New federal rules on distance education highlight long-standing tensions between consumer advocates seeking stronger state-level protections for students and higher education groups seeking shared national standards.
Regulating universities that operate across state lines is contentious and complicated. So it was considered a remarkable achievement when a panel of negotiators selected by the U.S. Department of Education reached consensus on new distance education rules earlier this year.
Not everyone is happy with the final regulations, however.
Robyn Smith, a consumer advocate who served on the negotiated rule-making panel, said the final rules published by the department in late October are not consistent with what the panel agreed to in April.
“I am outraged by the final regulations,” Smith wrote in a statement earlier this month. Smith, a lawyer who is counsel to the National Consumer Law Center and a senior attorney for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, said the department substantially changed the distance education regulation “without sufficient factual justification.”
The department amended the regulation “to allow schools to offer distance education under reciprocity agreements that prohibit states from enforcing the state laws specifically enacted to prevent for-profit school abuses,” said Smith. “As a result, the department has limited the ability of states to protect millions of students from predatory schools that waste students’ time and money while loading them with unaffordable debt.”