Hello everyone!

I was going to send you a whole nicely written piece on out-of-state placements and field trips..... but the Negotiate Rulemaking processes at the Department of Education decided to derail that.

On the table for this round of Negotiated Rulemaking is an addition to institutional requirements under 668.14 (Program Participation - things we have to do as a university in order to be able to receive and administer federal financial aid - putting these items in this section is an interesting choice) that would essentially dismantle the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement and send us back to having make individual agreements with every state, district or territory where a student may be located in order to deliver education (online or through out of state placement) in that state. This would be... well it would be a huge blow to any education delivered online (with an added blow to education, credit or non-credit, delivered on Coursera and our relationship with them or other OPM where we don’t manage the student data) as well as any thought to the mobility of our students. I don't know how many worked in or adjacent to state authorization prior to CO joining NC-SARA or the approval of our universities to participate but that was a very weird time. I was working in the SUNY system from 2011-2013, prior to NY joining NC-SARA. SUNY system administration had at that time a website that collected the letters and responses form the various states as they tried to broker authorization for the 64 campuses in the system. Most states wouldn't work with the system office, some states wouldn't allow the community colleges in the system to gain authorization, some states required that the campuses pay per FTE enrolled in their state. Some never replied because they simply didn’t have the capacity to address the situation.

The language being proposed states that institutions will:

(iii) Complies with all State consumer protection laws, including both generally applicable State laws and those specific to educational institutions, except where State requirements for obtaining authorization are inapplicable pursuant to a State authorization reciprocity agreement.

Again, this language would limit the reciprocity we have through SARA and we would then be subject to several other rules in a state that are currently covered by reciprocity, such as:

• Meeting different State refund policy for each state that has such rules.
• Contributing to "tuition recovery funds" that assist students at closed institutions for each state that has such a fund.
• Posting surety bonds in some states.
• Requiring varying State yearly reporting.
• States may be able to take unilateral action against institutions.
• And any other requirement that a state may place on out-of-state institutions

The irony of this is many of these types of rules are made to keep out the big bad proprietary institutions....the largest of who are some of the only institutions who have the human and financial resources to actually comply with these regulations.

NC-SARA sent out a call to action this morning, including as much back information that you could ever want, on the issue at hand. I high suggest reviewing this. Should language like this move forward it will limit the education we are able to provide outside of Colorado. I spoke with folks in the general counsel office this morning as commenting on this is larger than any one of our universities. If you wish to send an individual comment to one of the negotiators, NC-SARA provides a template for that as well.

This language is still being discussed and has not been officially published in the Federal Register as proposed regulations. We still have the rest of this week to get through and then maybe another month before we get there, but this is something you will want to keep you eye on as it could effect all of our jobs, our day to day work, and the education we provide to our students.

Additionally, you will remember some of the other language in Issue Paper 6 (linked above), specifically in 668.14 (32) from February's email. This was the language surrounding our professional licensure programs. This renewed proposal has somehow made that portion worse. In this revision, they're not only doubling down on the requirement that we "ensure" that the education we provide will allow a student to sit for licensure in the state where they are located (without any understanding that we have no control over the state requirements and the mobility of students) but now would also like to require us to gain & maintain programmatic accreditation if a state requires it for licensure. I'm a known accreditation apologist, but that is a step too far even for me.

I'm sure this isn't the last we will hear of this and I promise to keep you in the loop as things progress and on any info I get from folks involved in the Neg Reg or at the Department.

Maybe next month I'll talk about those out of state placements?

Sincerely,
Erika

Erika G. Swain
Interim Assistant Director for State Authorization
Office of Academic Affairs
University of Colorado System