Negotiated Rulemaking Program Integrity and Institutional Quality – 3/4/24

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 DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

OFFICE OF POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION

NEGOTIATED RULEMAKING PROGRAM INTEGRITY 

AND INSTITUTIONAL QUALITY

SESSION 3, DAY 1, MORNING

MARCH 4, 2024

On the 4th day of March, 2024, the following 

meeting was held virtually, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00

p.m.
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P R O C E E D I N G S

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning. Welcome 

back to session three of the Department negotiated 

rulemaking for program integrity and institutional 

quality. I'm Cindy Jeffries from FMCS, and I'll be your 

facilitator for this morning's session. We do have a very 

robust agenda again these four days. We would like to 

remind everyone to utilize their time to provide new 

clarification, concerns, or suggested changes. Please do 

not utilize the time to restate or voice support of 

points that have already been made. Those types of 

suggestions and proposed changes to language or support 

can certainly be placed in the chat and the chat will be 

transcribed and posted on the Department's website at the 

conclusion of the sessions. As the committee addresses 

each issue's proposed regulatory text after discussion 

and thorough time to be able to address concerns and 

questions, consensus will be taken issue by issue on the 

entire document. Does the Department have any opening 

comments, Greg?

MR. MARTIN: Excuse me, I was on mute. 

I'm sorry. No, I just want to say I'm happy to be back 

with everybody, and hopefully, we'll have a productive 

week. Thank you.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, great. Thanks, 
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Greg. So now we'll go on to the official roll call for 

the record. For business officers from institutions of 

higher education, Joe Weglarz.

MR. WEGLARZ: Good morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning. Don 

Chase?

MR. CHASE: Present.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning. Civil 

rights organizations and consumer advocates, Carolyn 

Fast.

MS. FAST: Good morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning. And Magin 

Sanchez.

MR. SANCHEZ: Good morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning. Financial 

aid administrators, JoEllen Price.

MS. PRICE: Good morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: And Zack Goodwin as the 

alternate.

MR. GOODWIN: Hi, everyone.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning. 

Historically black colleges and universities, tribal 

colleges and universities and minority-serving 

institutions, institutions of higher education eligible 

to receive Federal assistance under Title III, parts A 
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and F, and Title V of the HEA, Dr. Charles Prince, 

primary. Doesn't look like he has joined this yet. 

D'Angelo Sands as alternate. Okay. Looks like D'Angelo 

hasn't joined us at this point either. Institutional 

accrediting agencies recognized by the Secretary, Jamie 

Studley.

MS. STUDLEY: Morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: Morning. And Michale 

McComis.

MR. MCCOMIS: Good morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning, Michale. 

Legal assistant organizations, Robyn Smith.

MS. R. SMITH: Good morning, everyone.

MS. JEFFRIES: Morning. Sophie Laing 

as alternate.

MS. LAING: Good morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning. Private 

nonprofit institutions of higher education, Erika Linden, 

primary.

MS. LINDEN: I'm present.

MS. JEFFRIES: Scott Dolan, alternate.

MR. DOLAN: Good morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning, both of 

you. Bear with me one second. Alright. Next, we have 

programmatic accrediting agencies recognized by the 
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Secretary to include state agencies recognized for 

approval of nurse education. We have primary, Dr. Laura 

Rasar King.

DR. KING: Good morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning. And 

alternate, Amy Ackerson.

MS. ACKERSON: Good morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning. 

Proprietary institutions of higher education, primary, 

Jillian Klein.

MS. KLEIN: Good morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning, Jillian. 

Alternate David Cohen.

MR. COHEN: Good morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning. Public 

four-your institutions of higher education, primary, 

Jason Lorgan.

MR. LORGAN: Good morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning. 

Alternate, Alyssa Dobson.

MS. DOBSON: Good morning, everyone.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning. Public 

two-year institutions of higher education, primary is, Jo 

Alice Blondin.

MS. BLONDIN: Hi there.
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MS. JEFFRIES: Hi. Alternate is 

Michael Cioce.

MR. CIOCE: Good morning. Good 

morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: Morning. State 

attorneys general, primary is Diana Hooley.

MS. HOOLEY: Good morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning, Diana. 

And alternate is vacant. State officials, including state 

higher education, executive officers, state authorizing 

agencies and state regulators of institutions of higher 

education, primary, John Ware.

MR. WARE: Good morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: Morning. Alternate, 

Robert Anderson.

MR. ANDERSON: Good morning, everyone.

MS. JEFFRIES: Hello. Student 

borrowers, including currently enrolled borrowers and 

groups representing them, primary is Jessica Morales.

MS. MORALES: Good morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: And the alternate is 

Emmett Blaney.

MS. MORALES: He will be joining after 

lunch.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thanks, Jesse, 
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and welcome. U.S. Military service members, veterans and 

groups representing them, primary Barmak Nassirian. Good 

morning. Alternate, Ashlynne Haycock-Lohmann.

MS. HAYCOCK-LOHMANN: Good morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning. And next 

we have the Department, lead negotiator, Greg Martin.

MR. MARTIN: Good morning, everyone.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning. We also 

have several non-voting participants from the Department 

and from the Office of General Counsel, Ms. Denise 

Morelli for issues other than- good morning, Denise. And 

you're for issues other than accreditation.

MS. MORELLI: Correct.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Ms. Donna Mangold 

will be for accreditation.

MS. MANGOLD: Good morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good morning. Mr. David 

Musser.

MR. MUSSER: Good morning.

MS. JEFFRIES: David? Good morning. 

And Mr. Herman Bounds. Herman's not with us yet.

MR. BOUNDS: Good morning. Good 

morning, everybody. Good morning, I'm here.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Have I missed 

anyone? Okay. From FMCS, your facilitation consists of 
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myself, Cindy Jeffries, Brady Roberts, Krystil Smith and 

Kevin Wagner. So now that we've made all the 

introductions we can move on to our agenda. Magin?

MR. SANCHEZ: Yes. Before we continue, 

I know we have a lot on this agenda today, so I don't 

want to take up too much time. But I do hope everyone 

doesn't mind waiting a couple of minutes because I want 

to call a caucus with the Department. The Department 

only.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. And is that just 

yourself, Magin?

MR. SANCHEZ: Correct.

MS. JEFFRIES: Along with the 

Department. Okay. Greg, who would be attending from the 

Department?

MR. MARTIN: Just to clarify, Magin, 

the topic is TRIO?

MR. SANCHEZ: Right.

MR. MARTIN: Yeah, from the Department 

would be our attorney for TRIO, which would be Hannah 

Hodel, the chair of that committee, which is Aaron 

Washington and myself.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, so Greg, Hanna, 

Aaron, and Magin. Magin, do you have any idea about how 

long you would like?
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MR. SANCHEZ: Yeah, it should be 

quick. Ten minutes.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay.

MR. SANCHEZ: Hopefully before.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Jillian, you have 

your hand up?

MS. KLEIN: Yeah, I can wait till we 

get back.

MS. JEFFRIES: Oh, okay. Alright. 

Brady, do you have those rooms set up or Krystil?

MR. ROBERTS: Yep. They're all set up.

MS. JEFFRIES: Ready to move them. 

Okay, so we will take a ten-minute break while the 

party's caucus and it is 10:08. So approximately 10:18, 

we will get back together. Okay. Welcome back. The caucus 

has returned. Is there any report out, Magin?

MR. SANCHEZ: Oh, no. I look forward 

to tomorrow's discussion.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, great. So with 

that Jillian, you had your hand up, so the floor is 

yours.

MS. KLEIN: Yeah. Thanks. I was hoping 

just as we kick off this week. I think for me, it would 

be helpful to hear from the Department or the 

facilitators about how maybe structurally, this week will 
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look different than the last two weeks that we've had 

together. Just since we're running out of time a bit. And 

I think, you know, we've seen and I think Laura mentioned 

this in February too, a ton of proposals that have come 

through from negotiators, I think, in the hopes that we 

could move towards compromise or consensus positions. And 

I think in many cases there hasn't been sort of a 

feedback loop on why the Department hasn't elected to use 

some of that language. And in some cases, I think the 

Department's subsequent red lines have been sort of 

further afield from where we've started, based on what 

the Department indicated the issues were to solve in 

January. So I'm just I'm nervous about time, you guys and 

I'm wondering if there's a different approach that we'll 

be using this week in the spirit of getting us all 

towards compromise. Especially since I think there's a 

lot of things that we saw in some of these issue papers 

that don't look much like where we started in January. In 

2019, when many of us did negotiated rulemaking, the 

Department, I think it was like Aaron Washington sat 

around the table with us and was sort of updating and 

typing new red lines as we were going through the last 

week of neg reg. And I'm curious if that's the approach 

we'll be using this week, or how exactly is this week 

going to look different in a way that's sort of an 
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efficient use of time for negotiators to move towards 

consensus.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thank you, 

Jillian. We will- there may be times, Jillian, to answer 

your question, that the Department and the negotiators 

will elect to do some real-time edits. Those are 

generally- tend to be on the less complicated side to 

more efficiently use our time since this is the last 

week. One of the reasons I gave the reminder about 

rehashing things that have already been said, is not an 

attempt to stifle people's thought processes or their 

thinking but to better efficiently use our time. Okay? In 

the areas where the Department may not be able to make 

any changes. I know that past rulemakings as well as this 

when the Department has indicated where they can't. Greg, 

do you want to add to that or?

MR. MARTIN: Well, yeah, I mean, I 

would point out that the red lines we have now, you know, 

represent the Department's position as well as and 

represent some of the proposals we have received. 

Obviously, they don't represent every single proposal 

we've received. We are not- in some cases, we don't 

concur with that and others just- and as far as going 

back to the table, I try to address those proposals that 

we have received. If I were to address every single line 
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item that we get, there would just be no time to do it. 

However, if so the red lines we have back in this final 

session do reflect where the Department is. It is an open 

negotiation, and anybody is welcome to inquire about why 

a particular regulation is worded the way it is or why 

the Department didn't go a certain way. So if I neglect 

to cover any of those proposals or someone feels I 

haven't done it adequately they can feel free to ask for 

more clarification. As far as the time constraints go, 

yes, the third week is always difficult because it's the 

week we're going to vote on consensus. And I think that 

no matter how long discussions occur, there has to be a 

point at which, you know, everything that can be said, 

has been said, and people have to make up their minds 

which way they're going to go, hopefully with consensus. 

So we'll make every effort to do that. I do acknowledge 

the time constraints here that are involved but again 

people are- any of the negotiators are welcome to bring 

up at any point any of the proposals or why the 

Department didn't go in a certain direction. And just to 

reiterate what Cindy said about the real-time updates, if 

we can do that, if there is a request for a change in the 

language that the Department is amenable to that we feel 

would move towards consensus, we do have the capability 

to have our- I know Aaron did that before. We have 
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Vanessa and Joe doing that now. We do have the capability 

of making those changes. Maybe not exactly in real-time, 

but certainly within a few moments. Thank you.

MS. KLEIN: Yeah. Just one follow-up 

question I guess, so is the idea- will we, for example, 

this morning we'll do R2T4 and then are we doing, like, 

the consensus check this morning or are we doing that on 

Thursday?

MR. MARTIN: Yes, we'll take 

consensus. We will take a vote on consensus after each 

topic has been discussed. So the first one will be R2T4. 

That's David. And after he's done with that, we will vote 

on consensus when we're through with that. We believe 

that's a better way to go than just to go through all of 

them and then go back on Thursday and, you know, have to 

revisit areas of what we've already discussed. So we will 

be taking the consensus checks after we are done with the 

discussion on each individual topic.

MS. KLEIN: Okay. So really we're 

just- you all are explaining the red lines that we got in 

advance of this week and then there's actually not 

compromise that's happening throughout this week. I'm 

just trying to understand.

MR. MARTIN: We'll go over the red 

lines that we have, so the Department's rationale, we'll-
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just as we did in the previous weeks, we'll open the 

floor for discussion. And of course, we, you know, we 

have our facilitators to- one of the jobs of the 

facilitator, and FCMS always has done a good job of this, 

is to determine [inaudible] find the point at which 

there- it seems logical to call for a consensus check. Of 

course, it's to the Department's decision, you know, 

whether to do that and at what point. But there does have 

to be- it's- let's be honest, there's a bit of an art 

involved in knowing the point at which to do that, you 

know, and so it will be after each one. The consensus is 

by topic.

MS. JEFFRIES: I'd just add Jillian, 

that on the topics that span two days, like 

accreditation, those will be taken at the end of the 

conclusion of all the scheduled time for each of the 

topics. So R2T4 will be today and then we'll move on from 

there. Okay? And distance ed is scheduled for this 

afternoon. And that also would have consensus taken this 

afternoon. Does that answer your questions, Jillian?

MS. KLEIN: Sure.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, thanks.

MR. MARTIN: Can I just add. That, you 

know, obviously, I want to reiterate, this is- we're 

still in negotiations. So the language you see here is 
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what the Department proposed.

MS. KLEIN: I guess- but the struggle 

is if we're just, for example, on R2T4, like talking 

about this morning, then we're doing a consensus vote. I 

guess it doesn't feel to me like we're still negotiating 

because I think I would expect to see the Department come 

back one more time. I don't know, I we're out of time and 

I think we're so far apart now, even based on where the 

Department started and where negotiators have sort of 

made proposals and the Department in many cases has moved 

sort of further afield. And so if we had like eight more 

months to negotiate, maybe we could get there. But I just 

don't know how to feel. Like, why don't we just take a 

vote right now on all of the issue papers and have four 

days back? I just don't understand how this week is going 

to be an active negotiation based on how.

MR. MARTIN: Well, as I pointed out, 

there obviously is not enough time because we don't have 

a subsequent session to do what we've done in the past is 

come back with, you know, additional papers, additional 

changes, rather the next time, because there won't be a 

next time. But we are still in negotiation. And as much 

as what have here, this text can be edited, and modified 

for changes that, you know, are suggested if the 

Department is amenable to those changes. So there is 
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still an opportunity. I respectfully don't agree with the 

assertion that there's no negotiation because we have the 

week to do that. So we will discuss these topics if 

there's room for compromise that involves additional 

language or changes, we're certainly willing to do that. 

I do take your point that there is a time constraint. 

Yes. This is the last week. So there's more pressure than 

there would have been in the previous weeks. But that's 

not to say that we're still not negotiating or that we 

cannot make changes or are unwilling to make changes.

MS. JEFFRIES: So I think that we've 

heard from the Department that, you know, they are 

willing to consider changes and those that they are 

amenable to, you know, we do have the capability to deal 

with those. So negotiations is very much taking place. 

And, you know, I just want to say that regardless of how 

many sessions are scheduled for any given rulemaking, 

there's always that last week and there's always that 

pressure. Okay? So we're doing our best to address your 

concerns, Jillian. And certainly want to stress and 

reiterate the fact that this week is very much about 

negotiations. Before I move to JoEllen, I want to 

announce that Dr. Charles Prince and D'Angelo Sands have 

joined the session this morning. JoEllen?

MS. BLONDIN: Jo Alice. I don't want 
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to put JoEllen on the spot.

MS. JEFFRIES: Oh, I'm sorry.

MS. BLONDIN: Yeah. It's okay. And I 

prefer just Jo. Anyway, the question I have is, are we 

going to vote on each subcomponent, or are we voting on 

the issue paper as a whole?

MS. JEFFRIES: The issue paper as a 

whole. Correct, Greg?

MR. MARTIN: That's correct. Each 

issue paper as a whole will be voted on after the 

discussion on that issue paper is concluded.

MS. BLONDIN: It does feel like we're 

running out the clock a little bit here. So. Okay. Thank 

you.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you. Barmak. Oh, 

I thought you had your hand up. Sorry. Okay. Jamie, you 

had your hand up, are you?

MS. STUDLEY: I was putting my 

questions in the chat. I think I've gotten answers. 

There'll be temperature checks during the discussion but 

before the vote on the paper as a whole. One quick 

question I had was if any- I know people are thinking 

things may go long, but if any of them took less time 

than anticipated, will we just roll into the next 

available one depending on what the facilitators and the 
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group think at the time?

MR. MARTIN: Yes. If we conclude if, 

for instance, the discussions on R2T4 were to go more 

quickly than is scheduled we would move on to the next 

topic. And even though we're not scheduled to do state 

authorization today, if we were to conclude with David's 

topics of R2T4 and distance, we would move into the 

discussion on state authorization today. So, yes, we will 

roll forward with everything.

MS. STUDLEY: Okay. So one of the 

things I think I hear people saying that to me at least 

it would feel like- express negotiation is if there are 

ideas within any of these items that the Department 

thinks may be possible to bridge the gap or to come up, 

you know, or they hear something that they might be open 

to discussion. And not just the Department, anyone hears 

things, whether there's the ability to use the brakes or 

even overnight, say this looks like something that we 

could improve. That's actually not a question. It's a 

suggestion. You guys know whether that's within your 

plans. But if there were a bridge suggestion that the 

Department or someone else needed to think about whether 

we could pause and return to that arena if there was some 

progress that we thought we could make.

MR. MARTIN: Yeah. The Department is 
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in a position where we can call caucuses ourselves if we 

need to. So if something were to come up where we need to 

discuss whether or not we would be able to accept changes 

and come back with something, we're certainly in a 

position to do that. I could call for that at any time.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, thank you. A 

couple of other questions real quick that were in the 

chat. It was a question about whether the chats are 

visible to the public viewers. They are not during the 

live session, but they are visible to everyone, including 

the public. The transcript is once it's posted and 

uploaded to the Department's website. I think that is all 

the questions that were in there. So with that, I want to 

turn it over to David for R2T4.

MR. MUSSER: Alright. Thank you, 

Cindy. I think we can go ahead and pull up the redline of 

the R2T4 paper. So in the last session, we heard that the 

committee had given temperature checks that were either 

supportive or accepting of the various proposals in the 

R2T4 issue paper, except for one. Which related to 

requirements for attendance taking in distance education. 

So I'm going to ask first if anyone wants to talk about 

the other issues, that we hold that until we talk through 

the issue of attendance taking for online programs. But 

of course, if others have other things that they want to 
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talk through elsewhere in the paper, we're glad to do 

that. So if we could scroll down then to the area under 

discussion. Okay. So we heard a number of proposals 

related to this requirement that the Department is 

proposing to have institutions take attendance and use 

those attendance records in their return of Title IV 

calculations for programs- for courses offered through 

distance education. And as you guys know, this language 

has gone through an evolution throughout our negotiations 

in the past few sessions, one of the last things that we 

heard in the prior session was that it would be helpful 

to reword this somewhat and potentially separate it from 

the romanette (i) provisions that were sort of the 

original provisions around attendance taking 

requirements. In order to make it clearer, the 

Department's intent here was to have attendance taking 

requirements apply to courses offered through distance 

education. So this change here is an attempt to do that. 

We broke out what used to be paragraph (d) into a 

separate romanette, romanette (ii), where we say an 

institution is required to take attendance for each 

course offered entirely through distance education as 

defined in 34 CFR 600.2, except for dissertation research 

courses. Now, one thing I want to note here is that there 

is a relationship between this provision and the 
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provision that we are adding separately in the distance 

education issue paper where we're referring to distance 

education courses. This is intended to refer to the 

definition of distance education courses that appears in 

that section. So certainly open to suggestions from the 

committee if you think wording changes are needed here to 

get to that point. So if we scroll down just a little 

bit, I want to make sure everyone sees kind of how these 

changes played out through the remainder of the session, 

the remainder of the language. So we just made a few 

additional changes to move things down and move them 

around in various different ways to accommodate that. But 

there were no other changes here. Now, if you go back up, 

the other important point here is that we also were 

persuaded by negotiators who recommended that 

dissertation research courses be excluded from this 

requirement. And the reason for that we decided on that 

is the dissertation research courses by their nature are 

primarily oriented around a student's sort of self-study 

and work focused on their research which, if it's 

distance education, still needs to involve regular 

substantive interaction with their instructor. But we do 

acknowledge that those kinds of courses don't take place 

in the same kind of framework that most other distance 

education courses do. Where there may be a system, an 
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LMS, where students are submitting assignments on a more 

frequent basis, where there tend to be interactions 

directly with the student and the system. And that many 

institutions don't have that kind of framework set up for 

dissertation research courses, which means that the 

Department's primary logic for the requirement for 

attendance taking in online programs, which is that the 

data is readily available, isn't necessarily the case for 

these courses. So for that reason, we added that 

exception here. We did hear other proposals from 

negotiators to exempt other kinds of courses, including 

distance direct assessment courses, courses that use a 

subscription-based academic calendar, and courses that 

are part of a non-term program. And some of the reasoning 

behind those proposals is that those kinds of programs 

are structured very differently from traditional 

programs. Direct assessment programs are also more 

oriented towards self-study than traditional coursework. 

Even traditional quote-unquote online coursework whereas 

in subscription-based and non-term programs, the actual 

percentage that an institution is required to return is 

based both on the student's completion of a period, but 

also on their progress in that period, and that there was 

a sense that there was a level of unfairness treating 

those programs in the same way and requiring institutions 
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to use their attendance records. So we did not include 

those because in the Department's view, although those 

are somewhat different in how they are treated for R2T4 

purposes. The fundamental logic that we're using here 

about why we're requiring this still applies to them. 

Those kinds of programs often do and in fact, in some 

cases collect more data on student's academic engagement. 

And they're already subject to the R2T4 requirements and, 

for example, need to use in this student's official 

withdrawal date as the date of their withdrawal. And this 

requirement would, in our view, simply make the 

calculations more accurate by having this institution 

rely on its attendance records. So for all those reasons, 

we did not add the additional exemptions that were 

requested by negotiators. So I will pause there and open 

it up for other comments from the committee.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, David. 

Jillian?

MS. KLEIN: David's so glad to hear 

from me on this. So a couple of things. One, thank you 

for fixing the STEM issue and making it clearer about how 

the Department intends for this provision to work with 

respect to institution versus course. And to your sort of 

easy question at the jump, I do think it makes sense if 

the Department's moving ahead with the definition of a 
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distance education course, that that language be 

reflected in this proposal. So instead of talking about, 

a course offered entirely through distance education as 

defined, it feels like that's a place where you could 

just sort of sub in distance education course, that'd be 

my suggestion. You made all of the compelling arguments 

on my behalf for why direct assessment should be 

excluded. And I know we've talked about this twice 

already. So just one more time say, since we met in 

February, the Department released a really helpful Dear 

Colleague letter on Valentine's Day that talked about 

direct assessment. So I will read a portion of that, 

which gets exactly to why I believe that direct 

assessment programs should be excluded from this 

requirement. Part of that DCL says direct assessment 

programs are a type of CBE program that do not use credit 

or clock hours. Progress in a direct assessment program 

is measured solely by assessing whether students can 

demonstrate what they have a command of- demonstrate that 

they have a command of a specific subject, content, area, 

or skill, or can demonstrate a specific quality 

associated with the subject matter of the program. 

Therefore, unlike a CBE program measured in credit hours, 

a direct assessment program does not specify the level of 

educational activity a student is expected to engage in 
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to complete the program. So that feels really at odds 

with the rationale that the Department that you just gave 

on behalf of the Department for why these programs are 

not excluded from this requirement. I think the proposal 

I sent in, I won't read through it because I'm sure 

everybody read it with interest. But there were two other 

examples that I provided in that proposal as well, where 

the Department has clearly indicated that these programs 

operate in a different way, where much of the work can 

happen outside of the traditional course room setting. 

And that sort of coupled with the really rigorous 

application process that institutions go through with the 

Department to launch these programs anyway. I think make 

a really compelling case for why these should be 

excluded.

MR. MUSSER: Thanks, Jillian. Just a 

quick response to part of what you were arguing and on 

those points. So one of the things that we thought a lot 

about when we looked at your proposal was the extent to 

which attendance as we use the word colloquially, might 

be confused somewhat with the concept of academic 

engagement, which is the actual criterion that the 

Department uses for establishing a last date of 

attendance, either for attendance taking schools, or for 

in a nonattendance taking setting, the school is allowed 
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to use the concept of academic engagement to establish a 

last date of attendance. And your comments seem to 

suggest that schools would create artificial interactions 

or artificial check-in points or other kinds of 

requirements that would be intended to meet these 

conditions for attendance taking. And I just want to be 

clear that the definition of academic engagement is 

pretty broad and gives institutions a lot of discretion 

as to what they consider to be academic engagement and 

therefore qualifying for attendance. And that we're 

obviously if this were to go into regulation, the 

Department could respond to questions that schools have 

about what could and couldn't constitute that. But in our 

view, the kinds of things that go back and forth between 

institutions and their students and all of the kinds of

programs that we just talked about are certainly things 

the school could use for its attendance-taking 

requirements to fulfill that requirement to keep up with 

what students are doing and when they're doing it. And 

it's our feeling that if a school is keeping up with 

their students and ensuring that they're making progress, 

they also know that the student is, for example, 

completing assignments, participating in group 

discussions about particular topics, completing indirect 

assessments, in the indirect assessment world, completing 
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assessments, either pre-assessments or post assessments. 

A variety of different things could be used in order to 

fulfill that requirement. So in our view, this is still 

actually making the R2T4 calculation more accurate as 

opposed to simply allowing schools to use a midpoint to 

demonstrate how far a student has gotten in a particular 

period. The last date of attendance does matter for the 

R2T4 calculation for these programs. So that's part of 

why we decided not to incorporate those other exceptions.

MS. KLEIN: Yeah. I mean, I think I'll 

just respond to that. My example of institutions then 

sort of creating whatever to be able to comply with this. 

I think it speaks to how this is not necessarily in the 

best interest of students because I think in these types 

of programs where students are enrolling in them, in 

large part because of the flexibility. I think students 

are going to be surprised that there is a punitive 

expectation that on a particular cadence, they're in the 

course room doing something that maybe doesn't have much 

or anything to do with the assessment that they might be 

working on, and then that student will end up getting 

withdrawn and having aid returned through, I mean, I'll 

just say it, like through no fault of their own, because 

we've had to sort of comprise this system to keep up with 

these regulations that just don't make sense for direct 
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assessment programs. So I think it's not a studentfriendly approach and you know, I would love to continue 

to have conversation if we have time for it. But I think 

it certainly is at odds with the guidance that the 

Department timely put out right after our last session. 

Thanks.

MS. K. SMITH: Cindy, you're on mute.

MS. JEFFRIES: JoEllen Price.

MS. PRICE: Thank you. So I was 

discussing this proposal with some other colleagues, and 

the question came up, what happens to students at a 

school that does not take attendance and is not required 

to take attendance if they're in a combination of inperson and distance education classes and then they 

withdraw, officially withdraw. So if they officially 

withdraw at some date in October and part of the courses 

are in-person and part of the courses are distance 

education, how is the school going to treat that student 

for R2T4 purposes in terms of last day of attendance?

MR. MUSSER: That's a great question. 

We talked a little bit about this in one of, I think it 

was our first session, but I want to make sure that this 

is well understood because it's an important part of how 

this process would work. If a student is taking a 

combination of courses where they're required to take 
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attendance and courses where they are not required to 

take attendance, the Department views that student as 

being enrolled in a program where the school is not 

required to take attendance. So if you're taking four 

distance education courses and one on-campus course, the 

student would not be required to take attendance for that 

student for that particular period. Which means that you 

could use their student's official withdrawal date or any 

other method that you were using to determine a 

withdrawal date that's allowed under the nonattendancetaking provisions. It's only when the student is enrolled 

completely in distance education courses that this 

requirement applies.

MS. PRICE: Excellent. Thank you so 

much.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, thank you. Any 

other questions or discussion? And David, I'm not seeing 

any.

MR. MUSSER: Okay.

MS. JEFFRIES: Do you desire to move?

MR. MUSSER: Well, so I want to now 

open it up to the committee. Is there anything else about 

the R2T4 issue paper that you guys would like to discuss?

MS. JEFFRIES: Not seeing any hands, 

Dave.
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MR. MUSSER: Okay. Well, seeing no 

hands I think I will turn it over then to Greg. And I 

think we could move forward with a consensus check on 

this topic.

MR. MARTIN: Thanks, Dave. I just want 

to make certain that there are no other comments or 

anything else anybody wants to say on this topic before 

we have the facilitator move to a consensus vote. And 

just to reiterate when we take this vote, this will be on 

consensus, not a temperature check.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Erika.

MS. LINDEN: I just wish to clarify. 

I've had questions from members of the constituency of 

other nonprofit private schools and just asking for 

clarification that some of this is not a simplification, 

which is what I think the Department originally purported 

they were trying to do for R2T4. Will the Department 

issue some additional clarifying documents for that 

attendance-taking issue?

MR. MUSSER: Yes, I can commit to that 

already. We know that there will be questions that come 

up on that topic, and we know that the community will 

need additional information about how to comply with it 

if the Department moves ahead and does publish it as 

regulations. So we will be publishing guidance about how 
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to implement that requirement.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you. Jillian?

MS. KLEIN: Yeah. So I mean the same a 

little bit of general comment. I think the funny part of 

this is, I think a few of us were in conversations with 

some of our constituent groups last week where the 

recommendation was made that the Department add, actually 

add in the academic engagement definition to this 

section. Because the way I read it, and I think what 

folks thought this was suggesting was that attendance 

sort of equal to academic engagement. So I'm after 

working in this industry for 25 years. I'm like, 

absolutely blown away, Dave, by what you just said, 

because it feels like what you're saying is those two 

things are not the same necessarily. So I just would echo 

I don't know if there's a way to make that clear in this 

language. I know we don't have time or how the Department 

intends to sort of communicate that broadly to the field, 

especially as institutions, and will be in a position of 

having to, you know, sort of defend the approach to 

program reviewers and other external auditors. It feels 

overwhelmingly messy.

MR. MUSSER: So that's a good 

question. I mean, we absolutely are willing to provide 

guidance on that part of the work. I guess what I would 
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say is that the academic engagement concept was developed 

as part of the last rulemaking that we did on this topic. 

And it was part of the consensus with the committee that 

was intended to show that the school is the one, along 

with its accrediting agency, to some degree, to establish 

what is meant by academic engagement. And from the 

Department's perspective, academic engagement doesn't 

have to constitute only one thing, and we recognize that 

it includes a variety of different activities that are 

essentially the student working with the school on a 

particular academic issue that's related to the subject 

matter under discussion. So we decided to define it 

because we wanted to ensure that there were things that 

should not be included. And there are things in that

definition that we clearly have outside the scope of 

that. But aside from those things and in the context that 

I just described, the school has the discretion to decide 

what constitutes academic engagement. And as part of that 

same rulemaking, we took that concept and we connected it 

directly with R2T4 to ensure that when we're talking 

about how you determine a student's last day of 

attendance if you're going to rely on your attendance 

records, you're relying on your records of whether the 

student was academically engaged with the institution. So 

we certainly, like I said, have no problem making that 
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clear in guidance to the community that that is the basic 

concept that the school should be aware of. And that's 

how they can design their programs around that notion of 

academic engagement. And it sounds like, you know, there 

may be a need for us to provide answers to questions to 

colleges about different kinds of academic engagement, 

which we certainly could do as well if colleges decide 

that this rises to the level of a need for additional 

information.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, thank you. Scott 

Dolan.

MR. DOLAN: And I guess as a followup, would that guidance be specific to the types of 

programs that were excluded from this particular 

provision, including subscription-based non-term and 

direct assessment programs? Where we know, as you've even 

said here at the table, that those are a bit unique in 

terms of their delivery. And, you know, they're not 

necessarily pervasive. So there's going to be really a 

great need to be specific to anybody who will be doing a 

program review about what this means and the stipulations 

that are outlined here. So I think not only, you know, 

broad guidance around academic engagement, independence, 

but how that might apply across different modalities that 

we're agreeing to here.
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MR. MUSSER: Yeah, I appreciate that 

comment, Scott. I guess I would say absolutely. Yes, 

first of all, we will respond to the request from the 

community about what needs to be clarified. I want to be 

a little careful because the Department doesn't want to 

come out and provide more guidance on academic engagement 

that actually constrains schools in ways that we don't 

intend. So we probably wouldn't provide sort of broad 

guidance on that topic. But I do think we owe it to the 

community to provide answers to their questions about 

specific kinds of things that the school is doing with 

students or is designing as part of their programs. Which 

is not intended to be a gotcha exercise. The Department 

wants to ensure that schools know exactly what they're 

subject to. So we certainly can commit to putting out 

guidance about those kinds of things as we implement this 

rule.

MR. DOLAN: And I appreciate the 

intent, and I understand coming from your perspective, 

however, sometimes what is intent and what is practiced 

are at odds with one another especially when in practice, 

in operationalization, which I think, you know, is a 

comment that can be made across a number of issues as we 

move forward here. Right? Sometimes a stroke of a pen can 

lead to a whole number of unintended consequences here. 
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So I think a commitment around that guidance is going to 

be really, really important as we move forward, 

especially if we're looking for consensus here.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thank you. David 

Cohen has come to the table in place of Jillian Klein. 

David?

MR. COHEN: Yeah. Dave, I'm just 

looking for some clarification. Are you suggesting that a 

school doesn't- an attendance-taking school, in order for 

that to qualify, it doesn't have to be a set meeting time 

or place that merely submitting something could qualify 

for attendance? Like they don't have to come to the 

Monday morning session at 9:00 for the lecture and be 

recorded in their just merely submitting something is 

attendance according to the Department now?

MR. MUSSER: To the extent that it is 

an engagement between the student and the instructor 

about the course material. And that could be a variety of 

different things. It could be submission of an 

assignment. It could be asking and getting a response to 

a question even. As long as it's about the course 

material that the student is taking during that period. 

We gave some examples. I would point you guys to the 2020 

regulations, where we did, I think, talk through a number 

of different examples of what academic engagement means 
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in this context. Obviously, the simplest and most 

straightforward way is to yeah, to have a student 

actually be at a session and have attendance taken that 

way. But it is definitely not the only way that a school 

can take attendance. And that was never the Department's 

intent with these requirements.

MR. COHEN: Great. Thank you.

MS. JEFFRIES: David? David Cohen, you 

had a question in the chat about has the Department 

considered how imposing an attendance requirement might 

impact active duty military studying from a distance.

MR. COHEN: Right. So my concern was 

if they have to be at a place or time, you know, a set 

place or time in order to qualify for the attendance, how 

that could affect active military personnel. But if what 

David is saying, it merely requires the submission of 

something and a recording by the institution of that 

event, perhaps that resolves that. But I'm concerned 

that, you know, active military people who can't be at a 

place and time that's set up by a school in advance, you 

know, that they would then, you know, be subject to, you 

know, problems.

MR. MUSSER: And I think that the 

Department definitely did have that in mind. And that 

group of students, along with a lot of other kinds of 
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students who are really enrolled in distance education 

programs because of the flexibility that they offer. We 

know that many of these programs and direct assessment 

programs as a good example, they don't involve sessions, 

necessarily, where a student is sitting with all of the 

other students in the class, like a Zoom call, like we're 

experiencing right now. They're submitting assignments, 

they're interacting with their instructor and there are 

generally scheduled periods when they have to do that. 

But those are not the only kinds of activities that can 

be defined as attendance. So we think that that plus the 

ability in certain programs for schools to put students 

on leaves of absence if there is an extended period of 

time where they're not going to be able to engage and 

then come back, provide ways for schools to accommodate 

their students and their unique circumstances and avoid 

withdrawing them unless it really is clear that they have 

to withdraw for some reason.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thank you. A 

couple of other questions, Dave, that were in the chat. 

Erika Linden, you asked a question. Who's now back at the 

table, by the way, as primary. Are there ever excusable 

absences that will allow for a student to miss 14 days or 

longer without automatically withdrawn?

MS. LINDEN: And I think I heard, 
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Dave, you just say that there would be if.

MR. MUSSER: Well, there's a 

difference.

MS. LINDEN: Okay.

MR. MUSSER: R2T4 is a very 

complicated topic, so I don't mean to laugh. So a leave 

of absence is a specific and unique kind of status that a 

student can enter. There's a number of requirements 

around it in the R2T4 regulations. And generally 

speaking, it has to be- what's required for a leave of 

absence is established in your regulations. The student 

has to come back. If they come back in a term-based

program other than a subscription-based program, they 

have to come back at exactly the same point that they 

left in the coursework. I think the question about the 14 

days was about absent a leave of absence. Are there 

exceptions to the 14-day requirement? And I think the 

answer to that is yes, on a very limited basis, where and 

this has been the Department's guidance for a long time. 

I don't think we intended to change it. If, for example, 

there was a school closure and the school had no means of 

actually getting attendance, taking attendance, the 

students had no way of being in attendance. That kind of 

thing is an extremely limited exception to the 14-day 

requirement. I would say that by and large, however, 
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there are very, very few exceptions to that requirement. 

It would only be in cases where essentially the school 

had no way of keeping track of the attendance due to some 

kind of an unanticipated closure or a loss of, for 

example, their distance education capabilities for a 

limited period of time.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thank you. 

Alright, Greg, I'm coming back to you. As I don't see any 

additional hands.

MR. MARTIN: Yeah. The Department 

would like to request a ten-minute internal caucus, 

please.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Brady, can you 

make sure the Department is all assigned to the large 

room?

MR. ROBERTS: Yep, you all should be 

there.

MS. JEFFRIES: So the Department will 

caucus. It is 11:00 till 11:10, and then we'll get back 

together. Greg, let me know if you end up needing more 

time.

MR. MARTIN: Thank you. We appreciate

it.

MS. JEFFRIES: It. Okay. Thank you. We 

can go ahead and pause the live stream. Okay. We are back 
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on live session. The caucus is ended. Let me turn it back 

over to Greg to see if there's any additional comments 

and or Dave want to make and when they're ready to move 

to consensus.

MR. MARTIN: Thanks, Cindy. David has 

a couple of clarifications he wants to make with respect 

to academic engagement and a minor red line edit. So I'll 

turn it over to Dave for that discussion. Thank you.

MR. MUSSER: So, yeah, there is 

certainly understandable confusion about what is a very 

complicated topic. And I'll say that every time I talk 

about R2T4. So we did some very quick diving into the 

regulatory language around academic engagement. And we 

wanted to sort of show you guys the regulatory chain of 

reasoning that helps get us to the place that I've been 

describing this morning. So first, let's talk about the 

provisions in the Return of Title IV regulations where we 

talk about what constitutes academic attendance and 

attendance at an academically related activity. So you 

see on the screen here 668.22 (l)(7) romanette (i), this 

is referring to what we consider to be academic 

attendance and attendance at an academically related 

activity for the purposes of serving as the foundation 

for a withdrawal date in the return of Title IV 

calculation. And as you can see, it says, must include 
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academic engagement. So I can see where there might be 

some confusion that there was some requirement in 

addition to academic engagement that the Department 

intended with the word attendance. But ultimately, what 

we mean here is that academic engagement constitutes 

academic attendance as long as there's documentation of 

it. So if you have documented that engagement, you have 

met the requirement to use that engagement as academic 

attendance for R2T4 purposes. So with that, let me go 

down to the 600.2 definition of academic engagement that 

we created in the most recent regulatory process on this 

topic. So number one, it's defined by an institution in 

accordance with any applicable requirements of its state 

or accrediting agency. And then down to two, we have a 

bunch of things that it includes which are synchronous 

classes, academic assignments, submissions, assessments 

or exams, tutorials, webinars, study groups, group 

projects, online discussions, interacting with an 

instructor about academic matters, etc. And then we have 

some exclusions that are things that we specifically 

identified that are not academic engagement or and 

therefore not attendance for R2T4 purposes. Living in 

institutional housing, participating in a meal plan, 

logging into an online class or tutorial, but not doing 

anything else. And that's where the crucial concept of 
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engaging with respect to the subject matter comes into 

play. Just logging in is not enough. You have to actually 

engage in a particular academic activity in order for 

this to count. And then finally participating in academic 

counseling or advisement. So we hope that that makes this 

a little clearer. And I would also say as well, this was 

the Department's general approach for many years, this 

has not changed actually probably for more than a decade. 

Although schools indicated that it was not incredibly 

clear until we put it into regulation. And now that it's 

in regulation, we think that there is a pretty clear 

chain that allows schools to use that concept of academic 

engagement to determine whether attendance can be used in 

the R2T4 process. I want to pause there and open it up if 

others have questions, comments, etc..

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thanks, Dave. Any 

questions or comments or clarifications needed on what 

Dave just explained? Doesn't look like it, Dave.

MR. MUSSER: So hearing none, we 

recall that in the earlier part of this conversation, 

Jillian suggested that we make a change, a wording change 

to the language regarding distance education courses, 

since there is going to be, again, if we make the change 

in the distance education rules. Oh, go ahead, Vanessa, 

you can bring that up. So we wanted to make the change 
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here. We treat this as a relatively minor change. We 

think it's appropriate to make it here in an effort to 

reach consensus. And so this is each distance education 

course as defined in 34 CFR 600.2, except for 

dissertation research courses. This is what we had in 

mind in our earlier discussion. But let me pause and see 

what folks think about this change before we finalize. Is 

this what everyone- what you had in mind, Jillian? And 

does this make sense to the rest of the committee?

MS. JEFFRIES: I see Jillian is 

shaking her head and I don't see any other hands, Dave.

MR. MUSSER: Okay. If there's no other 

comments on this I will turn it back over to Greg and I 

think we can move forward with a consensus check.

MR. MARTIN: Thanks, Dave. Yes, Cindy, 

at this point I think we can move forward with the 

consensus check.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Sounds good. For 

the purposes of consensus, we will utilize a roll call 

consensus. So we'll go according to my screen, and I will 

call out your name and where the position of your thumb 

is. Remember a thumbs up is your 100% in support. A 

sideways thumb means you can live with it, and a downward 

thumb is indicating dissent. In dissent, you will be 

asked to clarify what your dissent is and offer any 
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potential remedy that might transpire. Dissent should be 

used if you have a serious concern over what's being 

proposed. Greg?

MR. MARTIN: I just want to clarify 

one more time to everybody, I think we've done that but 

just want to be very clear. This is the consensus check 

and not a temperature check. That's all I wanted to say.

MS. JEFFRIES: And the consensus is on 

the entire document. So with that let's go ahead and get 

started. Jillian?

MS. KLEIN: No down. What do you need 

me to say?

MS. JEFFRIES: We'll come back to you. 

Robyn. Thumbs up. Okay. Barmak. Thumbs up. Jesse Morales. 

Thumbs up. Bill Wexler. Thumbs up. JoEllen price. Thumbs 

up. Laura Rasar King. Sideways thumb. Thanks, Laura. Jo 

Blondin. Sideways. Jason Lorgan. Sideways. John Ware. 

Thumbs up. Erika Linden. Sideways. Diana Hooley. Thumbs 

up. Jamie Studley. Sideways. DC. Thumbs up. Carolyn Fast. 

Thumbs up. Did I get all the non-Federal negotiators? 

Okay. Greg Martin. Thumbs up. So we'll circle back to 

Jillian and Jillian please indicate what your serious 

concerns are with the document and what would get you to 

at least a sideways thumb.

MS. KLEIN: Yeah, I don't have 
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anything to add besides what I've already said, which is 

the direct assessment language that we've provided twice 

to the Department.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. So R2T4 did not 

reach consensus and we will move on. So Greg and Dave 

next on the agenda for this afternoon was distance ed. We 

have about 40 minutes. Do you want to start into that?

MR. MARTIN: Yes. I think we can start 

with distance education as long as David's ready. Dave, 

do you need any time before starting that?

MR. MUSSER: No, no. I think we can 

move into it.

MR. MARTIN: Okay, then we'll move 

into the discussion of distance education.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, great. Dave?

MR. MUSSER: Alright. Thanks, 

everyone. So let's turn now to the distance education 

issue paper. So I won't talk through everything that's 

currently in the paper, but as last time, I want to talk 

through all of the areas where the Department made 

changes.

MR. MUSSER: We want to talk through 

all of the areas where the Department made changes and 

areas where we received proposals and potentially, and in 

some cases, did not make changes.
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MR. MUSSER: So if we could scroll 

down just a moment. Alright. So the first item we 

actually already alluded to in the prior discussion. We 

are proposing to add a new, fully new definition of a 

distance education course that would track with the IPEDS 

definition of a distance education course. And this was 

originally a negotiator proposal, which we think makes 

sense. To ensure that schools have a clear understanding 

of what constitutes a distance education course and what 

does not, and we've defined it as a course in which 

instruction takes place exclusively as described in the 

definition of distance education, which as you guys all 

recall, is the sort of fundamental definition of distance 

education involving regular and substantive interaction, 

etc. In this section notwithstanding in-person noninstructional requirements, including orientation, 

testing, academic support services, or residency 

experiences. So I'm going to pause there and open it up 

for comment from the committee.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thanks, Dave. 

Jillian?

MS. KLEIN: Thanks. So appreciate the 

Department being open to the suggestion that I made on 

the comments about or the language about the residency 

experience. I guess my one comment is because that 
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residency experience falls after I think it's noninstructional. I'm not sure that's accurate. And I guess 

I hesitated asking this question because I wasn't sure 

what to suggest in terms of a solution. I don't know if 

you can just sort of swap the construction of the 

sentence. But I don't think residency experiences really 

are not instructional. So curious. I don't know, maybe 

the Department can provide some thoughts on that and then 

I'm happy to sort of work to finesse the language if that 

would be helpful.

MR. MUSSER: Yeah. It's a good point. 

We use the concept in part because it was derived from 

the IPEDS guidance on this definition. And, you know, I 

think we're open to swapping it around if you wanted to 

say excluding residency requirements and then saying or 

other non-instructional in-person requirements.

MS. KLEIN: That was going to be my 

suggestion. So yes, I agree.

MR. MUSSER: Okay. Well, I want to 

look to my Department colleagues, including Denise, and 

see if they have any concerns with that. But I think if 

they don't, I think we could go in and make that change.

MS. MORELLI: I don't think there is.

MR. MUSSER: Okay. So, Vanessa, I 

don't know if you have this one up and available to do 
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live redlining here. But if you do. There we go. I think, 

Jillian, I think what you had in mind is it would say a 

course in which instruction takes place exclusively as 

described in the definition of distance education in this 

section notwithstanding residency experiences, comma. 

Actually no comma. Residency experiences and in-person 

non-instructional requirements, including orientation 

testing or academic support services.

MS. KLEIN: Yep, I agree. Thanks.

MR. MUSSER: Oh, wait. No, no, just 

you can just yeah. There you go. And then or before 

academic support services. Okay. Other comments on this 

definition then.

MS. JEFFRIES: Not seeing any. Oh, DC?

DR. PRINCE: Yeah, just for the layman 

people out here who, you know, enjoy the conversations on 

semantics and sentence structures. What does this change 

do? Or is this just to make it clearer for people to 

understand it? Because what I notice in one example, I 

want to make sure I understand if we're going to 

constantly keep repeating it, is the constant structural 

changes of sentences and wording that might be getting 

too pedantic in how we're negotiating what we're trying 

to achieve. And so, help me understand Jillian or the 

Department, why was it moved from the end to the middle? 
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And is this going to be a constant kind of requirement 

for us to move consensus forward as we think about other 

language as we get through the rest of the week? It's a 

two-part question. The first one is why, you know, why 

that simple change? And then is this going to be a 

constant throughout the week that's going to preclude us 

from getting to other consensus on other issues?

MR. MUSSER: If it's okay, let me 

answer the second one first, and then I'll ask Jillian to 

explain.

DR. PRINCE: Sure.

MR. MUSSER: So I think this rewording 

is a very typical part of negotiated rulemaking, 

especially in this final week. We recognize that wording 

does matter. And in some cases, it can have a substantive 

effect on the regulations or and in this case, I think 

and Jillian can correct me, a substantive effect on the 

school's understanding of the requirements that they have 

to follow. And we want to be sure that that wording is 

clear for that reason and that we don't have unintended 

consequences. Again, either substantively, where 

something is enforced that we didn't intend, or cases 

where schools really don't know what we meant. So the 

Department is generally willing to make these on-the-fly 

changes. And of course, negotiators have to kind of think 
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about these changes as well. We typically won't make 

major, major changes in this way, DC. We typically will, 

as we talked about earlier come back in a later session 

after negotiators have had a chance to view bigger 

changes to ensure that you've had time to think through 

them. But for these more minor changes, we find it to be 

more efficient, to just make the change on-the-fly and 

finalize the language so that we can move on.

MS. KLEIN: Yeah, thanks. And I'm 

happy to- I agree with everything Dave said. I'm happy to 

speak to your first question DC. So many programs, I 

think typically programs that lead to like licensure 

outcomes have a requirement that there is an in-personlike a weekend component sometimes where students who 

maybe are otherwise are in an online program are required 

to come together and get sort of didactic training in 

person. And they're typically- it doesn't run the length 

of the time, right. So a lot of times it's a weekend or 

it's like 3 or 4 days couched within an otherwise 100% 

online course. And so my argument is that those actually 

are instructional institutions, have designed them to be 

instructional. Accreditors require them to be 

instructional. And so I just didn't want that modifier to 

be attached to residency experiences, because I don't 

think it was accurate. I think for an institution that's 
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required to offer these for a program, there could be 

confusion about, well, but what if my residency 

experience is instructional? Would it still be considered 

a distance education program or a distance education 

course? Should I be reporting it or not, etc. So there 

would be like downstream impacts from sort of the 

structure in which that proposal was created. Does that 

make sense?

DR. PRINCE: Yes, it makes complete 

sense. I just what I start to notice is if we're going to 

be constantly having to change that in that way, we might 

be spending more time in things that I think the intent 

was still there, whether you put it at the beginning or 

the end. And I think I just want to make sure that as 

long as if that is the purpose of us voting, that the 

intent is still there, regardless of it. Then it makesit didn't require us to do that. Right. And so I'm just 

trying to understand if that's going to be a constant 

thing that we're going to be doing, then that's a 

different interpretation of what I thought we were going 

to be doing today. But it makes sense. What you're trying 

to achieve is just whether or not you could have achieved 

in the same way.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, thank you. Any 

other questions surrounding the change that was made in 
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that particular section? Dave. I don't see any more. Do 

you want to move on?

MR. MUSSER: I think so. So, Vanessa, 

if you want to pull that back up again. Okay. So now 

we're moving to the second change that the Department 

made per negotiator requests. We had talked in previous 

sessions about how to incorporate a requirement that 

would be in addition to the requirement for institutions 

to establish what we are calling provisionally virtual 

locations where they would report their students who are 

in fully online programs. But negotiators also requested 

that we collect data at a student level about each 

student's distance education enrollment. And so the 

Department has agreed here to do that. And we thought 

that the best place to put this- Vanessa, could you 

scroll up just a little bit?- to put this was actually 

the disclosure section, the student rights no 

[inaudible], which will because in part this section of 

disclosure and reporting requirements deals with other 

similar reporting requirements. And because we expect 

that this information will be provided to students and 

their families as consumer information, if not through 

the Department's website, then potentially also by 

institutions themselves. And we have added at the end of 

that section. Now scroll back down, Vanessa. A new 
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paragraph (h) indicating for each recipient of Title IV 

HEA assistance at the institution, the institution must 

submit to the Secretary in accordance with the procedures 

established by the Secretary, a report regarding the 

recipient's enrollment in distance education or 

correspondence courses. We didn't want to get much more 

specific than that. We do agree, by and large, with the 

overall concept that we've discussed previously of 

obtaining information about a student being not enrolled 

in distance education, partially enrolled in distance 

education, or fully enrolled in distance education. But 

there's a lot of things that the Department and 

specifically the Office of Federal Student Aid is going 

to have to work out about this new requirement. And I 

would also mention that at least as of right now we do 

not believe we could implement this in July of 2025. This 

would be something that we would have to delay somewhat. 

But of course, we'll continue to evaluate that and make 

decisions on that before the publication of the final 

rule. So with that, I want to stop and then turn it over 

to the committee for discussion on this new provision.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, thank you. I want 

to note that Scott Dolan is coming to the table in place 

of Erika Linden. Jillian?

MS. KLEIN: Sorry. Just one comment. 
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I'm not even sure I have a language suggestion, but I 

think the language that many of us sort of co-signed on, 

I think the idea was around- and not trying to 

“solutionize” for the Department, right, but like 

attaching this to sort of NSLDS or COD records as the 

institution is sending across that information already, 

just in the interest of efficiency and because that 

happens really at a like term enrollment level, not an 

individual course level, I just would want to make sureand I understand what you're saying about the Department 

needs to figure out how to do this, and I'm sympathetic 

to that. But I don't think any of us were suggesting 

making a more arduous process. If there is a way to 

attach, for example, term enrollment information to files 

that are already being sent by the Department, which. So 

that would sort of track back to what the suggestion was 

around fully in-person, partially in-person, fully on 

ground, or that's not the language, but you know what I 

mean. As opposed to this, which sort of suggests it would 

happen at a course level and my operational people will 

kill me if they think I suggested that to you. So I just 

provide that feedback. I'm comfortable I think if this is 

how you think you need to sort of paper it, but just a 

strong suggestion to leverage the reporting functionality 

that already exists.
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MR. MUSSER: Thank you, Jillian. And 

that is exactly what we have in mind and I'm sure I 

didn't say it with exactly the specificity that I needed 

to. But the idea here would be that we'd use the existing 

process for reporting enrollment and essentially add this 

as a requirement, as another layer of reporting when a 

school reports on their student. So, for example, most

schools do this reporting once per payment period for 

their students. They indicate whether they're enrolled 

full-time, three-quarters-time, half-time, less than 

half-time. And as part of that, they would also indicate 

for the student for that period, not for each course, but 

for the full period, are they enrolled in some distance 

education courses? And we would use the concept of 

distance education course as the basis for this concept. 

Are they enrolled in none? Are they enrolled in some? Are 

they enrolled in all? That's the general way that we 

anticipate that we would do this. Of course, like I said 

this does still require some evaluation on our part as to 

how we would- exactly what the mechanism would be, how 

frequently etc.. But right now, yeah, we anticipate 

adding it to existing enrollment reporting.

MS. KLEIN: Perfect. Thanks.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you. Scott Dolan?

MR. DOLAN: Yeah. At the risk of 
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breaking protocol here, and I understand what you're 

saying, Dave, but it's really hard to understand how we 

might want to vote on this without kind of having some 

more specificity around cadence, frequency, and the like. 

So- and I guess I'm understanding you want some latitude 

there from a Department perspective, but from an 

institutional perspective, it seems like some clarity 

around what it is- what direction we're moving might be 

beneficial. And maybe not as much of an issue for my 

institution, but certainly for the other, you know, the 

thousand or so private nonprofits who are going to be 

wrangling with some of these new definitions as we move 

forward. So and I'm guessing I'm hearing, you know, 

trying to make this both efficient for institutions and 

enable the Department to get the information that you 

need, which I, which I understand completely and actually 

would be beneficial to all of us, right, to have a better 

understanding of students and where they're enrolled. And 

so we can start to look at outcomes in a more reasonable 

way. But I guess it's more of a comment than it is a 

question. I get a little bit concerned without some of 

the specificity being in here about what it is exactly 

what we're doing and where we're going with it.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you. Robyn Smith?

MS. R. SMITH: One suggestion I have 
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is maybe rewording it to say the institution must report 

to the Secretary in accordance with the procedures 

established by the Secretary, the recipient's enrollment 

in distance education or correspondence courses. Just to 

be clear, that's all the Department is asking for here? 

Instead of- I don't know what exactly institutions are 

concerned about, but that would be sort of a little 

clearer that that's all the Department's asking for.

MR. MUSSER: I think we'd be open to 

that. And in fact, Vanessa, do you want to pull up the 

language here? I mean, it sounds like from what I'm 

hearing, there are not objections to the approach. There 

are not objections to what we're proposing here, but 

there's a need for greater clarity. And I think we're 

open to that. So would you say that again as to, Robyn, 

what you had in mind for wording here?

MS. R. SMITH: I would say the 

institution must report to the Secretary in accordance 

with the procedures established by the Secretary, the 

recipient's enrollment in distance education or 

correspondence courses.

MR. MUSSER: So, Vanessa, after thedo you see the second instance of the word Secretary 

after the word Secretary, after the comma, add, go ahead, 

Robyn.
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MS. R. SMITH: Sorry. And then take 

out a report regarding.

MR. MUSSER: And I think you said you 

would start the sentence with the institution must report 

to the Secretary?

MS. R. SMITH: I didn't- that was all 

I was talking about.

MR. MUSSER: So these were the changes 

that you recommended?

MS. R. SMITH: Yeah. Yeah.

MR. MUSSER: Okay. Okay. Other 

comments? Does this help? And do we need some- it sounds 

like from Jillian's comment in the chat that this helps. 

Does this help on for others as well? Okay, hearing no 

other comments. So I think the Department is willing to 

make these changes and use this as our final red line. I 

think we can move on from there.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay.

MR. MUSSER: I should also mention, go 

ahead and you can pull it up, Vanessa, but we'll also 

include a discussion about this in the preamble to ensure 

that what our intent is and how we propose to collect 

this is would be part of the existing enrollment 

reporting process. Just to make it clear for the 

community. Go ahead, Vanessa.
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MS. GOMEZ: What do you want me to 

share?

MR. MUSSER: Go back to- you just go 

back to the red line text. So I think, is this at the end 

of it? Yeah. So if you scroll back up. We did not make 

any further changes to the concept of asynchronous 

coursework, and then you can keep going, Vanessa. We did 

receive a proposal from negotiators in an effort, I 

think, to achieve consensus that would have limited the 

use of asynchronous clock hours to no more than 50% of a 

Title IV eligible program. In the Department's view that 

although it would stem potentially some abuses at 

programs that have almost fully distance education, fully 

asynchronous programs that are offered in clock hours. 

Our concern is actually primarily about the partial 

portions of programs that are offered using asynchronous 

coursework which we believe is the most typical way that 

this is offered in clock-hour programs. So simply 

limiting it to 50% of a program doesn't alleviate the 

Department's concerns about both abuse and the potential 

expansion of how the Department is paying for instruction 

and clock-hour programs. I want to pause here, because I 

do want to mention we received some requests for data on 

this topic. And unfortunately, the Department does not 

have data on the distance education status of clock-hour 
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programs. However, we were able to confirm that there are 

approximately 8,000 programs that are offered using clock 

hours. These programs are primarily non-degree, leading 

to credentials below the associate's degree level. If the 

Department in the future would like to collect additional 

information on clock-hour status the distance education 

status of clock our programs. But that data does not 

currently exist, so unfortunately we can't provide more 

on that topic. We also were asked for information and 

guidance of the Department has given on this topic and we 

did provide that between sessions to negotiators. And we 

also wanted to talk through some specific information 

about the noncompliance that we've identified and the 

kinds of questions that we're being asked by institutions 

about this topic. But before I get there, I will turn- I 

see that there's a couple of hands. So let me open it up 

for just a moment to our non-Federal negotiators.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Scott Dolan?

MR. DOLAN: Yeah. Can you just 

clarify? I'm going back to January, right? Where the 

rationale for this change was provided for the 

Department, right? Here's a reason why we think we need 

to remove asynchronous altogether for clock-hour 

programs. The reason given was that institutions lack the 

technical expertise to really monitor clock hours in the 
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way that was required by the Department. With a hint 

towards some of the abuses. There has been no evidence 

marshaled by the Department regarding the abuse that 

you've seen and at what scale you've seen it. We've heard 

anecdotally from a few of you that we should be assured 

that this has existed. However, when you talk to her 

creditors in this space, they find it hard to find 

instances that you're talking about. When you talk to 

legal counsel that represents a lot of institutions in 

this space you find very little evidence of the abuse 

that you're referring to. So I just want to hear more 

clearly what the rationale is for the change. Is it 

really about abuse? Is it about that these institutions 

aren't meeting their outcomes? Which, you know, given the 

proposal that was submitted by a number of us it was 

pretty clear that a lot of these programs lead to 

licensure. So there's clear measures that already exist 

around outcomes that accreditors and the Department 

should be monitoring as part of this work. Or is it about 

the technical expertise component of this? Though I will 

say, if it's that, even the Department has highlighted 

very specific examples of programs that are doing this 

appropriately and well in accordance with the guidelines 

that have been provided to institutions. Just one quick 

thing, sort of to remind the Department here, too, is 
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that the guidance was given to institutions but has not 

yet been given to folks who are doing program reviews and 

audits. And so, you know, it's not even been monitored by 

the Department as part of this program reviews just yet 

because that guidance hasn't been provided, as was 

mentioned in February. So bottom line question just for 

this first part would be what is the concern, what's the 

problem that we're trying to solve here? And can we be 

clear on what that is? Is it abuse? Is it that these 

institutions aren't meeting outcomes or is it that they 

lack the technical expertise to really carry out this 

monitoring?

MR. MUSSER: A couple of things and 

then I want to turn it over to Denise. The first is that 

it's not accurate to say that our program reviewers don't 

have procedures on those. Program reviewers do have 

procedures about how to evaluate asynchronous clock 

hours. And in fact, that is the way that we would 

identify problems in this space ahead of all others. NonFederal auditors do not have specific procedures on this. 

And to be frank, Non-Federal auditors are rarely able to 

dig into requirements around such things as asynchronous 

clock hours to the degree that would be needed in order 

to identify real noncompliance. Although the Department 

will still consider asking auditors to do more in this 
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space over time if we ultimately decided not to change 

this regulation. But we don't think that they are the 

ones that would be able to find this. Program reviewers 

do understand these changes. However, during the 

pandemic, the Department was unable to perform as many 

program reviews as we had in the past for a variety of 

reasons. One of the things that comes up a lot when we 

talk about this is that we don't have many you know, a 

whole host of data on this and that's partly because it's 

our belief that this is not a widespread activity yet. I 

think what's partially driving our concern, and I'm going 

back to our original reasoning for this, is the abuse 

that we've identified in the cases that we've identified 

which in some cases have been extreme, as well as the 

kinds of questions that we're getting from the community 

about the requirement which, by the way, is a Department

specific requirement. This is not a requirement that 

accreditors are required to monitor. So most accrediting 

agencies would not even be aware that schools have to 

comply with this particular requirement of the 

Department. The accrediting agency knows how the program 

is being offered and has its own requirements, but it's 

not going to be thinking about how to measure a clock 

hour for purposes of the Title IV programs, and nor would 

we expect them to. So let me turn it over to Denise now 
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to talk through some of the specific cases that we've 

encountered about this that sort of raised these 

concerns.

MR. DOLAN: Can I just- so this is not 

part of a verification of compliance procedure that would 

be a component of an accreditor's responsibility upon 

review?

MR. MUSSER: No. This is not something 

an accreditor looks at. The accreditor looks at, are they 

offering distance education in accordance with the 

accreditor's requirements for distance education. Which 

do sometimes include things like verifying identity. That 

is an important piece of this that might relate to this. 

But in terms of measuring a clock hour and ensuring that 

a student attended 50 out of 60 minutes in a clock-hour, 

no, accrediting agencies are not required to perform that 

activity.

MR. DOLAN: So, you know, I'm certain 

it's something.

MS. K. SMITH: You have 30 seconds.

MR. DOLAN: Great, thank you. It's 

certainly something we report on from a credit hour 

perspective to our institutional creditor as a component 

of a review, right? In addition to reviewing our 

standards. Accreditors are being asked to take a look at 
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as a gatekeeper to the work that the Department is doing 

in compliance with Title IV regulations. So I might be 

wrong on this relative to clock-hour programs. I would 

think there would be some parallel expectations and I'll 

hop back in as necessary.

MS. MORELLI: I'll go ahead and go and 

then I'll leave, I guess, Jamie to come in on 

accreditation. But I haven't seen this issue raised in 

any kind of accreditation reports that I have seen. Not 

saying it hasn't. One thing, a couple of things to first 

point out is we don't have a lot of data in terms of 

specific- we can't give you examples, but this is going 

to be found primarily in program reviews, which is the 

area that I do a lot. I work with the teams on the 

program reviews and what they find there and taking 

actions against the schools. So one of the things that 

we've noticed, I'll give you some examples, we've already 

talked about it, and I also did want to point out that 

the Department did talk about the mechanism for 

monitoring this, but a big part of it, and we did lay 

that out in the first session, was the abuses that we've 

seen. I brought some examples out before. We've seen 

situations that are as bad as, you know, having somebody 

curl their hair, send a video in, watch a YouTube video, 

and then they get hours for it, assigning what they think 
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how long it should take somebody to do something like a 

project or whatever, and assigning clock hours. And when 

you get back to the definition of a clock-hour, it says 

instruction. We're talking about instruction and becomes 

more paramount in hands-on training programs, which are 

most of the ones we're seeing in these issues. We have 

other cases where we've gone in and we were able to get 

from the platform to go in behind and actually check. And 

where they were getting- student was getting 300 hours. 

We were able to find out they were actually really only 

online in these programs, 30 minutes, 45 minutes and be 

given 300 hours for it. So we are seeing a lot of abuses, 

and some of these other typicals go out and read a topic 

and then write something up on it or answer some 

questions. These are typical things that you would have 

seen before the explosion of distance education as 

homework items in a clock-hour, traditional clock-hour 

hands-on program, and now they're being turned into clock 

hours of instruction and they don't really meet that 

definition. And one of the other things, when you're 

saying there might be a small amount of abuse, and I 

think I said this before, sometimes the Department's 

obligation to the integrity of the programs, to help the 

students, to make sure they're getting the training 

because in these cases that I'm bringing up, the students 
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were also harmed in them. It wasn't just simply a 

taxpayer issue or something against the program. The 

students were not getting the training they needed and 

they couldn't go out and get jobs in the field. So we 

want to make sure that we're protecting everybody. But 

sometimes we do have to regulate to the bad actors and 

this is one of those situations. We've also seen because 

maybe because of the pandemic and seeing how much, you 

know, how easy it is to just say we're going to be 

distance ed an explosion. So even if we might not have a 

bulk of institutions right now where we've seen the 

problem, we're seeing an increase. And I've been doing 

this for 30 years, and I'm seeing a big increase in the 

amount of situations we're seeing where schools are 

claiming clock hours asynchronously and the students 

aren't getting the training. And when you're talking 

about outcomes, one of my more recent cases, it was very 

bad in this situation. We did check the licensure passage 

rates in this case and they were abysmal. 5, 10 students 

out of classes of 100, 200 students that actually passed 

the licensure exam. And I don't know what the states 

ultimately do and when they might cut it off. But from 

our perspective, that's not okay. And so in order to stem 

this abuse that we think this is the best way to do it. 

And putting like just a 50% cap isn't really going to get 
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us where we need to go. So that's the Department's 

reasoning. And we do have a large example of abuses. It 

may not be as widespread but we see an increase in it 

growing.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks, Denise. Jo 

Blondin, you're next.

MS. BLONDIN: Yes. I do want to 

clarify something that Scott brought up. Yes, I can speak 

for the Higher Learning Commission, and we do have a 

Federal compliance component to all peer review. So 

there's that. The other question that I had is rather 

than impacting 8,000 institutions and, you know, is there 

a way to put any kind of guardrails? I know that Denise 

just spoke to that a little bit, but I think that this is 

going to impact programs with unintended consequences. 

Nursing programs, particularly practical nursing 

programs, and state-tested nursing assistant programs 

that are doing this right. So I also wonder, too, if 

there are ways that we could think about some type of 

guardrails or even another reporting mechanism because I 

think that taking out asynchronous totally is going to 

have major impacts on students that we don't even realize 

in fields that are much needed to close skills gaps. 

Thank you.

MR. MUSSER: Real quick before Jamie 
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goes, I just want to make one clarification, which is the 

number that we gave was 8,000 clock-hour programs, not

8,000 institutions that are offering clock-hour programs.

MS. BLONDIN: Right, right. Sorry.

MR. MUSSER: Yeah. No worries. There 

are many institutions that offer a number of different 

programs. And it's the number of programs not 

institutions. Go ahead, Jamie.

MS. JEFFRIES: Jamie, can you hang on 

one second? We have two hands up, Jamie and David Cohen. 

We have approximately four minutes before lunch, so we'll 

take those two, and then we're going to break for lunch. 

Okay, so, Jamie.

MS. STUDLEY: Or breakfast, as the 

case may be.

MS. JEFFRIES: Sorry.

MS. STUDLEY: That's okay. My point is 

similar to Jo's and what Scott was saying. Listening to 

the public comment over the last few weeks, I realize 

there's another set of anecdotes, but there were students 

who were describing the value to them of asynchronous 

learning in ways that I did hear as providing examples of 

access for people who could pursue postsecondary 

education with these kinds of options and might not be 

able to otherwise or might not be able to move forward. 
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Denise really put her finger on it. This is a case of 

regulating to the bad actors, and sometimes we need to do 

that. But maybe there's a more subtle way to allow the 

opportunity for it and to regulate or to tighten 

something else. She's right that there are outcomes that 

can be used to determine whether a program is achieving 

what it's meant to achieve. David, maybe up to make the 

point he made in the chat about military people whose 

schedules require it. Just hate to see us in a moment of 

flux for technology and offerings to close something that 

can be positive completely, rather than trying to find a 

way to manage it when it could have real value for 

exactly a set of students that we'd like to have 

opportunities for. I do not have the perfect solution, 

but I don't think we're there yet.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks, Jamie. 

Appreciate it. David Cohen?

MR. COHEN: Just briefly, because I 

don't want to kind of repeat what people have said, but I 

was just going to say to Denise, you know, has the 

Department considered those quality assurance issues to 

define what good quality online asynchronous clock-hour 

learning would be rather than imposing a ban? And then 

the only other point that I will add is that I was 

approached at a conference in Washington by an active 
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military person who indicated that this type of ban would 

force them to give up the programs of study that they 

were in. And I was wondering whether the Department has 

considered the ban and the effect it would have on the 

active-duty military who are serving our nation who 

cannot then participate in clock-hour education 

asynchronously.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thanks, David. 

There are a couple comments in the chat. Jo Blondin 

added, when students need maximum flexibility and 

technology-provided solutions, why disallow the entire 

practice? So these are things that you can ponder over 

your lunch. I do want to remind the public to utilize the 

correct link for this afternoon's session, as it is a 

different link than what you were able to access this 

morning's session with. So make sure you make that 

adjustment. With that, I think that we can go ahead and 

pause our live stream and we will take our lunch break 

and reconvene shortly before 1:00 so we're ready to start 

at 1:00.

 
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Zoom Chat Transcript

Program Integrity and Institutional Quality- Session 3, Day 1, Morning, March 4, 2024

*Chat was copied as presented, as a result minor typos or grammatical errors may be present.

From Hannah.Hodel to Everyone:

I am not hearing any audio and will try calling back in

From Charles Prince, Dillard University to Everyone:

Charles Prince is here

From P, DC, HBCUs, TCUs, MSIs to Everyone:

p, DC, HBCUs, TCUs, MSIs is present

From A, Scott Dolan, Private/Nonprofit IHEs to Everyone:

i'll be back

From P-Jamie Studley, Institutional Accreditors to Everyone:

will we keep rolling through and accelerate when we start the next topic if some take less 

time than the schedule provides?

From A-David Cohen, Proprietary Institutions to Everyone:

If you take a consensus check prior to the public comment period, how can the negotiators 

consider the public comments?

From P - Erika Linden - Private Nonprofit Institutions to Everyone:

I concur with Jillian - this doesn't feel like negotiations.

From A- Alyssa Dobson: 4 Yr. Public Institutions to Everyone:

Reacted to "I concur with Jillia..." with ���

From A, Scott Dolan, Private/Nonprofit IHEs to Everyone:

Reacted to "I concur with Jillia..." with ���

From P, Jason Lorgan, Public 4-year to Everyone:

Reacted to "I concur with Jillia..." with ���
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Negotiated Rulemaking Program Integrity and 

Institutional Quality - 3/4/24

From A-David Cohen, Proprietary Institutions to Everyone:

Has the Department considered that it has put so many topics on the agenda in such a 

condensed period of time, that they cannot be fairly negotiated in the timeframe allotted?

From P - Erika Linden - Private Nonprofit Institutions to Everyone:

Facilitators - can you remind us whether the chats are visible to the public viewers?

From P-Jamie Studley, Institutional Accreditors to Everyone:

but with temp checks during the discussion, before the vote on the paper as a whole?

From A, Scott Dolan, Private/Nonprofit IHEs to Everyone:

agreed that the Dear Colleague Letter does seem at odds with the current redline language.

From P. Jo Blondin, Community Colleges to Everyone:

Reacted to "agreed that the De..." with ���

From P - Erika Linden - Private Nonprofit Institutions to Everyone:

Reacted to "agreed that the Dear..." with ���

From P. Jo Blondin, Community Colleges to Everyone:

https://fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledge-center/library/dear-colleague-letters/2024-02-

14/applying-title-iv-eligibility-direct-assessment-competency-based-programs

From P, Jillian Klein, Proprietary Institutions to Everyone:

Reacted to "https://fsapartners...." with ���

From P, Jillian Klein, Proprietary Institutions to Everyone:

Reacted to "agreed that the Dear..." with ���

From P - Barmak Nassirian, Veterans & Military Students to Everyone:

I support the Department's rationale on direct assessment.

From A-David Cohen, Proprietary Institutions to Everyone:

Has the Department considered how imposing an attendance requirement might impact 

active duty military studying from a distance?

From P - Erika Linden - Private Nonprofit Institutions to Everyone:
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Negotiated Rulemaking Program Integrity and 

Institutional Quality - 3/4/24

Alternate Scott Dolan is coming to the table.

From P - Erika Linden - Private Nonprofit Institutions to Everyone:

Are there ever excusable absences that will allow for a student to miss 14 days or longer 

without automatically withdrawn?

From P, Jillian Klein, Proprietary Institutions to Everyone:

David Cohen is coming to the table

From A, Scott Dolan, Private/Nonprofit IHEs to Everyone:

Erika will come back to the table

From A, Scott Dolan, Private/Nonprofit IHEs to Everyone:

i thought i heard that there was a minor redline edit?

From Krystil Smith | FMCS Facilitator to Everyone:

Please don't forget to use the naming conventions. A or P, your name, your constituency 

group

From P - Erika Linden - Private Nonprofit Institutions to Everyone:

Jillian's explanation is helpful as to what might constitute a "residency experience" -

perhaps the note that in the preamble.

From P, DC, HBCUs, TCUs, MSIs to Everyone:

Reacted to "Jillian's explanatio..." with ���

From P - Erika Linden - Private Nonprofit Institutions to Everyone:

Scott Dolan will return to the table.

From A- Alyssa Dobson: 4 Yr. Public Institutions to Everyone:

100% agree with Jillian's comments here.

From P, Jillian Klein, Proprietary Institutions to Everyone:

I like Robyn's edit

From P - Carolyn Fast, Civil Rights/Consumer Organizations to Everyone:

Reacted to "I like Robyn's edit" with ���
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Negotiated Rulemaking Program Integrity and 

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From A - Zack Goodwin (he/him), Financial Aid Administrators to Everyone:

Reacted to "I like Robyn's edit" with ���

From A-David Cohen, Proprietary Institutions to Everyone:

Has the Department considered how the removal of asynchronous learning in clock hour 

programs will impact active duty military?

From A, Scott Dolan, Private/Nonprofit IHEs to Everyone:

so why isn't this an institutional level issue with compliance? Of the 8,000 institutions, how 

many are doing it appropriately?

From P. Jo Blondin, Community Colleges to Everyone:

Reacted to "so why isn't this ..." with ���

From P, Jillian Klein, Proprietary Institutions to Everyone:

David Cohen will come to the table.

From A, Scott Dolan, Private/Nonprofit IHEs to Everyone:

the demand for students from low-income and disadvantaged backgrounds for flexible 

programs is increasing. from an equity perspective, not surprising to see a growth in models to 

meet that needed demand

From P - Carolyn Fast, Civil Rights/Consumer Organizations to Everyone:

I strongly support the Department's proposal here to address abuses in these programs.

From P - Barmak Nassirian, Veterans & Military Students to Everyone:

+1 in support of the Department's position on exclusion of asynchronous hours in clock 

hour programs

From P. Jo Blondin, Community Colleges to Everyone:

8000 programs, excuse me.

From P - Robyn Smith, Legal Aid Orgs. to Everyone:

I also strongly support this proposal.

From P - Erika Linden - Private Nonprofit Institutions to Everyone:

I agree with Jo Blondin's comments and asking if we can imagine some guardrails
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From A - Zack Goodwin (he/him), Financial Aid Administrators to Everyone:

Reacted to "I agree with Jo Blon..." with ��

From P. Jo Blondin, Community Colleges to Everyone:

When students need maximum flexibility and technology provides solutions, why disallow 

the entire practice?

From P - Barmak Nassirian, Veterans & Military Students to Everyone:

Parking students in front of a recording or counting amorphous "learning activities" as 

instruction is another open invitation to abuse.

From P, Laura Rasar King, Specialized Accreditors to Everyone:

I agree with Jo and Jamie. I think removing asynchronous instruction from clock hour 

programs will have unintended consequences for students.

From P-Jamie Studley, Institutional Accreditors to Everyone:

and people with failiy responsibilities, or jobs with unpredictable shift schedules

From A, Scott Dolan, Private/Nonprofit IHEs to Everyone:

Reacted to "I agree with Jo and ..." with ���

From P - Barmak Nassirian, Veterans & Military Students to Everyone:

We get a lot of complaints from military students about being parked in front of YouTube

From P - Carolyn Fast, Civil Rights/Consumer Organizations to Everyone:

Reacted to "I agree with Jo and ..." with ���

From P - Carolyn Fast, Civil Rights/Consumer Organizations to Everyone:

Removed a ��� reaction from "I agree with Jo and ..."

From P - Carolyn Fast, Civil Rights/Consumer Organizations to Everyone:

Reacted to "Parking students in ..." with ���

From P - Erika Linden - Private Nonprofit Institutions to Everyone:

Reacted to "I agree with Jo and ..." with ���

From P-Jamie Studley, Institutional Accreditors to Everyone:
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Negotiated Rulemaking Program Integrity and 

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so let's get at those, Barmak!

From A, Scott Dolan, Private/Nonprofit IHEs to Everyone:

agreed, Jamie! let's focus efforts there. seems like an institutional quality perspective.

From P - Erika Linden - Private Nonprofit Institutions to Everyone:

Well said, Jamie.

From P-Jamie Studley, Institutional Accreditors to Everyone:

Are there any good options proposed but not pursued? is there any chance we could 

generate a better proposal on this issue tonight if we had time?

From P, Jillian Klein, Proprietary Institutions to Everyone:

Carolyn and I are taking our consensus as a real consensus, Barmak! :)

From A, Scott Dolan, Private/Nonprofit IHEs to Everyone:

Reacted to "Carolyn and I are ta..." with �����

From P - Carolyn Fast, Civil Rights/Consumer Organizations to Everyone:

Reacted to "Carolyn and I are ta..." with �����

From A, Scott Dolan, Private/Nonprofit IHEs to Everyone:

compromise.

From P-Jamie Studley, Institutional Accreditors to Everyone:

if not consensus ED has the pen so they shd be able to take any suggestion they like to put 

in NPRM

From A, Scott Dolan, Private/Nonprofit IHEs to Everyone:

Reacted to "if not consensus ED ..." with ���

From P-Jamie Studley, Institutional Accreditors to Everyone:

Multiple options: 1) hold DE open and see if we find a better idea tonight 2) create a way to 

do what Barmak is suggesting. 3) finish reg neg and anyone can offer a brainstorm to ED for 

consideration in the NPRM

From A, Scott Dolan, Private/Nonprofit IHEs to Everyone:
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Negotiated Rulemaking Program Integrity and 

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there will be an assessment on what you watch, and a discussion of its importance within 

the larger context of the field