Policy
Federal Distance/Digital Actions of the Outgoing Administration and Congress
Published by: Lindsey Rae Downs | 1/28/2021 | 0 comments
Since the inauguration, we have been very focused on what Jed Bartlett would say is “what’s next?” WCET Frontiers will be publishing a great deal in the weeks to come about the priorities of the new Biden Administration. However, today we share a look back on the pre-inauguration activities of Congress and the Department of […]
Practice
Professional Licensure Student Disclosures – It’s the One Month Warning, with No Time-outs Remaining
Published by: Lindsey Rae Downs | 5/29/2020 | 4 comments
Winning Isn’t Everything, but Wanting to Win is! – Vince Lombardi Excitement is in the air! There’s two minutes left in the game! You have the ball with no time outs left! What are you going to do? It is up to you! We just heard the horn for the two-minute (well…one-month) warning for the […]
Practice
New Regulations Review #2: Credit Hour, Title IV Eligibility, & What Exactly is a Week?
Published by: Lindsey Rae Downs | 4/6/2020 | 5 comments
On April 1st, the Department of Education finally released the last set of regulations from its epic 2019 negotiated rulemaking process. On April 3rd WCET posted an analysis of proposed changes to the definition of distance education including (finally) a proposed definition of regular and substantive interaction. Today we are examining several other aspects of […]
Practice
Negotiated Rulemaking: Accreditation, Student Identify Verification, Student Disclosures, and Other Proposed Regulations
Published by: Erin Noelle Walton | 5/10/2019 | 1 comments
This is the fourth and final post in our blog post series on the results of the U.S. Department of Education’s negotiated rulemaking process. You may recall that there were many issues covered by the negotiated rulemaking committee and to our pleasant surprise, consensus was reached. With so many issues, we divided our review of […]
Practice
State Authorization Lawsuit: Court and Ed Department Need to Work Together to Avoid Causing More Confusion for Students and Institutions
Published by: Erin Noelle Walton | 4/30/2019 | 5 comments
As one of my favorite columnists, Dave Barry, used to say, “I am not making this up!” Maybe what I am about to share isn’t as exciting to you as last week’s release of “Avengers: Endgame” or Sunday’s “Game of Thrones” episode, but I kid you not, we are living in real life plot twisting […]
Practice
Negotiated Rulemaking: What Happened with State Authorization and Licensure Notifications?
Published by: Erin Noelle Walton | 4/17/2019 | 9 comments
In this second of our blogs dedicated to exploring the outcomes of the recent negotiated rulemaking sessions, Cheryl Dowd and Russ Poulin focus on the state authorization for distance education language that transpired from those conversations. They also share some integral changes to professional licensure notifications, as those requirements have been expanded to ALL programs […]
Practice
ED Negotiated Rulemaking: Innovation Subcommittee Completes Its Work and Makes Several Recommendations
Published by: Erin Noelle Walton | 3/19/2019 | 3 comments
The “Distance Learning and Education Innovation” Subcommittee of the current U.S. Department of Education negotiated rulemaking process completed its work last week. While several reports highlighted that there was disagreement on issues, there has been less attention paid to the general agreement the negotiators were reaching on a long list of regulations under consideration. There […]
Practice
House HEA Proposes Changes for Distance Ed, CBE, and State Authorization
Published by: Russ Poulin | 12/4/2017 | 4 comments
In a new bill regarding higher education rules proposed in the House of Representatives: all federal state authorization rules are ended, competency-based education gets a boost with “regular and substantive interaction” being redefined and expanded accreditation oversight, accreditation reviews for distance education are a thing of the past, some confusion remains over distance and online […]
Practice
On the OIG/WGU Finding, Part 1: When Interaction Is Not Interaction
Published by: Russ Poulin | 9/22/2017 | 10 comments
Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a report concluding: “We concluded that Western Governors University did not comply with the institutional eligibility requirement that limits the percentage of regular students who may enroll in correspondence courses. Therefore, the Department should require the school to return the $712,670,616 in Title […]
Practice
We Need YOU! …to comment on Federal State Authorization Regulations
Published by: Lindsey Rae Downs | 7/13/2017 | 7 comments
The Department of Education seeks comments about higher education regulations that may be “appropriate for repeal, replacement, or modification.” WCET and the WCET State Authorization Network (SAN) will comment about the federal state authorization regulations that are scheduled to be effective on July 1, 2018. In recent months, we have seen several federal higher education […]