Highlighting the Education Department’s accomplishments under the Trump administration, Principal Deputy Under Secretary Diane Auer Jones said the agency had listened to colleges’ call for regulatory relief.
“We heard what you’ve said about regulatory burden and we’ve tried to address it,” she said remotely at the Federal Student Aid Training Conference Wednesday.
This fall, for example, the agency replaced the 265-page Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting guiding higher education administrators in following the requirements of the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act with a 13-page addendum to another department handbook on administering financial aid.
That simplified the reporting process and gave institutions more discretion in deciding what to report, she said.
Changes to accreditation standards, allowing colleges to get quicker approvals and giving accrediting agencies more discretion in sanctioning institutions, will allow for more flexibility, she said.
The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the need for more flexibility in judging institutions, she said. The pandemic’s economic fallout has made it unfair to judge colleges over standards like job placement. An increase in students taking gap years during the pandemic has affected institutions’ retention rates, she said.