Negotiated Rulemaking Program Integrity and Institutional Quality - 1/11/24 

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 DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

 OFFICE OF POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION

 NEGOTIATED RULEMAKING PROGRAM INTEGRITY 

AND INSTITUTIONAL QUALITY 

 SESSION 1, DAY 4, AFTERNOON

JANUARY 11, 2024

On the 11th day of January, 2024, the

following meeting was held virtually, from 1:00 p.m.

to 4:00 p.m.
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P R O C E E D I N G S

MS. JEFFRIES: Welcome back. I hope 

you all had a nice break and a chance to get some 

nourishment as we have a very aggressive agenda yet to do 

this afternoon. So, I'd like to pick up with, I believe 

John Ware was first and then Jamie and take those two 

comments on 602.23, and then we're going to move on to 

the rest of the areas in the red text. So, John.

MR. WARE: Thanks. Yeah, just 

responding to the proposed revisions to the complaint 

provisions, state we’re generally supportive of those 

provisions. And I think a lot of that's probably already 

occurring at the accrediting agencies. So, this is just 

kind of formalizing the process. One suggestion I would 

have, is putting something in there that would require 

notification to state authorizing agencies who want the 

information. So, more of an opt-in type provision about 

substantive complaints. I don't think every state 

authorizing agency necessarily wants to get the 

information. And I certainly don't think they want to get 

notice of every single complaint that comes in. But, if 

there's a substantive complaint or something that the 

accrediting agency reasonably believes is fraud or 

misrepresentation, I know my agency would be interested 

in knowing about it, and I'm sure other state authorizing 
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agencies would as well. The second thing I want to touch 

on is just the notion of anonymous complaints. You know, 

I'm also supportive of the idea that you can't just 

outright dismiss anonymous complaints because, even 

though nine out of ten, probably you can't do anything 

about it, because of a lack of specificity, there are 

some that come in that are very specific. And, you know, 

it really does require the ability to follow up on. When 

I started 25 years ago, we have a provision in our law, 

it's still in the law, that says all complaints must 

come to us, must be signed and written by the 

complainant. So, when we get an anonymous complaint, we 

just call it a compliance matter and investigate it the 

same way. So, you know, I think that's kind of what the 

accrediting agencies were alluding to. But yeah, I 

support the idea that, you know, if something comes in 

and it has substance and that it really needs to be 

investigated whether or not there's a specific signature 

on it. Third item, confidentiality. This is a tricky one. 

Our general policy is we can't promise confidentiality, 

although we'll make reasonable efforts to keep 

information confidential. Sometimes in the course of an 

investigation, it's- you know, the school's going to 

figure it out. Let's put it that way. I mean, if you're 

doing an investigation about a specific consumer issue, a 
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lot of times it's already been raised at the school 

level. So, we tell students we'll make reasonable efforts 

to keep the information confidential you know, a lot of 

them are staff complaints, too. But we also tell them, 

look [30 seconds] the school's going to figure this out 

and also understand that if the matter goes to a formal 

hearing or something, it's almost 100% sure that either 

the plaintiff is going to be a witness or their name is 

going to come out in some type of discovery process. So 

those are my thoughts. Thanks.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you. Jamie? 

MS. STUDLEY: Three quick points. One, 

I appreciate Carolyn's reference to the recent 

discussions of what makes for good complaint practices. 

And many agencies have already revised their practices or 

have improvements underway. In some cases, very wellintentioned improvements turned out to need further 

tailoring. For example, moving from paper requirements to 

electronic was smart and relevant to a generation that 

probably can't locate a stamp. But then we realized there 

are some people, such as incarcerated individuals who may 

not have electronic access and need another model. That's 

the evolution in learning, and we are attentive to that, 

and making those changes. Second, if something does not 

fit within the complaint practice either because of the 
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way the person wants to do it, or an individual who 

chooses not to file a complaint, and does not want to go 

that route, accrediting agencies still have the ability, 

as John just said, to take cognizance of things that come 

to our attention. And, we do so we learn of things in a 

variety of different ways, and we follow up as 

appropriate. So, somebody who tells us something, who 

says, no, I don't want that to be a complaint, has other 

choices. It can be a third-party comment, or it can 

simply be having heard that I need to do something to 

learn what's going on at that institution. And finally, 

we could all help students - with directional signals. I 

always worry about the picture of a student trying to 

find the right doorway for a complaint or concern, and 

maybe there's something we can do together outside the 

regulatory process that would say, here's what the state 

attorneys general does, and is responsible for. Here's 

what the Department, the Federal Trade Commission, VA, 

DOD, US Department, and the accreditor, and here's the 

best way to take your concern, so that you have the best 

chance of getting to the right actor who can assist. I'm 

not trying to duck the responsibility that we should 

have, but helping people get to a responsible and 

responsive entity could also help all of us act in a 

timely way.
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MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Jamie. Jo, 

do you have something really quick? Because we were going 

to take the two and move on.

MS. BLONDIN: I do, I just want to add 

to that, for example, the Higher Learning Commission has 

a student right to know guide that helps them in that 

process as well. And so, I know a lot of the accreditors 

are making efforts or have made efforts in that regard. 

Thank you.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you very much. We 

appreciate the comments on 602.23. Next, we're going to 

move to the remaining sections, which are 602.30 through 

602.39. We would like to conclude those discussions by 

1:50, so that we can give you a quick ten-minute break 

and then move into the discussion piece on where the 

Department will be looking for guidance on drafting some 

regulatory texts so that- they can have that to come back 

with for the next session. Okay? So, with that I'm going 

to turn it over to Herman, who can start walking us 

through.

MR. BOUNDS: Alright. Thank you. Good 

afternoon, everyone. Hope everybody enjoyed their lunch

and got some time to take a little breather. I won't go 

over everything we have done in this session. I'll just 

speak in general terms, our changes here were number one 
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to try to help fit whenever we develop our risk-based 

review process that we're thinking about implementing, to 

streamline the timelines that are in the recognition 

process. Which, you know, when we first put these in, we 

thought, yep, this is probably going to be a good idea. 

But operationally, we had found out that they are causing 

some problems. So that's the main reason for the changes 

that we've made here are specifically related to the 

timelines. 

We also wanted to separate some of 

the requirements from, let's say, like renewal of 

recognition and submission of compliance reports, 

expansions of scope, and those things. So, we can start, 

(a) has a couple of changes there, and then we can just 

go down the list as we see fit. So, I'll open it up for 

discussion from this point.

MS. JEFFRIES: Sorry about that. My 

headset went dead. Can you hear me? Okay. Great. Alright, 

Jamie, you're up first. 

MS. STUDLEY: Yeah, we still want to 

keep looking at this because it is very detailed, but in 

general didn't spot broad concerns. We appreciate the 

Department's thinking about how the timeframes work and 

how the notification works, but efficiencies in the 

recognition process, you know, are reasonable to try and 
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improve what we do. And we will, comment about 

specifics, but, that had not yet identified any real 

concerns and respect the effort to think about how to 

make it flow so the public can participate and the 

comments can be timely. We appreciate that this is 

connected to Department workload issues, but nobody wants 

to be making decisions on stale information either.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, thank you. Any 

other questions, comments on what Herman just covered? 

Okay. Herman, you want to move on?

MR. BOUNDS: Sure, if there are no 

questions in that section we can move down. Please let me 

know if I skip something. We can move down to looks like 

602.31, the new 31. If we want to display that on the 

red text on the screen. And we will be hitting 604 on 

this later too, so I just want to make sure. Yeah.

MS. JEFFRIES: Yes.

MR. BOUNDS: And, no, really, I 

covered our basic purpose here, so I'll just open it up 

for questions or discussion. Again, this all has to do 

with the process.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, 602.31. Laura?

MS. RASAR KING: Thanks. I'm not sure 

we're fully supportive of striking the 24 months in 

advance submission of the petition that was not helpful, 
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I think, for either the accreditor or the Department. And 

the information got stale before it could even be 

reviewed. So, we support that. The language, though, 

that's in the place of it is just a- I'm sorry. A 

submission deadline set by the Department is that because 

we haven't discussed the risk-based stuff yet, or are you 

not intending to put a parameter in there? Because, I 

think , it would be fair to set some kind of timeline. 

It's not 24 months, but what would the timeline be and 

why isn't that proposed at this time?

MR. BOUNDS: Yeah, so let me answer 

that with maybe two short answers. So, if you remember

previously in the regulations before the 2020 change, we 

didn't have a submission timeline in those regulations. 

We did the recognition process operationally where we 

gave you notice and let you know when you were supposed 

to come to the NACIQI meeting based on the expiration of 

your recognition date, which is in that SDO decision 

letter. The second part is, true. This is related to our 

risk-based review process. Because once we figure out 

what that model is, we may be able to put a specific time 

for submission, but we're still working those things out. 

We just have found out when we put this hard 24 months in 

there, we just found problems with it. So, we don't know 

if an 18-month would be good or if a 12-month. We think 
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that this is something that can happen operationally as 

long as we give the accrediting agencies the time they 

need to get everything ready. Currently you get somewhere 

around 6 or 7 months to submit once you get that 

notification from us. So, but you're right, it's kind of 

based on risk-based review.

MS. RASAR KING: I do like the idea. 

The one thing I did like about the 24-month period is 

that it gave us a timeframe. That's the only thing I 

liked about it, but at least it gave us a timeframe. I 

would suggest putting in a timeframe once we get to that 

point, just for fairness on all sides.

MR. BOUNDS: Yeah. 

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, great. Other 

comments on the 602.31 changes? Feedback? Barmak. 

MR. NASSIRIAN: A group of us have 

submitted comments in writing. Some of them are just 

basic editorials, some of them are quite substantive but, 

I'm assuming we're just going to have the Department 

absorb those before it comes back. There's no need to 

burn time now trying to debate them, right?But, they are 

on the record and the Department will review them, I 

assume.

MS. JEFFRIES: You're talking about 

the proposal you sent?
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MR. NASSIRIAN: Yes. 

MS. JEFFRIES: We sent them. And they 

do have it, as well as the rest of the negotiators in it 

will be on the website as soon as it's completed, okay?

MR. NASSIRIAN: Thank you. 

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you. And thanks 

for being considerate- the time. We appreciate it, 

Barmak. Jesse.

MS. MORALES: Alright, so before we go 

on to look at further language, I think it's important to 

kind of take a step back and really start to understand 

why we're looking at stronger accreditation regulations. 

It's supposed to be a critical part of the triad that 

ensures that students, especially, are being served well 

and not being harmed. And I think, as we discussed with 

some of the standards for accreditation this morning, 

accrediting agencies may be serving their institutions 

well, but are often failing the students at those 

institutions who are counted on and have that expectation 

that accreditation means that there's a stamp of approval 

by the Department. So, the institution is going to work 

for those students, and ultimately, they're not. There'sacross thousands of currently accredited colleges, barely 

half of the students are graduating. And of those 

programs at currently accredited colleges, many of the 
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students are having to leave in a lot of debt, and 

earning less than they would have if they not gone to 

college at all. Many can’t get a job because their 

degrees aren't actually helping them to achieve that. And 

as students are leaving, and being left off again. I-t's 

important for us, as we're looking at this language, and 

for the Department to be ensuring that accreditors really 

are the trustworthy arbiters of the quality that they're 

saying that they are. Then instead of the Department's 

processes- instead, right now, the Department's processes 

often leave accreditors failures left unchecked. Tt'swhy we're looking through this language, that has to be 

something that we're looking at. What are the things that 

we're truly addressing that are touching students? 

Because as all of you here at the table and as I 

represent, our foremost concern should be for students 

and ensuring that students are getting a degree and an 

education that is of quality, that can help them in the 

future. So, I also wanted to add in the chat a letter 

from outside organizations sent to the Department last 

year, I believe, that echoes, and kind of expands on some 

of these concerns, and I hope the negotiators here at the 

table and others will look at it. Let me just say that I 

understand all these people that are representing at the 

table right now, I'm sure you're doing the best that you 
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can, but nonetheless, so many aren't. This is the 

purpose of why we're at the table, to make sure, and to 

check, and ensure that students are being served well.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thank you for 

your comment, Jessica. Next, anyone? Ashlynne.

MS. HAYCOCK-LOHMANN: I also wanted to 

add on to what Jessica was saying, especially when you're 

looking at entities like the Department of Veterans 

Affairs and the Department of Defense, they rely very 

heavily on what the Department is doing in accreditation 

to ensure that the programs they approved for things like 

GI Bill benefits and tuition assistance are good programs 

and good uses of those dollars as well. You know, 

oftentimes we see a lot of issues with veterans who are 

using GI Bill benefits access, having access to those 

programs and not being able to graduate on time or 

utilize those degrees as well. They're expecting that if 

something has VA- expects if something has the stamp of 

approval from Department, that it's going to be a 

legitimate program that's going to lead to employment for 

our veterans and military families. Thank you.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks, Ashlynne. Okay, 

seeing no hands, oh, Barmak, you're back. Okay, thanks. 

Go ahead. You're on mute.

MR. NASSIRIAN: Sorry about that. But, 
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Ashlynne reminded me of something I just wanted to bring 

to the committee's attention, and that is that obviously, 

the Department operates an ecosystem for its own 

programmatic purposes, that in which, accreditation is 

just one of part of the triad. I think the committee 

should be aware that the fact of accreditation by a 

Secretarially-recognized agency becomes a shortcut for 

eligibility for VA and DOD programs, particularly for VA 

programs, which means we have institutions that obtain 

Secretarially-recognized accreditation, but opt not to 

participate in Title IV very consciously, precisely 

because they don't want to be subject to the other 

requirements of the law on which we may be relying in 

terms of our thinking about how to configure 

accreditation.I can see why some may think, the 

accreditor, maybe we could ease up on the accreditor, 

which, by the way, I support. I know we're throwing too 

much at them, but it's important to understand that while 

the system may work, when you absolve the accreditor from 

certain kinds of responsibilities because, to say the 

certification process will take care of it, other 

agencies look at the accreditor being recognized by the 

Department almost like a blank check for purposes of 

eligibility. So, Ashlynne's comment is particularly worth 

paying attention to because the accreditor, in some 
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cases, is all there is for billions of dollars of 

taxpayer money and tens of thousands of students. Thank 

you.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Barmak. 

Okay, no further hands. Herman, back to you.

MR. BOUNDS: Alright, let's see. We 

can then go down in the red text, I think. We get to see 

where we are. Yeah, 602.32. Again, I talked about this 

earlier. This is again trying to reorganize the 

recognition process. Here we just moved review of 

expansions of scope compliance reports, and the increase 

in enrollment headcount. We wanted to put that in a 

section of its own. Mainly because the timelines in the 

earlier portion of the regulation, you alked about 

submitting two years in advance that may not be 

applicable here, nor so the amount of time that we have 

to give a credit to respond to a draft analysis. So, we 

just wanted to separate those. So, with that said, I'm 

happy to open it up for discussion.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thank you, 

Herman, for the overview. So open discussion on 602.32. 

Comments? I know some of these things were addressed in 

some proposals that have already been sent through by 

some negotiators. Jamie? You're on mute, Jamie.

MS. STUDLEY: Sorry to be taking- 
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commenting so often. On this one, we are a little 

concerned about the restrictions on the ability to bring 

forward a request for a scope increase. If institutions 

or program development need it, the Department speaks 

about innovation, and about allowing institutions to 

offer programs that are desired by students, by 

workforce, by states. To the extent that this could have 

the effect of slowing things down, the Department tried 

to anticipate that in saying to prevent the delay of 

educational programs for which high interest exists. It 

may not be massive, but it may be something the 

accreditor is willing to do. We know that's something 

we'd like to look at further , we appreciate the 

Department wanting to be efficient, but we would also 

like to be able to be responsive as fields or needs 

evolve and accreditors who meet Federal standards want to 

be able to review new types of programs. This may also be 

an issue for specialized accreditors.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Jamie. 

Anyone else? Barmak.

MR. NASSIRIAN: This is another 

conundrum, obviously. We certainly support evolution, and 

innovation, with the realization that there is risk 

involved. The question that is not sufficiently attended 

to in our current practice is that risk is borne almost 
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entirely by students and the taxpayers. You know, its 

innovation doesn't always succeed. It has a very warm and 

fuzzy feel to it when you say innovation, because we tend 

to think of innovations that succeeded. For every one 

that succeeds, there may be 99 that fail. When that 

happens in this environment, you're dealing with students 

under crushing debt. You're dealing with students 

significantly worse off than, if they had not been 

participants in the system. We want a system that is 

safe. Yes, we want it to be innovative. We want it to 

move forward. It has to come with significant safeguards 

that do not exist. I would be remiss if I don't go back 

to the vets and active duty members who don't even have 

the safety nets that the Department has so wisely 

implemented for purposes of protecting victims, at least 

post-facto from programs that prove less than adequate. 

We don't have those protections necessarily for vets and 

active duty service members. In all instances, the 

wasted time obviously cannot be made up. So, it is 

critical that as we attempt to accommodate innovation, we 

also think about the downside of not only possible, but 

probable failure, precisely because it's something we 

haven't done before. We don't know what the outcome is 

going to be. Thank you.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Barmak. 
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Jamie.

MS. STUDLEY: One of the advantages of 

regulatory negotiation, which I will still call neg reg, 

accidentally, is that we can learn from each other about 

what we're seeing. Barmak, I agree with everyeverything you just said in a that broad statement. Can 

you help me understand how that applies to expansions of 

scope? I just truly don't know how it plays out in 

accreditor expansions of scope. And if I did, I could 

think about how- , we could all think about what the 

regulatory guardrails ought to be.

MR. NASSIRIAN: I mean, as when you 

expand- may I respond? 

MS. JEFFRIES: Yes. Oh, absolutely.

MR. NASSIRIAN: Okay. Yeah, The

concern is that even diligent and attentive accreditors 

may be confronted with completely new configurations of 

delivery, completely new arrangements of programmatic 

offerings. That may sound good, that may look good, that 

may have all kinds of theoretical virtues except for one 

little defect, which is that they really can't work in 

practice. Right? I mean, there's lots of things that they 

called existential fallacy that lots of things can be 

thought of, but just because you can think of something 

doesn't mean you can do it. You may be able to construct 
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a submarine to go to the depths of the ocean to visit the 

Titanic on the cheap. It would be a good idea to have 

that, except that sometimes it doesn't work. So, the 

concern is that as accreditors are confronted with this 

onrush of innovative ideas, many of them driven by 

private equity and techno utopia. Techno utopian claims 

by outside parties who claim to have a better way that 

they may end up expanding the scope of their recognition 

practices to accommodate what sounds good but ends up 

victimizing lots of students. That's our concern. 

Otherwise, Jamie, you and I are very much on the same 

page. It's the critical task of striking the right 

balance to ensure that we don't stifle and ossify the 

system at the same time as we ensure that people are not 

victimized. It's a tough job.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you. Seeing no 

further hand.- 

MS. STUDLEY: I want to respond to 

Barmak.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, sure. Yeah.

MS. STUDLEY: All I want to do for 

folks is separate that there are two different stages 

here. You're right that we're in agreement on the 

challenge that we face. This section is about the 

accreditor's expansion of scope to even look at a 
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particular type of program, either a degree level or a 

field. Then the accreditor has the responsibility to 

make those critical judgments about any institution 

offering programs or, expanding into those areas of 

within the new scope. There are two stages, and both 

need to be rigorous. One is a set of decisions where the 

Department would decide on the agency's scope. The 

authority of Laura said, we see a new area where we 

believe our expertise could apply. We would like to add 

that to our scope. The Department makes the complex 

judgment whether she has the knowledge capacity through 

her commission, and then the agency would decide about 

whether any institution could measure up to the standards 

for that. Just- because we talk about scope and we talk 

about approvals, and it took me a long time to learn that 

there are these multiple layers.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks, Jamie and 

Barmak, for that great exchange and clarification for 

each other. Alright. So, Herman, let's move on to 602.33, 

I believe is next.

MR. BOUNDS: Yes. This is the section 

that I was referring to. I think the question that Barmak 

had about our ability to review accrediting agencies at 

any time during the recognition period. So again, we've 

proposed some changes here. And I'll open it up again for 
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comment.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks. Comments, 

questions, concerns on 602.33? Jamie.

MS. STUDLEY: Very tiny one. One of my 

colleagues picked out the words, if practicable, the 

Department would provide the agency with public 

information that it had received, to allow it to provide 

a written response. We wondered when, or how it might 

not be practicable to share that with the institution, 

with the agency? I'm not looking for an answer right now, 

but it was hard to imagine when something that the 

Department received and was relying on couldn't be made 

available in some fashion to the agency at issue.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, thank you. Is 

that something you want to put in the chat, Jamie? I know 

you're not looking for a response right now, but okay. 

Seeing no further hands on 602.33. Let's move to 602.34.

MR. BOUNDS: Okay. Again, just a few 

changes here. This is under Advisory Committee Meetings, 

I don't know if we've talked about these before, but 

they're not, too extensive at all. So, the minor 

changes here,if anyone has any comments. Just let us 

know. Tell us more about, the types of recommendations 

the committee can make and, committee processes. 

MS. JEFFRIES: [Inaudible] a few 
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minutes to peruse that text if you want before we move 

on. Not seeing any hands on 602.34. So, let's move to 

602.35.

MR. BOUNDS: Same here. Minor changes 

here. So, again any discussion?

MS. JEFFRIES: We're on Substantive 

Changes here? Is that what you're saying, Herman? 

MR. BOUNDS: Right. No, nothing 

substantive under 35. I think we just have the one in 

(a), I believe. Yeah. Everything else is current 

regulatory text.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. So, we will move 

to 602.36.

MR. BOUNDS: Okay. I don't think 

there's anything there significant. Nope.

MS. JEFFRIES: So, unless someone sees 

anything substantive that is missing, we'll move on to 

602.37.

MR. BOUNDS: Yeah, I honestly think 

we're probably good all the way down to the 604. I don't 

see anything significant in any of those sections unless 

I missed something.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. So, let's move to 

604. 

MR. BOUNDS: Okay. Let me get down to 
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that. I'll give a brief overview of 604. And I don't 

know how many folks are familiar with our review of state 

boards of nursing. They are currently reviewed using a 

1969 Federal Register Notice, which has not been updated 

since 1969. We have another type of agency that we also 

review. It's not covered here. But just to put things in 

context, we also review state agencies that approve 

vocational education in their states. They're recognized 

under 34 CFR 603. I just want to give people an 

understanding we're not making a special carve-out. 

There's it's already been established that these are 

different organizations, and they have different review 

criteria. Just general information. There are currently 

five state boards of nursing that we recognize, four 

state vocational agencies that we recognize. Our attempt 

here was merely to move the nurse criteria into 

regulation and codify the criteria that currently exists 

that was in that 1969 Federal Register Notice that I 

think you guys may have that, and then try to update it 

with things that we think the nurse criteria may have 

been a little short on. I know this is a lot to look 

through, but that's our sole purpose here. They're 

recognized instead of five years they recognize every 

four years. Again, I understand this is a lot, but I 

would open it up for questions at this time.
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MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Before we do 

that, I want to make note that Amy Ackerson is coming to 

the table in place of Laura Rasar King for the entirety 

of the 604 discussions. Amy, your hand is up.

MS. ACKERSON: Thank you. I just want 

it to be known. I've waited all week for section 604.

MS. JEFFRIES: It's your stage now, 

Amy.

MS. ACKERSON: Just to reiterate, 

there are currently only five nursing regulatory boards 

that are recognized by the Department. In hearing from 

colleagues at other nursing regulatory boards, there is a 

likely scenario that number of nursing regulatory boards 

approved will drop from 5 to 3. Over the years, agencies 

have self-selected to not maintain their department

recognition due to the scrutiny of the review, the fouryear review process, and the lack of concordance with 

state rule, and statute that the nursing regulatory 

boards function under. Lastly, there's a very limited 

benefit to the Nursing Regulatory Board, and the programs 

they approve. The 1969 Federal Register Notice not only 

cites outdated statute, but it also cites outdated 

practices as it pertains to nursing education program 

regulation. The Department seeks to update the 

recognition procedures to more closely align with those 
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applied to other agencies, and I assume that other 

agencies refer to accreditation agencies. Nursing program 

approvals are not programmatic accreditors. Nursing 

Regulatory Board approval standards are regulated by 

state law, and rule that the nursing program accreditors 

have modeled their standards after, not the other way 

around. Model rules that are evidence-based and based on 

best practice are developed by the National Council for 

State Boards of Nursing, and are the guiding rules that 

the nursing regulatory boards use in nursing program 

approval. If it is the intention of the Department to 

continue to recognize the approval agencies of nursing 

education programs, then I would ask that this 

negotiation cycle also be used to bring the rules into 

the current era of nursing program regulation. The 

Department rules should allow for state rules to be 

considered and recognized for the high quality and 

integrity they are modeled after. I think some minor 

changes to the reg text can accomplish both the goals of 

the Department, and be better suited for the nursing 

regulatory boards at this time. I think it's important to 

reiterate that nursing regulatory boards are not 

accreditation agencies. We do not have staffs of people. 

We are Departments within state agencies that are often 

one and two people deep. The burden of regulatory 
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burden, along with the re-review process of the 

Department is cumbersome at best. So that's what I would 

like to say. I did submit some minor changes to the 

rules. One of my main concerns is with the annual 

reporting as guidelines as they stand now. And then as I 

stated, the review process being four years, whereas 

accrediting agencies are five. Thank you.

MR. BOUNDS: Amy, I would just like 

to comment. Yeah, our goal was to not only try to update 

the best we could but try to align with some of the 

things that are also in 603, which are the agencies that 

we recognize for vocational education. We also realized 

that it would be very difficult for state vocational or 

state boards of nursing to meet the requirements of 602. 

Number one, there's a provision there that would require 

that the state agency be recognized, I think it is before 

1st October 1991. So many of them would not even be able 

to make that requirement. But, your input is helpful. 

That's why we're glad you're here. W You're the 

experts with the state Board of nursing. We know some of 

them, like this process, some of them, have some 

suggestions. We welcome any edits, and updates that you 

think might help us through this. So, we appreciate you 

being here.

MS. ACKERSON: Thank you.
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MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Amy. I would 

like to point out that D'Angelo Sands, the alternate for 

historically Black colleges and universities, tribal 

colleges and universities, and minority serving 

institutions, is stepping to the table for this in place 

of DC Prince. Thank you. Further discussion on 604? Not 

seeing any. Okay. I believe, Herman, that's concluded 

the regulatory text and leaves the discussion topics as 

the next agenda item. Correct?

MR. BOUNDS: I believe so.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. It is 1:43. How 

about we take a ten-minute break, come back about 5 to 2, 

and then we'll spend the rest of the time until public 

comment on those questions for discussion and the 

relevant sections of the document associated with those. 

I do want to take a moment just to remind the public 

commenters who have been given time slots to please 

remember to sign in about 15 minutes before your time 

slot so that we can move through, and get as many people 

in on public comment as we can. With that, we'll see 

you back, at about 5 to 2. Okay. Welcome back. I hope 

you were able to at least get your legs stretched a 

little bit. We are now going to move, and look at the 

issue paper under the discussion topics. Herman, do you 

want to start with the discussion under 602.16, I believe 
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it is, the first one, is that correct?

MR. BOUNDS: Yes, I think that is.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay.

MR. BOUNDS: Right. Okay. Whoa, my 

screen went blank. Sorry.

MS. JEFFRIES: That's alright, my 

headset went dead. 

MR. BOUNDS: Okay. You all can read 

the issue that we have here, and we're looking for some 

discussion under 602.16. Just quick above that, we just 

made a mention about putting in a crosswalk under 

number one, to better, relate the regulations in 602 to 

some of the eligibility regulations. I'm sorry if I'm 

jumping around. It's still on page four, I just wanted 

to mention that. If you can scroll up, a little bit more 

right there. I didn't want to skip that if somebody had 

questions. I've already talked about the nurse criteria. 

Now we're at the 602, 602.16 spot. Basically here 

we're asking for some help with some questions in this 

area. As you know, accrediting agencies are supposed to 

have- standards that they have to have policy for. We 

have standards that the agencies must have standards for 

under 602.16 and that's really 602.16 (a) one through 

ten. Of those, of course, are- student achievement. 

Some of the others are fiscal and administrative 
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capacity. Again, route recruiting, and admission 

practices, student support services. Of those we have to 

determine whether an agency standards are what we say as

sufficiently rigorous, both in, regulation and in 

statute. So, what we are asking you here, if you go down 

to the questions, and there's the first one, I guess we 

can go ahead and take that one. It's, how can the

Department ensure that standards are sufficiently 

rigorous, and should the expectation of rigor vary by 

category? I'll leave it at that. Sorry for the tongue 

twisting earlier. I had two different screens open, and 

got lost there for a second, so I apologize.

MS. JEFFRIES: Barmak.

MR. NASSIRIAN: Yeah. It's a problem 

because obviously we want them to be rigorous, whatever 

that means. Many standards, of various accreditors do 

refer to rigor and outcomes, etc. The only problem is 

they are not they are not clear and distinct, and they do 

not articulate verifiable thresholds below which 

performance can be designated as unacceptable. I think 

it would help, to the extent that it is possible for the 

Department to at least require accreditors to use to 

articulate specific bright lines where possible, below 

which they would view an institution as not having met 

their standards. The one that comes to mind immediately 
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is the graduation rate. The Department can't impose a 

graduation rate on anybody, but an agency should be able 

to tell you that there is a graduation rate below which 

the institution should be very carefully looked at and 

maybe even a graduation rate below which the institution 

should not be eligible.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks, Barmak. Diana.

MS. HOOLEY: I would just echo what 

Barmak just noted as well. I think that's an eminently 

reasonable suggestion. I would also suggest that, 

whatever these benchmarks are, that they be made 

available very conspicuously to prospective students as 

well as currently enrolled students who will have, in 

longer term programs, have to decide whether, to 

continue to enroll. I think that information just has to 

be made conspicuously available to consumers.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Diana. 

Jamie.

MS. STUDLEY: Starting with a little 

bit of classification. Standards are the broad criteria 

and expectations that we establish that all schools must

follow. For example, and I can send this around, my 

organization has standards. That's what we call these 

that say the institution demonstrates that graduates 

consistently achieve stated learning outcomes and 
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standards of performance. The institutions demonstrate 

that students make reasonable progress toward and 

complete their degrees in a timely manner. The 

institution monitors and analyzes the outcomes of its 

students’ following graduation and uses the results for 

improvement. Those are in the new 2023 standards that 

WASC has adopted and will go into effect this coming 

year,. those are standards. Then we have metrics by which 

we, and the institution can understand, and students, and 

anyone else who wants to look, can understand how the 

institution is doing regarding those standards, using a 

variety of metrics. I've sent around- it wasn't showing 

as a link, I don't know what my problem was, I have the 

connection attached there, that provide student outcomes 

at the institution, disaggregated by population with 

trends over time, comparison to medians 25 and 75% 

levels. Not every accreditor does it this way. I'm using 

the one I know best as an example, but you will see on 

lots of other institutional accreditors and Laura can 

speak for specialized about how we share that 

information, and we use it with the institution in the 

team review and in our decision making. We use it to 

understand how the institution is performing, but it all 

needs to be situational. What's the program? What's the 

population? What is the effectiveness of programs in this 
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field? What's the trend? Are you moving upward and 

getting better? And those all fit into the judgment that 

the accrediting organization is asked to make. It is 

complex work. And we are aiming to promote student 

success on all these measures. We, in our organization, 

are looking at, newly under 2.11 [30 seconds] new 

questions about return on investment. I'm speaking now 

mostly on student performance. I'll come back to other 

topics and what we do, but you need to understand that 

the standard is the big picture. The metrics are the 

performance levels, and that we do use those in judging 

whether an institution is satisfactory or falling below 

what should be expected. But it is a very individualized 

judgment matter to which we are trying to add 

predictability, the ability to tell a public story. We 

are working with the Department on improving the 

education,- the information the Department can give us in 

data terms so that we can do those complex analyses.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Can you hear me? 

Okay, great. I got this headphone working. Wonderful. 

Jamie, did I hear a data request in that?

MS. STUDLEY: No, I was providing 

data, a link to the data that we provide, and I was 

referring to conversations that we are having with people 

at the Department, guided by Antoinette Flores, Jordan 
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Matsudaira and others to improve the data that we have 

available so that we can meet our desire to be rigorous 

and that of the other negotiators.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thanks for that 

clarification. Before I go to Barmak, I want to announce 

that the alternate Scott Dolan has stepped in in place 

of Erika Linden for private, nonprofit institutions. So,

with that, Barmak.

MR. NASSIRIAN: If we get into the 

fundamental dilemma here of accreditors playing the 

fundamental duality in the nature of what accreditation 

has become, on the one hand, it's a quality assurance 

mechanism that's supposed to do gatekeeping. On the 

other hand, it's a quality improvement mechanism which is 

supposed to be a voluntary collaboration among peer 

institutions. I think what I'm trying to articulate 

here, Jamie, I understand what you're saying and what you 

say makes a lot of sense. But to put it in like 

collegiate terms, to give us nightmares about our 

undergraduate years, it's sort of like, in the quality 

improvement modality. Obviously, the accreditor is 

judging the application of these metrics to its standards 

based on a self-set institutional mission. W In many 

ways what you're doing is you have an almost infinite 

number of grades that are given to people. You have an 
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infinite number of grading systems, based on what the 

institution says its mission and goals are. But from a 

Federal and from a student perspective, it would be handy 

to know that there is also a fixed rubric based on which 

an institution makes an accreditor makes its own 

judgments about institutions. Now, the Feds can't tell 

you what that is, but it would be nice. Such a rubric, if 

articulated by the accreditor, would be enormously 

helpful. It may be perfectly fine that an institution 

has a 5% graduation rate. There may be all kinds of 

reasonable explanations as to why that is the case, but 

it would be nice to be able, for the accreditor, to be 

able to say, these are the thresholds by which we 

categorize different members or different entities we 

accredit. Below a certain threshold, we have looked at 

them and, it's fine. We validate the fact that they have 

a 5% graduation rate, should not be grounds for concern, 

because we have attended to it, and we know it's okay. I 

think that's what I'm trying to get at. We're not trying 

to impose a Federal standard on anybody. We're simply 

saying articulate something that the public can 

understand.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Barmak. 

Jamie.

MS. STUDLEY: Two observations. One, 
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the accountability and quality assurance purpose. I don't 

know if the phrase is, comes first, but it's not a 

choice. We are not confused about whether we are 

improving or gatekeeping. If an institution does not meet 

standards, it is the responsibility of the accrediting 

agency to so identify and to place them on warning, 

probation, show cause or to withdraw accreditation, 

period, end of sentence. So, it is a dual role, but there 

are lots of ways in which people have dual roles. 

Teachers do it all the time, but if somebody fails the 

test, we identify them as having failed the test and work 

through the consequences. Sometimes that does allow an 

institution to improve. They're placed on warning, they 

get better. All good, ut that does not stop us from 

pursuing the natural compliance story. On the other, I 

think we're closer together than some people might think. 

A fixed rubric, however, I avoid the phrase bright line 

because we can't set bright lines. Had it been possible 

to set bright lines, the College Scorecard might have 

done so. We do not have either the information or the 

understanding to have high stakes consequences follow 

from the numbers. But I know my agency and I believe 

many others are looking at thresholds for follow-up and 

as the information that we have gets better and more 

reliable and coherent, we are thinking about how we can 
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say, if this, then we will look at you this way or this 

is going to be subject to an additional conversation. We 

already do that in lots of instances. We call out poor 

performance in our commission action letters, which are 

public. You can look at them. There are lots of ways in 

which we flag for the institution, and we are asking 

whether those flags can be more visible so that people 

know when we will flag, whether that's numerical or in 

some other way. But we can't do it out ahead of data that 

that would be inaccurate for schools and not tell a fair 

story about their students' performance. So, we're with 

you in wanting to be more predictable, wanting to be 

clearer about how we follow up, because we do want people 

to understand what we're doing. But we can't do it in 

ways that are that would be so blunt that we would have 

consequences for institutions that should be permitted to 

continue or are improving at a pace that would satisfy a 

reasonable accrediting judgment about standards.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Jamie. Jo? 

MS. BLONDIN: Yes, thank you. Not to 

reiterate what Jamie said, but I know that the Higher 

Learning Commission is working on what is relevant also 

to the sectors and to student intent. I know as a 

president of a community college that many students come 

to me. In fact, 90% of the 6,000 students at Clark State 
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are part-time. They're not going to graduate within a 

two-year window. They also may not be seeking to graduate 

from our college at all. They transfer to Wright State or 

Ohio State. I want to make that clear that is something 

I know that we're paying particular attention to is 

trying to capture student intent across our institutions. 

But also, we want these metrics. We want to be as 

relevant and transparent as possible. But I agree about 

bright lines because, as Jamie mentioned, I mean, the 

scorecard is not always representing what we're doing 

within the two-year sector. Thank you.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Jo. Barmak?

MR. NASSIRIAN: I'm going to pose a 

question to the group. Do we believe, as has proven to 

have been the case historically, that there are fully 

accredited institutions operating today, that a future, 

lenient benevolent administration may decide to offer 

mass loan discharge to their students because it turns 

out they were subpar operations? Do we think every- do we 

believe that every accredited institution today is a 

safe, high-quality venue for students to pursue 

education? Because if that is not so, and it was not so, 

we know that. We know that Corinthian, not to speak ill 

of the dead, but you know, we can never speak about those 

who are continuing today since they may get, offended. 
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But we can certainly talk about the past. Corinthian was 

accredited. ITT was accredited. I realize the answer is 

typically that was then, this is now. I posit to you 

that not enough has changed to ensure that WASC may do a 

lot of things right voluntarily. I am grateful for that, 

and others may do the same. That's great. The question we 

need to ask is, are the demands of the Federal 

government sufficient to make sure that everyone must 

do, at the minimum, the required due diligence to ensure 

that every institution currently operating with a full 

accreditation status is actually a good actor. I think 

the answer to that, I really challenge anybody to give me 

that assurance that there are no bad actors enjoying full 

accreditation today, in which case there's a real problem 

and I think there is a real problem. Thank you.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Barmak. 

Carolyn? 

MS. FAST: Just to put some numbers 

into what Barmak is talking about. Department has 

estimated that 700,000 students are getting Federal Aid 

and are enrolled in career training programs that leave 

them with debt that they cannot pay back because of their 

meager earnings, or that earn less than a high school 

graduate in the same state. This is, I think, pretty 

clear indication that something is not entirely right in 
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how quality is, and this is just looking at career 

training programs, not looking at the programs in 

general. I'm just putting that out there as additional 

evidence that the problem has not gone away. These are, 

current numbers and suggest that there is a problem here 

that the Department is trying to address.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Carolyn. 

John?

MR. WARE: Yeah. Thanks. And I agree 

with Carolyn's comment, and I think that the issue about

cost, is in my mind, different from quality. But, 

that's a different discussion, but also to respond to 

Barmak comments, all these institutions that we're 

talking about, that were accredited that went out of 

business were also state authorized as well, so it's 

important to remember that. Some of this, in specific 

reference to ITT, because we had multiple ITT 

institutions in Ohio, some of this information that's 

coming out now that ITT closed and just because it was 

fraudulent, I don't think that's accurate. We can get 

into a debate with that, but it was primarily closed due 

to financial issues and the fact that the US Department 

requested that they post a $250 million letter of credit. 

So that was kind of what pushed them over the edge for 

the closure. But, getting back to the standards, I 
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think we really need to consider comparing similar 

institutions to similar institutions. And we have 

standards and benchmarks in our regulations that relate 

to job placement and graduation rates. When we getpeople falling below the rates, we really, take the time 

to look at what's going on. Who are the students they're 

serving? You know, there's a lot of factors in there. And 

I think this goes back to the community college issue, 

too, that if you look at IPEDS data, community college 

graduation rates are really, low. But there's a reason 

for that. You know, the students they're serving, they 

tend to come in and out of school. And if you're going to 

start to use benchmarks, I think there's a lot of 

institutions who kind of have a different mission that 

are going to get into trouble with those type of

benchmarks. Thanks.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks, John. Okay, 

Scott Dolan.

MR. DOLAN: I know I put it in the 

in the chat box, but I think we're all in agreement that 

we should move forward with standards that we can use to 

evaluate institutions. I think it's how accreditors use 

that information to determine the quality of 

institutions. I think the challenge is how we go about 

doing that. And how do we create consistent bright lines 
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that enable us to make fair comparisons, good comparisons 

around, what makes this institution of quality and leads 

students to success? You know, within our constituency 

there's a wide variety of institutions and different 

types of students that they serve. I think, out of 

recognition of that, it's just about being thoughtful. In 

addition, I guess the question I have is, the 

Department's looking for some guidance around how they 

ensure sufficient rigor moving forward. It might be 

helpful to hear a bit more or to see a bit more exactly 

the process and procedure that is being used right now to 

determine those assessments of sufficient rigor, as they 

apply to, accreditors. What have been the challenges 

there when evaluating accreditors? What data would they 

like to have? What data don't they have? What information 

is not as easily accessible? I think we could start from 

a kind of here's where we are versus here's where we 

might want to be and how do we solve for that?

MR. BOUNDS: Yeah, I can jump in 

really quick. I just do want to remind everybody that we 

have two more questions in this category. We're still on 

the first question. To answer your question real 

briefly, what we currently do is when we get a petition 

for recognition and we're evaluating the agency student 

achievement standards, whether they set their own or 
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evaluate the institutions, we're looking at a reasonable 

explanation of how the standard was developed, how the 

requirements were developed. If it’s a benchmark, how did 

you determine that 70% was okay? What sort of studies or 

reviews have you done? Then we wait and see what the 

agency comes back with. I won't get into it, but I'll 

just remind everybody, there are some strict limits on 

the Department's authority when it comes to trying to set 

a student achievement standard out. I won't read it to 

you, but it's in the HEA. I'm sure all of you all are 

aware of that. I kind of hope that answers your 

question. It's really a qualitative review of, you know 

what the agency provides for us in our review of the 

agency.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thanks, Herman. 

And you are exactly right. We were taking comments on 

question one. Let's look at question two. What factors 

should the Department consider in evaluating the rigor of 

an agency's standards generally? Any thoughts on that? 

Jamie. You're on mute, Jamie.

MS. STUDLEY: Different place on the 

screen. Accreditors want to be as helpful as we can on 

this issue, and having gotten these, last week, we will 

be talking some more about providing answers that can be 

helpful on this whole set of issues. But some of them 
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involve using the best available data, consistently 

training, and preparing their teams to ask the questions 

about these particular matters. Accreditation process and 

inquiry have evolved a lot over the 10, 20, I think it's 

almost 30 years that I've been watching accreditation. 

It's much more specific. It's much more linked to data 

and performance outcomes. Carolyn talked about several

outcomes related to postgraduate success, employment, 

return on investment, debt, and so forth. As information 

about those has become available, they've been 

incorporated into the thinking. So, what is rigorous 

depends on what's available It has moved. We advanced 

the needle on doing those kinds of things. One of my 

colleagues said rigor under the standards will be in 

terms of disaggregated data, informed approaches to 

measuring student achievement and closing equity gaps. 

The Department can ask us about how each agency, and 

does, ask how each agency has applied that and done it in 

a consistent way, and how it has supported it with 

substantive information. We'll probably have more to 

say. But this is very much in line with the thinking of 

accrediting agencies trying to say, what can we use to 

make those judgments and what are the new issues that 

should be included? And how can we do it in a way that's 

fair and reasonably consistent? Because they're not the 
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same, but they need to be fair and appropriately 

consistent across institutions.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Jamie. 

Jesse?

MS. MORALES: Just wanting to also 

echo what Jamie has just mentioned. But in terms of the 

importance of the requiring of the disaggregated data, 

wanting to lift that back up again. While obviously some 

accreditors may do so, having that language within this 

process that we're working on is very important.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you. DC?

DR. PRINCE: Can you hear me?

MS. JEFFRIES: Yes.

DR. PRINCE: Alright. In relation to 

this question, I do like to bring up two points on what 

factors the Department consider in evaluating the rigor 

of an agency standards generally. I think the first one 

is on transparency, and I think the Department needs to 

determine what is an agency's role in being transparent 

not only to the public, but to its members. What level 

of that should be done as an adequate level of 

transparency? I think the issues, that we are running 

into is a lot of these discussions that we're having, 

isn't necessarily heavily known in the industry as it 

should be, but also the roles of these agencies, and how 
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they handle certain situations, certain topics, their 

financial sustainability, and stability. I would say 

these levels of transparency need to be determined by the 

Department. I think secondly, the other issue is 

governance. I know that I brought it up yesterday and 

think that we need guidelines around what is good 

practices in governance. What should governance look 

like? As I had also suggested yesterday, what is the 

overhaul of rethinking an agency's role as far as when it 

comes to not management, CEO and VP's, but governance in 

the sense of the role of the members, the role of their 

board, their commissions, whatever they might call it 

that are that the CEO reports to? And looking at those 

two areas of an agency standards, how transparent are 

they? At what level of transparency are they providing 

based on the standards, based on public engagement and 

then governance? At what role and level do we think what 

agencies are doing is there governance policies, 

procedures? Are there people that they name? Because I 

know we've talked about public members, but really, we 

need to think about all the members who are part of the 

commission, whether we consider them to be higher 

education experts or not, what is the right position and 

call and how do they navigate such a terrain in building 

an appropriate and effective form of governance at their 
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and their respective agencies? I think those two points 

need to be taken into consideration as far as evaluating 

rigor.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, DC. Seeing 

no other hands-on question two, let's move to the final 

question. What factors should the Department consider in 

evaluating the rigor of an agency's standards 

specifically on success with respect to student 

achievement, fiscal and administrative capacity, student 

support services, and recruiting and admission practices? 

Jamie?

MS. STUDLEY: Thank you. Let me just 

pick up on two of them, because this is the kind of 

question agencies ask themselves all the time. With 

fiscal- regarding fiscal and administrative capacity, in 

reaching out to other institutional accreditors, a number 

are doing very thorough analytic work on these kinds of 

things as many of the commenters have mentioned, John 

Ware most recently. Some of the issues of great concern 

were financial issues with institutions. In some cases, 

institutions with adequate or effective education 

programs have financial issues. In other cases, they areit is a signal to motivate a stronger look into the 

program. The New England Commission does a financial

analysis that is extremely detailed about its 
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institutions. I know, my and the Middle States Agency do 

annual reviews. Others may also do that, in which we 

evaluate financial requirements and status for different 

institutions. We use the best available metrics that we 

can to try to be forward-looking because, increasingly, 

one change that accreditation deals with is that 

financial realities are more dynamic than they used to 

be. Things happen faster and that can make or break, 

despite the best efforts to review, you know, audits our 

history, we try and look at enrollment trends because 

they are somewhat more predictive if they are rigorously 

applied. So, there are lots of different ways in which we 

are using the best available tools on the finance side. 

Student Support Services is quite different because it's 

very integrated. You want to know what students think 

about the availability of the services they need to 

succeed. You also can look at the student performance. 

And if it's not as the institution hoped or as the 

accreditor hoped to fit squarely in a solid performance 

level, then you can look backward to say, what's not 

working? Are you accepting people who can't benefit from 

this program, or are you not providing a quality 

education? Or you are providing a quality education, but 

they can't get housing or food or transportation or 

counseling services to be able to continue in your high-
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quality program too often? We do that by educating 

institutions to go through that entire analysis of what 

are the outcomes, what are the performances. Then if 

we are not happy with them [30 seconds] where might the 

shortcomings be and what does it take to improve those?

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thank you, Jamie. 

Barmak?

MR. NASSIRIAN: This is an obviously, 

as with everything else, a particularly vexing and 

complicated topic. With regard to the first one, success 

with respect to student achievement, one of the 

consistent patterns we see is that bad actors can 

outsmart the regulators when it comes to navigating 

whatever reasonable standards and metrics they come up 

with. This committee heard from a student that was 

describing an experience that illustrates the point. It 

is a perfectly rational and appropriate thing to index 

some kind of judgment about an institution's educational 

quality to the success of its graduates in passing state 

administered licensure exams. That's reasonable. That is, 

in fact, arguably the best metric of judging the quality 

is how many of your graduates end up successfully 

navigating the licensure exam. But it apparently never 

occurs to people that it is very easy for institutions to 

cash the checks for the entirety of the program and at 
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the very end administer either the test, the high stakes

test itself, or a proxy for it to prevent those of their 

students that they know cannot pass the test from 

graduating. I think it's important that as agencies 

develop metrics and standards and metrics for these 

criteria that they also pay some attention to the 

numerous ways in which some of them can be easily game. I 

think the manipulation of whatever good ideas we put out 

there is a perpetual problem. I think that certainly 

applies in a different way to the last one, recruiting 

and admissions practices to the extent- , we see an 

enormous amount of abuse there. You know, if anything, 

accreditors are supposed to be closer to the ground. 

They're supposed to hear this stuff with the same 

frequency we hear this stuff and it's all out there quite 

in the open, and nobody seems to be acting. So that's 

another one. We see mis-categorization of expenses as a 

huge problem. We see some institutions categorizing 

recruitment as a student support service to decrease the 

number for the recruitment figure and increase the warm 

and fuzzy feeling you get from support services. So, I 

think this notion of making sure that they anticipate 

ways in which whatever standards they come up with may be 

easily manipulated, and some process for validating this 

stuff, the fiscal and administrative issue is 
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particularly vexing because the Department itself is not 

particularly good at anticipating where institutions are, 

but the evidence of so many institutions that have failed 

[30 seconds] in the recent past. Obviously, nobody is 

very good at anticipating, for reasons I don't 

understand, how institutions are doing and who's likely 

to collapse those students. Thanks.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thank you. I have 

three hands up: Scott, Jamie, and Jo. We'll go ahead and 

take those three. Then I'd like to move the committee to 

the 602.24, as we have quite a bit yet to cover this 

afternoon before public comment, if that's okay. Scott?

MR. DOLAN: Yeah, thank you. You know, 

I think I would put an endorsement for, work-around 

increased oversight on the fiscal and administrative 

side. We've talked a lot over the last few days about 

bad actors and institutions that need more oversight. But

in this particular instance, I think we really need this 

kind of oversight for institutions that are wellintended, but just happen to be maybe in the wrong 

region and have a demographics and being what they are 

making the reality of their institution difficult, and 

need guidance and the ability to work with the triad to 

figure out ways to better serve, students and to have the 

acumen. I appreciate all the work that, you know, Jamie 
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has noted that the accreditors are doing, but, there is a 

real need for increased fiscal and administrative 

oversight, given the dynamic sector that we're operating 

in. Speaking as someone located in New York, and this is 

an area where we could collaborate in the best interests 

of institutions and the legacies that they have in the 

region and in the students that they serve. To John's 

point, many of them have extremely high-quality 

educational programs. They're just faced with a reality 

of a particular modality. I won't go too far on this, 

but, some of the barriers of entry to distance education 

is putting some of these institutions in the private 

nonprofit sector, at a disadvantage because it's not just 

institutions looking to take advantage of students, its 

students choosing because of their lives. Their- need 

for work-life balance, flexibility, Veterans and military 

students who are moving around frequently by virtue the 

worlds that they live in and the work that they do and 

the service that they have, they're choosing online 

institutions because it helps them meet their needs and 

their goals, both professionally and personally. I think 

we need to be thinking about ways, fiscally and 

administrative, to help institutions better prepare for 

some of these real challenges in the in the macro 

environment that they're operating on and how to make 
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decisions to change their model and serve students in 

different ways to persist and continue to exist without 

having to go through some of the challenges that we've 

seen more recently of teach out [30 seconds]

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Scott. 

Jamie?

MS. STUDLEY: I simply want to read 

the poster that sits behind me all the time on my phone 

calls as we think about regulation. What it says is, too 

loose and the wheels fall off, too tight and the wheels 

won't roll. It's the dilemma that Barmak described. As 

you do something that covers a wide range of 

institutions, you don't want to stand in the way of the 

effectiveness of, I would say most institutions, but you 

need to be tight enough to protect the system and to 

avoid the abuses that both exist and the workarounds, 

once you create a rule. Regulators are always chasing the 

behavior, just like police officers. We do the very best 

we can to make rules that make sense in both directions, 

and to anticipate to the best of our ability, those 

abuses. I think we're doing a good job here of thinking 

about what's the real problem now and what might be the 

run-around that we need to protect against as well. But 

you can't screw it down so tight that you close schools 

that are providing real quality to students, even if they 
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are doing it without a great deal of money or even if 

they're doing it in a challenged field or a region that's 

economically stressed. So, I appreciate that everybody is 

trying to strike that appropriate balance.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, thank you. Jo?

MS. BLONDIN: Yes. Really quickly, I 

just want to say that I know since I've been on the board 

of HLC since 2018, we've had numerous presentations, 

workshops with both the liaisons who are the vice 

presidents for accreditation, as well as the board and 

the peer reviewers on finance and making sure that we're 

looking at those financial indicators from the 

institutional update that's done annually, if not more 

often, to the work that we're doing, particularly as 

mergers and other factors are affecting the landscape of 

higher education institutions, particularly with those 

demographic challenges that so many have spoken of. I 

also just want to emphasize, too, because I do feel as 

though I need to step up for the liaisons here who work 

in accreditation. They're extremely knowledgeable about 

all their institutions and what is going on at those 

institutions. I just feel the need to lift up their 

expertise as well in this conversation. Thank you.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Jo. Okay, 

so, Herman, did you get what you needed on those 
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questions?

MR. BOUNDS: Yeah, I think we did.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. So, can we move 

on to 602.24, Teach-out Plans and Agreements?

MR. BOUNDS: Yeah. We sure can. Weagain, I won't go over the- issue, but we have two 

questions that we would ask the committee under, you 

know, teach out plans and agreements. We know how 

harmful, you know, school closures are for students. And 

under our existing regulations, we require teach out 

plans upon certain occurrences. Tthey're not required, 

but we say teach out agreements where, you know, if 

applicable. So, our questions under here are, the first 

one is, you know, what factors should the Department 

consider in determining a relative risk of a recognized 

agency? I'll just read two and then what type of 

reviews or observations of the Departments- oh, excuse 

me, I'm in the wrong place. Let me go back up. Excuse me. 

Yeah. First one is, what can the Department do to 

further address the issue of orderly teach out and secure 

teach out agreements in the event of sudden closure? 

Again, I apologize. It's been a long day. We'll get 

there, though.

MS. JEFFRIES: We , will. So, 

comments and suggestions around that first question? 
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John?

MR. WARE: Yeah, thanks. And at the 

state level we're involved in, unfortunately, a lot of 

closures. I would note that the process of teach outs 

and closures has gotten better in the last 5 to 10 years 

as a result of a lot of work by people at Department 

accreditors and states to do a better job of 

collaborating on these issues. I think that's really the 

key, to try to work together at all levels of the triad 

to assist students. You know, unfortunately, I don't 

think there's much that can be done it's going to be a 

bad situation, so we may have moved the needle from 

terrible to bad. But it's going to be a bad situation for 

students that I don't know as far as teach out agreements 

go. The only suggestion I had was there's a provision in 

the rule right now that talks about accrediting agencies 

notifying other accrediting agencies, if the school 

presumably is accredited by multiple accrediting 

agencies, If there's a teach out plan approved. I would 

suggest also notifying state regulatory agencies. I think 

that is happening for the most part now but putting it in 

rule. And going back to my other comments and complaints, 

where I suggested putting something in there about 

notifying state agencies, I don't want to imply that 

accreditors aren't doing that. I don't think it's 
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happening all the time, so it would be good to have that 

in there. Again, I don't have any- and since closures 

tend to be very fact-specific again, I've done a lot of 

them and they're all unique. It's hard to imagine, you 

know, what you could put in regulations that's really 

going to make it easier for students, unfortunately.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thank you. 

Barmak, you're next.

MR. NASSIRIAN: I tend to think 

orderly teach outs are obviously much more manageable 

than sudden closures. The precipitous closure problem is 

a much different kind of a challenge. There is something 

problematic, both in theory and in practice, with having 

one institution closed under the watchful eyes of its 

accreditor and then expecting that accreditor, which, for 

better or worse, failed to anticipate, prepare for, plan 

on, or better yet, prevent that closure and, come up 

with a remedy because, as some of you may recall, a 

number of students who were left holding the bag when 

Corinthian collapsed, were handed over to ITT, so that 

they experienced two earthquakes in their lives, two

kinds of failure in their lives. I think it would be 

important to ensure that when teach outs are offered, 

that they're of substantively better quality than the 

program that victimized them in the first place. So that 
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would be, I think, the main challenge. From my point of 

view, the accreditor kind of loses a little bit of 

credibility once they preside over one collapse. I 

almost feel like at that point, they're probably not the 

right party to organize and manage a teach out. 

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, thank you. Yes, 

Herman.

MR. BOUNDS: Since these questions are 

kind of intertwined with each other, can we- let 

people comment on all of them together?

MS. JEFFRIES: Absolutely.

MR. BOUNDS: Okay.

MS. JEFFRIES: Emmett?

MR. BLANEY: Hi. Thanks. I can 

certainly empathize with the fact that I'm sure that 

closures are all different. That was a comment made a 

couple minutes ago, I think. Just wanted to cite some 

SHEEO research. Shout out to Rob Anderson, and say that 

students who were in states that had kind of more robust 

plans and policies around school closure were somewhere 

between 53 and 94% more likely to re-enroll in higher 

education than students in states without those 

protections. So just emphasizing that it's not saying or, 

not proposing to try to have like a super detailed plan 

that applies to every overall situation. But having kind 
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of more robust policies around teach outs is shown in 

research to be incredibly beneficial for students.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thank you. I just 

want to take a moment here to announce that Magen is in 

for civil rights organizations and consumer advocates as 

the alternate. Jamie?

MS. STUDLEY: Good discussion. There 

are some smooth teach outs and accreditors are learning 

from each of them. Each agency I talked to had situations 

in which 100 or virtually 100% of the students were moved 

to another program. It's especially a challenge where 

there are clinical placements involved, especially in 

high-demand fields. But there's a lot of good practice 

that is helping make that work in more situations. The 

Department has done something in the last few years that 

is helpful, where institutional owners or leaders have 

other schools or want to return to the field of running 

institutions of higher education. The fact that the 

Department in a bad closure has preventive and 

restrictive conditions is positive. There's some good 

thinking. The problem is when the people, whether in good 

faith, are working to try and provide, use the remaining 

money and time that an institution has to support the 

long-term employees or, , and think about student 

services one by one to be able to do a good job of it. 
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We and many other accreditors have worked on improving 

the manuals, how-to, what to do for good practice. We 

expect people to provide transcript protection services 

to minimize that's one of the most common problems. But 

once an institution is on a final slide, in many cases, 

the accreditor has no more leverage because the school is 

closing or we have withdrawn accreditation, and that is 

part of the closure. There's no reason to listen to us. 

I think, again, this is something that we might want 

collectively to work on offline. Should there be a 

centralized resource that steps in to assist in 

situations of precipitous or even planned closure that 

might know how to do it, that might have arrangements for 

transcript protection, whether that's funded by a tiny

slice [30 seconds] or an insurance system. It is a 

recurring but unpredictable where it will occur problem. 

We may have other policy solutions, but in the meantime, 

we do our best to notify students early. We are not 

afraid of asking students to prepare teach outs when we 

see risk. I appreciate the Department's attention to 

this important matter.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, thank you, Jamie. 

Sophie?

MS. LAING: Thanks. Teach out 

agreements are necessary because they ensure that 
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students can finish the term at no charge and that their 

credits will transfer. In our experience, it can really 

be chaos when a school closes and students are inundated 

with a lot of inaccurate or misleading information about 

what options they now have. The closing school often 

refers students to schools offering so-called teach outs, 

but they're not really teach outs covered by an approved 

teach out agreement. Schools also flood students with or 

other schools flood students with so-called teach out 

offers to attract more business, when in fact they also 

are not offering to provide a teach out pursuant to a 

specific teach out agreement. This is all very confusing 

to students and can result in them enrolling at a school 

that they think is providing an approved teach out. But, 

the teach out is not, in fact, accreditor approved. And 

then the school goes on to charge them for the remainder 

of the term or refuses to accept credits. So 

specifically, I guess to the Department's second 

question, we were wondering if the Department could maybe 

provide some examples of what you're thinking about, what 

could be a middle ground between the plans and the 

agreements? How that can make sure that would protect 

students from the kind of practices I just mentioned.

MS. JEFFRIES: Herman- would you like 

that question put into the chat?
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MR. BOUNDS: Yes.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thank you. 

Alright. Magen? 

MR. SANCHEZ: I wanted to both 

supports, but also echo both what Sophia said and others 

on this regard. I mean, quite frankly, I feel this issue 

of abrupt school closures is a civil rights issue. I 

mean, when we're talking about the disproportionate 

impacts on students of color, I think when a closure is 

abrupt, the data I think that was shed earlier I was 

looking up in the last couple minutes. I saw in 

particular, a quarter of both Black and Brown students 

who go through a sudden closure end up not completing 

their degrees. That's relative to 41% of white students. 

I think it should be an expectation that we do provide 

for an orderly school closure process through teach out 

agreements or whatever way that we can support these 

students, because quite frankly, we shouldn't just hope 

that things go well. We should require that things go 

well.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Thank you. I want 

to make note that the primary negotiator, Robyn Smith, 

has come back in for legal aid organizations. We're going 

to take Jillian and Robyn on these questions and then 

move to subpart C, the recognition process discussion 
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that still needs to take place. So, Jillian.

MS. KLEIN: Thanks. I was first going 

to ask a similar question about this sort of interaction 

between teach out plans and teach out agreements. I 

remember in 2019, when many of us were here, we talked, I 

think, at length about options around teach out 

agreements and if they were feasible or hard or how they 

worked, how willing institutions were to talk sort of in 

general concept about a teach out agreement as opposed to 

at the point where teach out plan actually gets 

implemented. I was just sort of curious, and I'll wait 

to hear more from the Department about sort of what 

you're envisioning there. But obviously, if it's possible 

for that to happen more upstream, it's always in the best 

interest of students. I think there were just some 

questions. This was five years ago, right, but I think 

there were questions about sort of the feasibility of how 

that would work. My second comment is, and probably not 

super dissimilar from what John said, which is, there is 

at least, in the experience where we've taken students as 

part of a teach out, I think there's a critical role in 

many cases for the states to play. As you guys are 

thinking about sort of this from the lens of 

accreditation, I would just say, like, I think it's 

broader than that. Especially in the cases of when more 
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traditional institutions close that are maybe enrolling 

students within a more geographically central footprint. 

How can states help facilitate conversations about how 

students can get transcripts, what their options are, 

what sort of protections they have, and then how schools 

near them can help sort of pick up that loss and help 

students get to the finish line? Oobviously, even though 

we're talking about this in the accreditation space, it's 

obvious that it's sort of a broader conversation in terms 

of how the whole triad works together. I would just 

encourage the Department and folks to sort of think more 

broadly than that. Then, to the comment, I think 

Jamie made, about if there's just a way that's more userfriendly for students or institutions that are seeking 

teach outs to work together. This, by the way, is not a 

regulatory thing. It's just a general comment for the 

ethos. But like if there's a more feasible way for 

schools to get information about other schools that may 

be looking for teach out so that we can be helpful in 

those cases, if somebody can like make an app or a 

technology tool or something, I have no idea. I think 

part of the problem sometimes is like there's just not a 

ton of visibility as things are scrambling and schools 

are shutting down into what that need is. And so always 

sort of open to conversations about how we can make that 
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more user-friendly for institutions to be able to help 

other institutions in the best interest of students. 

Thanks.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks, Jillian. Robyn?

MS. R. SMITH: Thanks. I just want to 

put a human face on this. I also want to respond a 

little bit to question number three based on the 

experience I have of doing school closure work for the 

last 30 years on behalf of low-income students. As you 

all know, sudden school closures are devastating for 

students. Really a horrendous and traumatic experience. 

It's while, closed- I'm sorry, teach out agreements are 

really the best option, and it's the option that students 

want. The problem is, is that I have rarely seen highquality teach out programs offered to closed school 

students. Most often, what I have seen in my experience, 

again, with primarily for-profit school closures, sudden, 

not orderly closures is the revictimization of students 

who then enroll in a teach out that is of incredibly low 

quality but is still accreditor approved. I want to give 

one example of a client I currently have. He enrolled in 

a two-year TV film editing certificate program at a forprofit school in Los Angeles, who was accreditor-approved 

and had no- no problems from the accreditor standpoint 

or any actions had been taken by an accreditor against 
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this school. The program included training students so 

they could be certified on the Avid Media Composer 

Program, which at the time was required for most TV and 

film editing jobs. Unfortunately, the school closed 

before he was able to complete. Another for-profit 

college offered a teach out that was also accreditor 

approved, and this school is currently and was at the 

time approved by a separate accrediting agency. The teach 

out school assured students that they could be trained in 

and eligible for certification in the Avid Media Composer 

Program. The teach out school also told students in the 

two-year certification program that they were required to 

enroll in a four-year bachelor's degree granting program. 

After our client told the school he just wanted to 

complete his last quarter of the two-year program, the 

school told him that he would still have to sign the 

four-year agreement, but that they would let him get a 

certificate after he finished the last quarter at no cost 

to him. He signed the enrollment agreement because he 

didn't want his two years to go to waste. He didn't want 

to have to start over at another school from day one. 

When he went to his first meeting, it was at a location, 

a new location, this temporary location that [30 seconds] 

that lack the equipment necessary. The instructors were 

unqualified. The school was not licensed for the Avid 
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Media Composer Program. Even though they told him they 

would get that, they never did. Then the school told him 

he had to complete another quarter with additional 

courses that were never required by the other certificate 

program. He took out additional student loans, but then 

ended up dropping out because the school never got the 

AVID, the other program that was required for 

certification. As a result, he, although he can get a 

closed school discharge [inaudible]- sorry, I just want 

to say they were all accreditor-approved and no problems 

at any of these schools, but it was horrendous. Thanks.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Robyn, for 

sharing that. Herman, are you ready to move to subpart C, 

the recognition process? You're on mute.

MR. BOUNDS: Sure am, since there are 

no more questions in this area.

MS. JEFFRIES: Yeah, I don't see any 

more hands.

MR. BOUNDS: Alright. Just to 

summarize here, we've talked about this for, for several 

days about our risk-based review process and how we would 

like to initiate that. It's going to be applicable to, 

we talked about the 53 accrediting agencies recognized

under 602, the four state agencies for vocational 

education recognized under 603, and then the five nurse 
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approval agencies currently, which are recognized under 

the 1969 Federal Register Notice. So, we'll be trying to 

work out this risk-based review process for all the 

entities that we recognize. As part of that process, we 

would like to prioritize regular monitoring and more 

frequent, in-depth reviews of those agencies or those 

conditions that have greatest risk, and then implement a 

more focused and narrow review of moderate-risk agencies. 

Then the third one here, I'm reading from the middle of 

that paragraph, subject the lowest risk agencies to less 

frequent and more highly focused reviews. We welcome 

your questions. I mean, your answers to our questions, 

about our risk-based review process. We have two 

questions there, and we can just combine all those 

together.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. The two 

questions, are in your issue paper. If we want to start 

taking comments on that and discussion. Barmak.

MR. NASSIRIAN: We have in the 

legislation a process of triggering risk-based reviews. 

The Department may want to look at those. Obviously, what 

you're looking for is indications of potential problems. 

Certain kinds of lawsuits, certain kinds of law 

enforcement action. A financial analysis sometimes 

indicates problems. A downgrading of institutional bonds 
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could be a metric. But most importantly, - again this is 

a matter of ethos and prevailing practice more than it is 

a matter of like articulating stuff in regs. You don't 

judge the safety of air travel based on the number of 

airplanes that took off successfully. You get very 

focused on the ones that crashed, the ones that had 

problems. I think that ought to be the primary mechanism. 

There are accreditors that have a disproportionate number 

of institutions with problems, and that, to me, indicates 

that the accreditor is probably not being as vigilant as 

they need to be. Candidly, there has to be a 

presumption, come NACIQI review and come Departmental 

review, that accreditors should be judged on the basis of 

the worst institutions they fully endorse, not on the 

basis of the best ones, because the best ones would 

probably be fine without accreditation on their own. It's 

the ones that represent the weakest link in the chain. 

That ought to be the metric of how well an accreditor is 

performing.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay, thank you, 

Barmak. Jesse?

MS. MORALES: Alright, I'm off mute. 

Can you all hear me? Adding to Barmak and just kind of, 

also what was raised in, I believe, Monday in our first 

discussion, but talking about the risk-based reviews and 
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what we should be looking at in terms of when the 

accreditors are looking at institutions. We've submitted 

some language on that behalf. I don't want to read 

through all that because obviously we have time limits. 

But, I just want to point out that that's some of the 

language we put in. This language and these metrics are 

based on a project that we did with institutions seeking 

VA benefits and understanding that it truly focuses on 

what are those institutions at most risk. Then from 

there, looking at how long or flagging for accreditors to 

focus and then looking at moderately risky schools and so 

forth. It creates a streamlined, efficient process. I 

also want to say that it's particularly necessary in 

these cases that we or that accreditors are looking at 

institutions before they fail. Because once they have 

failed, students have really nowhere to go and that 

creates an even bigger process, so we really want to stop 

that before it happens. I will be putting in the chat 

kind of a summary of how that pilot went and the report 

just looking more closely at this. I highly recommend 

that folks look at it.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks, Jesse. Jillian.

MS. KLEIN: Yeah, thanks. So, I guess, 

I'm not sure if I have a question or a comment, I'm 

reading through this, I'm trying to think through, is the 
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issue related to Department bandwidth? Because I think if 

I'm understanding some of the red lines that we went 

through today, and some of the concerns raised by some of 

our accreditor friends at the table, I feel like you 

perhaps in your red lines are creating the conditions 

where there are going to be fewer accrediting agencies 

may be recognized by the Department. I don't have any 

data to support that. But if we're changing or removing, 

tightening this requirement around a Federal link to be 

recognized, and there's some timeline changes that are 

going away in terms of expectations the Department is 

committing to and their turn time and what accreditors 

have to commit to, all of that reads to me like there 

should be more bandwidth at the Department to do more 

robust reviews on agencies on a regular cadence, and 

especially if we're already talking about sort of a 

five-year timeline on recognition, I'm struggling with a 

scenario where folks would feel comfortable with any 

accrediting agency being reviewed less frequently than 

that, especially with the diversity that continues to 

evolve in higher education. I think we see that and, I'm 

obviously sympathetic to all the stories about school 

closures. They happen. We have seen an uptick of them 

happening in every sector, right? And we're seeing 

diversity in accrediting agencies accrediting different 
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types of institutions. Sort of all of those pieces 

combined, I guess, make me just nervous about any 

potential proposal that would deprioritize a review of 

all of our accrediting agencies on a very regular basis 

to make sure that all students are being served well. I 

hope that makes sense. Thanks.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Jillian. 

Jamie?

MS. STUDLEY: I think Carolyn's first.

MS. JEFFRIES: Oh, I'm sorry, Carolyn. 

I apologize. 

MS. FAST: Oh, no problem at all. I 

just wanted to kind of piggyback a little bit on what on 

Robyn's really compelling story about, real-life 

situations that she sees. What struck me about what her 

story was that the consequences, the harm, the difficult 

situation fell on the students, and they paid the price 

for the misconduct of the schools. But I don't know that 

the accreditors faced any kind of consequence at all for 

their failures. This is an example of why more 

stringent review is important by the Department so that 

when there are these problems where schools are abusing 

students and students are harmed, the accreditors are 

also facing some kind of consequence for this, so that 

they don't just continue to be either rubber stamped or, 
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you know, not held accountable for these kinds of 

failures of oversight that are really harming students.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thanks, Carolyn. Now, 

Jamie, your turn.

MS. STUDLEY: I would say that our own 

processes are inherently risk-based, so we respect the 

notion and the question. For example, the frequency of 

monitoring in accreditation is very much driven by what 

we see and what the performance levels are. My own agency 

in looking at reaffirmations for institutions, provides 

for 6, 8 or 10-year reaffirmation cycles in addition to 

the annual review of outcomes, financial sustainability, 

complaints, litigation, and a variety of other factors 

that we look at every single year. But we make the big 

review process appropriate to our sense of the strength 

and sustainability and capacity of the institution. So 

that might be a model. That all said, each of the 

possible risk factors needs to be looked at carefully

because of the reverse, tightening the bolts too tight. 

Sheer size does not necessarily mean danger. Several

negative actions might mean rigorous or might mean that 

your institutions are weak. The number of complaints 

that come into an agency might tell you that the agency 

is very open to the learning that it can do through 

complaints and very clear about how people can file them. 
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I could say that there are more problems at their 

schools. Historic closures, right now what we're seeing 

is that there are geographic reasons that more 

institutions in some parts of the country are struggling, 

although I will say it is not as isolated as we might 

have thought. Good healthy closures, with planning, are 

hard to distinguish for this purpose from troubled or not 

well-managed ones. Maybe a place that we can look is at 

the accreditor dashboard, which, was initiated in 2015, I 

believe is when Michael Itzkowitz and I did the first 

one, looking at the relative outcomes for accrediting 

agencies and whether there is something that can be 

gleaned from that to speak to the question of exposure or 

effectiveness, but every one of them needs to be handled 

extremely carefully, even within a sensible, broad 

principle.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Jamie. 

Robyn?

MS. R. SMITH: Sure. Thanks. I do 

think Jillian makes a good point that to the extent that 

there are risk-based factors identified by the 

Department, it would be useful to apply those to all 

institutions. I'm sorry, all accreditors. I also think 

that having worked for the government, I know, there's 

always a resource issue, and I think it would be very 
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useful for the Department to establish risk-based factors 

that pose red flags that an accreditor may not be doing 

the job it's supposed to be. One example is a sudden 

school closure, even one sudden school closure when an 

accrediting agency hasn't taken any action against that 

school. I think poses a red flag because, in my 

experience, those schools often close because of 

financial issues that have been going on for an extended 

period. Those kinds of financial issues also lead to a 

lowering of the quality of education. It's something an 

accreditor should be able to track and be aware of. And I 

think that if a school suddenly closes on an accreditor's 

watch, that's an example of a red flag that really should 

be looked at closely by the Department. I think we've 

put together a number of other potential risk-based 

factors that should be considered by the Department.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Robyn. 

JoEllen?

MS. PRICE: Alright. Thank you. Over 

the past few years, I have employees and currently have 

employees that have worked for some of these 

institutions that closed, some of them that closed very 

suddenly. And when they describe their experience working 

for the institution, and why they left the institution, 

it makes me extremely concerned about what students are 
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being put through at some of these institutions. These 

employees never reported their experience and working for 

these institutions. Should there be a method or a way in 

which employees that leave institutions that make them 

uncomfortable and or have been asked them to do things 

that make them very uncomfortable in terms of helping 

students and processing students through their 

processes- enrollment processes? Should there be a way 

for them to report that information comfortably, either 

to the accrediting agency or to the Department? Because I 

don't know of any way now in which they can report what 

their experience was working for some of these 

institutions.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you. Joellen. We 

have Erika up next. We are just about 15 minutes away 

from public comment. So, I'd like to encourage those who 

have registered spots for public comment to sign in at 

least 15 minutes prior to your slot. We'll take Erika, 

and then I think we should move on to the very last 

section of the issue paper for today, for the remaining 

15 minutes. Erika?

MS. LINDEN: Thank you. And thank you 

for giving me a moment to speak. This conversation has 

been fascinating to me as a compliance officer in my real 

life. I don't often get into the weeds on many of the 
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issues that you're raising, and I recognize how critical 

they are. I recognize the horrifying impact on students 

that failures have on them. I'm going to ask the group to 

take a step back and just be thoughtful this is, again, 

a general comment, just reminding everyone that it's the 

students who ultimately pay for the increased costs that 

are related to achieving and maintaining accreditation or 

any other kind of authorization or any kind of regulatory 

compliance. we need to be careful what we ask for, I 

think, that we're not just creating additional costs to 

pass on to our students, which I think none of us want. 

I just ask, is there a way to consider what work is being 

done currently that maybe no longer needs to be done so 

that the resources needed, whether it's at the 

institution, at the agency, at the Department, at the 

states, can be shifted to focus on other issues that are 

now recognized as more relevant or critical. It always 

seems to be easier to add than to take some other things 

away that are no longer serving a relevant purpose. I 

say that as a compliance officer who really is committed 

to a belt and suspenders approach, but I have learned to 

hold that back a little bit within my organization 

because that's a very costly approach to take. So, I just 

ask people to be thoughtful about that. This is all tough

stuff. If it was easy, we wouldn't be needing to have 
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these conversations. So, thank you.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Erika. 

Alright. Herman, are you ready to move into the last two 

sections there under the category Other, which I believe 

had to do with change in accrediting agencies?

MR. BOUNDS: Yeah, I sure will. And I 

don't think I need to go deep into this. Everybody can 

read the issue before us, but, it's related to, 

removing the regional structure as far as the recognition 

process and then some of the changes made in current 

state law and the issue does mention the legislation 

passed in Florida. Our questions here are related to 

that issue. We can start with question one and go from 

there.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Alright. Thank 

you. Barmak.

MR. NASSIRIAN: This goes under the 

category of be careful what you wish for, it may come 

true. The decision was made in the last rulemaking to 

obliterate the difference between regional and national 

institutional accreditors. Candidly, as I grapple with 

the consequences of it, I am not necessarily opposed to 

the notion that you shouldn't be perpetually attached 

at the hip to one accreditor, that change may well be 

helpful just in the abstract, moving you from one 
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oversight agency to another. But what I am troubled with 

is that when the decision was made to nationalize 

regionals, no thought was given to the two likely 

consequences of creating that possibility. We're facing 

candidly both of them. One is political decisions that 

force institutions to go from one accreditor to another. 

That's the state law issue where, the state has every 

right and prerogative to manage the resources and the 

physical and administrative processes of the institution. 

But what they're not supposed to do is interfere with 

academic policy. That is the role of accreditation, is to 

oversee academic policy primarily, and the idea that 

politicians can force an institution to go from one 

accreditor to another based on political preferences 

should have been anticipated. Obviously, even without 

that, the second question we should all ask ourselves is 

what would be an institutional motivation to go from one 

accreditor to another? And the obvious one is that 

regulated entities shop for the most lenient regulator 

they can identify. If you give a regulated entity 

unfettered choice to go from one regulator to another, 

odds are that they will decide to do so based on what is 

most convenient to them. Doesn't mean they're bad actors, 

it's just that they do not want Attila the Hun regulating 

them, so they will identify the most lenient accreditor 
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and go to that one. Unless there is some sort of brand 

advantage to being regulated by somebody, which, frankly, 

I don't think that the legacy regionals have any brand 

identity before the public to make a difference. So, the 

thought I have here is to begin to rethink that choice in 

the first place. One is to go back to what we had 

before. The other would be to have the Department 

randomly assign accreditors if one of the former 

regionals is to be changed [30 seconds] to randomly 

assign. Now that's where the definition of voluntary 

comes in. Voluntary has historically not meant to have 

an unfettered choice. It has historically meant you could 

do it or not do it. The state isn't forcing you to do it. 

Nobody's forced to participate in HEA programs in the 

first place. So even under the old regime you had to 

voluntarily join the regional accreditor in your region. 

I think those are some of the thoughts around the nature 

of voluntary.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Any other 

thoughts on the notion of voluntary? Jamie?

MS. STUDLEY: These are complicated 

questions and do deserve a great deal of thought. There 

are two kinds of voluntary potentially at play here. One 

is the voluntary departure. Whether a departure is 

voluntary for a public institution may get into questions 
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that the Department has acknowledged of Federal state 

relations and the respective authorities of each. Then 

there's voluntary choice of accreditors. I will read 

something that somebody in our field suggested as a 

possible definition of voluntary. I am not proposing 

final or recommended action language, but just to help 

inform how this might be thought about. One suggestion 

was that it should be a yes/no determination and

recognize this is not just a state issue. There are other 

ways in which institutions choices could be affected, 

that are worth thinking about, even though we have a 

particular frame right now, is any law, parent, 

organization, owner, sole member, state system, or other 

person or entity with legal authority over the 

institution requiring the change to a particular agency. 

That would be a way of articulating what was voluntary. I 

also wanted to just start early in this discussion, I 

want to say that accrediting agencies make decisions on 

these issues independently and do not consult with each 

other. We don't make those in a collective way. Each 

agency, with which I'm familiar, makes these decisions 

independently. That's a starting point on question one, 

Herman.

MR. BOUNDS: Thank you. You're going 

to put that in the chat, Jamie?
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MS. STUDLEY: Yes, I will.

MR. BOUNDS: Okay. Thank you.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Jamie.

MS. STUDLEY: [Inaudible] the comment 

period because it's a lot to type.

MR. BOUNDS: I got you.

MR. NASSIRIAN: I have a question here 

for Jamie, may I?

MS. JEFFRIES: Sure.

MR. NASSIRIAN: Jamie, the definition 

you read was intended to define involuntary? In other 

words, were those categories of potential causes that 

would make it involuntary?

MS. STUDLEY: Yes.

MR. NASSIRIAN: Well, then, I mean, 

you know, somebody must make the decision. Is everything 

I mean, institutions have corporate governance of some 

kind, some sort of governance mechanism. If you decide 

that every one of those governance mechanisms in deciding

is coercing the institution, then I'm kind of pondering, 

well, who is the institution that can make a voluntary 

choice? If it's not the board, if it's not the state, 

then who is the institution, for purposes of defining 

voluntary?

MS. STUDLEY: We deal with those 
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questions. I would refer you to governance policies about 

who is the institution that is making the decisions and 

whom we are regulating, and what is the governance 

structure. I can't answer that on the fly, but it is a 

fair question about who is it that an accrediting agency 

actually looks at and who you deal with? So, as I said, 

this was a stab at that direction, and it may be flawed, 

but it was offered in the interest of trying to help us 

get to a sense of what is voluntary in a way that could 

be reasonably predictable for the Department's purposes. 

Fair question.

MR. NASSIRIAN: Follow up?

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay.

MR. NASSIRIAN: Is it your view as 

well that voluntary from the accreditor perspective means 

the right to reject the request?

MS. STUDLEY: That was the distinction 

I made between departure and choice. Accreditors, I mean, 

somebody can choose to pursue accreditation with an 

agency. But, it is always the agency's responsibility to 

determine whether or not to grant that accreditation 

based on satisfaction of standards and any other 

requirements that the agency has. That's why I'm 

suggesting that there are two different phases of 

voluntariness, because there may be different choice 
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or voluntariness factors in those two different phases. 

But, if what you're asking is, does the institution's 

choice to pursue accreditation mean acceptance? No. Not. 

In any of the circumstances the Department's referred to, 

the accrediting agency would have to go through its full, 

normal review, plus any other considerations that the 

Department required us to take into account in the event 

of a transition, as opposed to the review of a brand-new

institution that was not moving accreditors but was 

arising for the first time.

MR. NASSIRIAN: I'm sorry. Can I 

follow up on that just [inaudible]?

MS. JEFFRIES: Yeah. Real quickly. DC?

DR. PRINCE: I was just going to ask 

Jamie, and the institutional creditors, If you define 

voluntarily as if the institution decides to do it, or if 

their state passes a law, just by the act of switching 

accrediting agencies, doesn't that lead to better 

competition of institutions making their own 

determinations of who can better support them and help 

them keep their accreditation and/or improve where 

necessary, rather than being stuck or in a sense 

pigeonholed to an accreditor based on a regional boundary 

that most institutions are in essence required to do?

MS. STUDLEY: Was that a question to 
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me, Cindy? 

DR. PRINCE: Yeah, it was.

MS. STUDLEY: You know, I think that 

all of us could have a view on the question of what 

promotes competition and what promotes it in a healthy 

and positive way. WASC was the first accreditor to say 

that we would be open initially to institutions that had 

connections with institutions we already accredited, and 

then moved to make that broader. We did it in the sense 

that there might be institutions that would find the way 

that we practiced accreditation or evidence-based, 

equity-minded, high support by staff model, and would 

want to be part of our agency. We didn't advertise, we 

didn't market it. We were allowing institutions to see 

what their thinking might be. That is a possibility. We 

think that there are different styles and models, but 

ultimately, all of the recognized accreditors have to 

have rigorous standards that are approved by the 

Department. In many ways, while we may articulate them 

differently, we may practice differently, the ultimate 

standards about mission, quality, student outcomes, 

governance, financial sustainability, and so forth are 

very similar among the historically regional accreditors 

that are most at issue here. I know that we have other 

national counterparts that play a different role in the 
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national picture. So, DC, I would say maybe, but that's 

really for institutions to determine, and for the whole 

landscape to judge whether what mix of positive and 

negative effects there might be.

DR. PRINCE: I think on that note, I 

would just quickly say, and make sure I'm only 35 or 45 

seconds is that I think it's too soon for the Department 

to start to regulate this particular process yet, because 

what the Department hasn't demonstrated is that by 

institutions changing accreditors, that we are seeing 

larger, egregious acts of institutions either not doing 

what they're supposed to be doing, more students being 

hurt or harmed, more teach outs on the rise. There isn't 

anything that's related to an actual data or any kind of 

trend to say, by having this action, more institutions 

are closing, competition is becoming stifle, innovation 

is not happening, we're seeing more fines or more 

complaints arise from this. Therefore, I think it's a 

bit too soon to say that, oh, we need to now because of 

all this activity, we need to now start to regulate when 

we haven't even seen the outcome of what this is going to 

have on institution moving forward. Thank you. 

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. We are one minute 

away from public comment. There are still two 

questions. I'm going to wrap this up. I'm going to ask 
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you to please consider those last two questions and 

provide the input that the Department needs to have so 

that they can move forward with or without drafting 

regulatory text. Without your input, it makes it even 

that much more difficult for them. The last thing I want 

to say before we go to public comment is that we are 

asking, because this is our last day of session this 

week. Tomorrow, the TRIO committee work begins. the 

Department has asked that you submit any proposals to 

them by close of business on Thursday the 18th, which is 

a week from today, so that they have ample time to 

appropriately review them and analyze them while they 

prepare the reg texts for the next go-around. Because, as 

you know, the protocols say the text needs to be out, 

they try to get it out seven days prior to the next 

session. Keep that in mind. Send all your correspondence 

to FMCS. Please include the entire FMCS team on your 

correspondence. And with that, I think we're going to go 

ahead and open public comment. Krystal, who do we have 

first?

MS. K. SMITH: So, our first speaker 

is Cynthia Lawrence, who is representing herself. She is 

in the room.

MS. JEFFRIES: Hey, Cynthia, can you 

hear me?
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MS. K. SMITH: She's on mute.

MS. JEFFRIES: Cynthia. Yeah, you're 

on mute.

MS. LAWRENCE: Alright. Good 

afternoon. So, yes, I can hear you. Thank you.

MS. JEFFRIES: Great. Okay, Cynthia, 

you will have three minutes to address the committee, and 

you will receive 30-second heads up just before your time 

is to expire. So, with that, you may go ahead and begin.

MS. LAWRENCE: Good afternoon. I would 

first like to say thank you for having me here to speak 

to you today on this matter of utmost importance. Hi 

everyone. I'm Doctor Cynthia Lawrence, and I'm a veteran 

spouse. My husband was in the United States Air Force 

from 1986 until 2011. In 2014, I decided to return to 

school to get my doctorate. I wanted to have more earn 

ability, and my husband and I worked it out that it would 

be worth using his GI Bill benefits if I could get my 

doctorate from Grand Canyon University in the expected 

time. I spent seven years at Grand Canyon University and 

never received my educational doctorate from that school. 

My time at Grand Canyon University was marked by what 

seemed to me like [inaudible] and bait and switch 

tactics. I'd expected to take 3 to 3 and a half years to 

get my doctorate, as that is what the school had 
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advertised. Instead, the school repeatedly changed my 

dissertation requirements by switching the dissertation 

templates, requiring additional classes that were not 

initially part of my program, and providing conflicting 

standards. Things would change depending on whether I 

spoke to my dissertation chair or to my assigned 

methodologist. This meant that if I wanted to get 

anything out of Grand Canyon, I would have to pay more 

money. Although, I finished the coursework in two years, 

I spent an additional five years just trying to get my 

dissertation finished. Not only did GCU use up all of my 

husband's remaining GI Bill benefits, but I also took out 

$36,000 in Federal loans and spent an additional $17,500 

out of my pocket. That is just $53,500 for the 

dissertation alone. I ultimately spent seven years at 

GCU. Although many of my credits did not transfer 

elsewhere, I was able to complete a PhD at another school 

in a much shorter timeframe. I honestly wish I could say 

that Grand Canyon University had benefited me in, at 

least in some ways, but I honestly, I can't. Accreditors 

need to do a better job of making sure that the doctoral 

programs are meeting legitimate educational and 

professional developmental goals and are not being 

operated in ways that just run up students cost. I'd 

like to thank you for your time in hearing me today.
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MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Cynthia. 

Krystal, Who's next?

MS. K. SMITH: Our next speaker is 

Kimberly Jones from the Council for Opportunity in 

Education. They are in the room, and there they are.

MS. JEFFRIES: Hi, Kimberly. Can you 

hear me?

MS. JONES: Yes.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Wonderful. Thanks 

for joining us this afternoon. You will have three 

minutes to address the committee, and you will receive 

30-second heads up just before your time is going to 

expire. Okay? So, with that, Kimberly, please feel free 

to start.

MS. JONES: Thank you to the members 

of the Negotiated Rulemaking Committee, thank you for 

this opportunity to comment. As the President of the 

Council for Opportunity in Education, I represent more 

than 880,000 participants in the Federal TRIO programs. 

As higher education has changed drastically over the 15 

years since the last reauthorization of the Higher 

Education Act, I strongly urge the Department to use the 

full weight of its authority and focus its efforts on 

updating TRIO regulations to address the current 

challenges facing our programs and students. First, with 
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the introduction of the better FAFSA comes a new barrier 

to TRIO, namely, provisions within the tax code that 

prohibit TRIO programs from accessing students' Federal 

tax information. To address this, COE recommends that the 

Department expand the definition of low-income 

individuals to include Pell Grant recipients. This would 

provide great administrative relief to TRIO's 

undergraduate programs. The Department should also 

eliminate the use of standardized test scores and high 

school dropout data. In the wake of the global pandemic, 

many jurisdictions have done away with standardized 

testing. This inherently disadvantages pre-college 

programs in these jurisdictions, as they cannot provide

such data to demonstrate the need for the project, nor 

can they use this as evidence of their program's 

effectiveness. The use of data surrounding high school 

dropout rates is also problematic. First, such data is 

often underreported, if available at all. More 

importantly, TRIO programs have the distinct quality of 

enhancing the overall academic culture of a high school. 

Thus, in a school that has had a TRIO program for many 

years, it is probable that this program has helped 

decrease the school's dropout rate to avoid penalizing 

projects for their locality and their success in ushering 

in positive change, the Department should remove 
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regulations requiring standardized test scores and high 

school dropout data. COE also recommends that the 

Department update student stipends, as those outlined in 

the 2008 reauthorization have not kept pace with student 

need. For example, a Veterans Upward Bound program can 

only provide $40 a month to a participant, which would be 

one of our former servicemen and women. To prevent 

students from choosing between academic enrichment or 

employment, COE urges the Department to look towards the 

bipartisan [30 seconds] Educational Opportunity and 

Success Act for guidance and adjusting stipends within 

TRIO. Finally, COE recommends that the Department address 

regulatory prohibitions that hinder professional and 

student development. This would include broadening 

allowable costs within all programs to support costs 

necessary for students to participate in events that have 

as their purpose the intellectual, cultural, and social 

development of participants. Currently, such language 

only resides within Upward Bound. Thank you for your 

consideration of these comments.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you very much. 

Before we introduce the next one, I just would like to 

make a comment for the public commenters that, please be 

cognizant of the fact that we have interpreters working 

behind the scenes trying to provide services for those 
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who need them in an accurate and timely manner. So, 

please be cognizant of the rate of your speech, and 

articulate things clearly for them. I know three minutes 

seems short, but they're trying to do their job behind 

the scenes too. So, who's next? 

MS. K. SMITH: So, next we have Cheryl 

Dowd from the WICHE Cooperative for Educational 

Technologies (WCET), and Cheryl is in the room.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Cheryl, can you 

hear me?

MS. DOWD: Yes. Thank you.

MS. JEFFRIES: Wonderful. You have 

three minutes to address the committee today, and you'll 

receive 30-second heads up just before your time is up. 

So, with that, you're free to begin.

MS. DOWD: Thank you to the 

Department for allowing me this time to address the 

committee. Hello, my name is Cheryl Dowd. I'm with WCET, 

the whiskey cooperative for educational technologies. I 

serve as the senior director for the State Authorization 

Network (SAN) and WCET Policy Innovations. SAN and WCET 

serve members that include institutions, state agencies, 

and organizations to develop best practices and manage 

policy and compliance for important student consumer 

protections, addressing digital technology and interstate 
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Distance education. So, regarding the issues of this 

rulemaking, I wish to share points on two of the issues 

today. First, I'm going to address regarding state 

authorization, and it'll be specific to the complaint 

language. We concur with the Department that it is 

prudent that a reciprocity agreement includes a process 

for communicating information regarding complaints 

subject to the agreement, and the reporting of number and 

type of complaints. We urge the Department and this 

committee to consider that a process for communicating 

information must extend beyond states where the student 

is located at the time of initial enrollment. The 

regulations cited in this proposal includes or language 

that an institution is responsible for determination of 

student location. Also, upon receipt of information that 

there's been a change to the student's location of state. 

The Department's reference earlier this week to a 

previous rulemaking about the use of language was in 

reference to program approval for Title IV, which is 

different than the situation that we have here, where 

we're wanting to ensure that the states with a nexus to 

the students are resolving the complaint. We urge the 

inclusion of the full language about change of location 

found in the citation, to be consistent with requirements 

for state authorization and providing notifications for 
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programs leading to a license or certification. Second, 

I'm going to address R2T4 attendance for distance 

education. We understand the goal is to identify the 

evidence for the last day of academically related

activity in each course. The proposal rationale indicates 

to better identify withdrawal of a student for distance 

education defined under 600.2, that institutions take 

attendance and use the attendance data to determine a 

student's withdrawal date. We wanted to offer some 

practical application information upon surveying our 

members. We learned from our members that there needs to 

be a clarity in language of which courses are applicable 

and what would be acceptable for attendance. 

Additionally, we learned that in current practice once a 

student is identified as [30 seconds] then the research 

is conducted to find the evidence of the last 

academically related activity. The search is focused on 

that one student, so consequently the institution will 

need to take the attendance by collecting this 

information for every distance education student. A 

member queried, is the Department seeking institutions to 

convert all academic engagement on a student-by-student

basis into a record of attendance for every distance 

education student? We wanted to share this with you 

after having communicated with our members. Thank you 
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very much for your time today. 

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Cheryl, we 

appreciate it. Krystal, who do we have next? 

MS. K. SMITH: Next, we have Jessie 

Hernandez-Reyes from The Education Trust. And Jessie is 

in the room.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Jessie, can you 

hear me?

MS. HERNANDEZ-REYES: Yes. Can you 

hear me?

MS. JEFFRIES: Wonderful. Welcome. And 

thanks for taking time out of your day to address the 

committee. You will have three minutes to address them. 

You'll receive 30-second heads up just before your time 

is ready to expire. Okay? So, with that, you may begin.

MS. HERNANDEZ-REYES: Thank you. Good 

afternoon. My name is Jessie Hernandez-Reyes. I'm a 

senior policy analyst for higher education at The 

Education Trust. We work to dismantle racial and economic 

barriers in the US education system from preschool 

through college. I'm also a first-generation college 

graduate and proud Mexican American. I'm here to urge the 

Department to center the experiences and outcomes of 

students of color and students from low-income 

backgrounds throughout the rulemaking process. This week, 
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a diverse group of former students shared how accredited 

colleges scammed them into spending down their Federal 

Student Aid and GI Bill benefits while leaving them with 

no credential or a worthless one. The public deserves 

regulations that hold institutions and accreditors 

accountable and prevent them from harming students in the 

first place. In addition, while students of color are 

nearly half of all undergraduates, accredited colleges 

often have persistently low college completion rates for 

these students. At collegeresults.org, we use Federal 

data to shine a spotlight on these disparities, which are 

a sign of a broken system. This lack of institutional 

effectiveness and accountability is a huge problem for 

the US workforce. Fewer than one-third of Black adults 

and only one-fifth of Latino adults hold an associate 

degree or higher. Federally recognized accreditors and 

colleges are responsible for student achievement and 

support, and they're falling short. One reason is 

negative campus climate. I spent a year talking to 

students of color at colleges around the country. 

Students recounted hostile treatment by peers and college 

staff. They expressed uncertainty about where and how to 

report incidents of discrimination, and they shared 

feelings of isolation, stress, and exclusion due to these 

experiences. These stories come from research on the 
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importance of belonging for student success. The 

Department should require accreditors to consider for 

both institutional reviews against standards and ongoing 

risk assessment, retention and completion rates 

disaggregated by race, ethnicity, and Pell Grant status, 

debt and Repayment rates, processes, and outcomes of 

campus climate reviews and Office of Civil Rights 

Discrimination data. Accreditors should also review 

retention and completion rates for incarcerated students 

attending higher education in prison programs, and ensure 

incarcerated students are not duped into training for 

jobs they will not be eligible to take. Lastly, the 

Department should ensure student complaints to 

accreditation agencies are not refused for being 

incorrect.

MR. WEATHERS: 30 seconds remain. 

MS. HERNANDEZ-REYES: Or anonymously 

filed. Accreditors should err on the side of hearing 

students' concerns and should adhere to swift timelines 

for addressing complaints. Thank you.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you. Krystal, who 

is next? 

MS. K. SMITH: Next, we have Jewel 

Bourne from The Campaign for College Opportunity, and 

Jewel is in the room.
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MS. BOURNE: Hey. Good afternoon.

MS. JEFFRIES: Good afternoon, Jewel, 

welcome. You will have 30- you wish, right? You will have 

three minutes to address the committee. You'll get 30-

second heads up just before your three minutes is to 

expire. So, with that, please go ahead and begin.

MS. BOURNE: Thank you. Good 

afternoon, members of the committee, Jewel Bourne, on 

behalf of The Campaign for College Opportunity, a broadbased bipartisan coalition committed to ensuring that all 

students, regardless of their circumstances, have an 

opportunity to go to college and succeed. As the 

Department seeks to clarify the rigor of accreditation 

practices and provide accrediting agencies the authority 

to implement clear standards of quality related to 

student achievement, student services, and recruiting and 

admission practices, The campaign for College Opportunity 

sees an opportunity for the committee to reimagine 

policies and practices to support transfer reform. We 

also see this as an uncommon opportunity to address an 

issue many institutions have been grappling with since 

the Scotus decision this past summer, severely curtailing 

the use of race-conscious admissions practicesadmissions in higher education. We can choose to see the 

ruling as an opportunity to reimagine policies and 
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practices that support campus diversity, equitable 

access, and completion at four-year institutions. 

Transfer reform is one of those policies. What we are 

proposing here today would provide institutions with a 

race neutral means to increasing diversity on college 

campuses. This is because transfer reform can help close 

equity gaps in bachelor's degree attainment by providing 

vital degree pathways for students from minoritized 

backgrounds, who disproportionately begin their 

educational pathways at community colleges. The presence 

of clear, streamlined transfer pathways and practices and 

investments that support transfer student success should 

be considered part of the criteria for assessing 

institutional quality. Yet the existing HEA language on 

accreditation and transfer is limited to transparency. 

Specifically, HEA only requires accreditors to confirm 

that institutions publicly disclose their transfer of 

credit policies, which institutions accomplish through 

posting articulation agreements. However, the public 

posting of articulation agreements is neither a helpful 

nor meaningful signal to transfer-bound students. They 

provide no insight to transfer-bound students on what to 

expect, how they can plan for, and what resources are 

available to them as they pursue transfer. In fact, 68% 

of articulation agreements are written above the reading 
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level of a college graduate. If articulation agreements 

are inaccessible and unreadable to their core audience 

students, the current requirements are merely a stand-in 

for meaningful transparency. The Campaign for College 

Opportunity asks the committee to consider expanding the 

scope of accreditors authorization beyond the current 

transfer [30 seconds] transparency measures, by requiring 

that institutions prioritize the needs of students in 

determining the quality of the transfer information 

provided. This can include annual data related to the 

share of transfer students, the rate of acceptance for 

transfer applicants, the average time to degree for 

transfer students. This committee could go beyond 

transparency and authorize accreditors to evaluate the 

process by which institutions accept or prepare students 

to transfer and consider whether institutions utilize 

accepted best practices in transfer, including common 

course numbering. Thank you for your leadership and the 

opportunity to underscore the imperative of investing in 

transfer as an essential lever to affirm equity and 

achieve quality in higher education.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Jewel. 

Krystal, who is next?

MS. K. SMITH: Our next speaker is 

Gregg Greer, who is representing himself. Gregg is in the 
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room.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Hi, Gregg. Can 

you hear me? 

MS. K. SMITH: You're on mute, Gregg. 

Bottom left.

MR. GREER: Unmute.

MS. JEFFRIES: There you are. Okay. 

There you are. Great. Wonderful. Welcome, Gregg. And 

thanks for joining the committee this afternoon. You will 

have three minutes to address the committee with 30-

second heads up just before you're 30- your three- I keep 

wanting to go to 30 minutes here- just before your three 

minutes are to expire. So, with that, please feel free to 

begin.

MR. GREER: Hello, my name is Gregg 

Greer, and I'm the executive director of institutional 

research and effectiveness here at Wayland Baptist 

University in Plainview, Texas. My comments are in 

reference to regulation 668.1642. an institution may 

include the cost of books and supplies as part of 

tuition. Equitable access programs have seen an increase 

in student success because they offer the students 

effortless, low-cost materials on day one of their 

courses. If the proposed language goes through, this will 

drive up the cost to students by an estimated 40% and
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potentially delay delivery of materials to the students. 

This leads to more student debt and creates challenges 

for the student's success. I recommend that we keep the 

current regulations as they are. The intent of the 

proposal is to change the students opt to- from opting 

out if they don't want to participate, to opting in if 

they do want to participate. The changes to the 

regulation are not in the best interest of the students. 

The proposed change removes the requirement that the 

students be allowed to opt out in the case of health and 

safety or single source materials. This also removes the 

requirement that an effort be made to have the materials 

be provided at a lower cost and provided to the student 

in a timely manner. Requiring students to opt in will 

create expensive procedure changes for the following 

reasons. First, unless students are somehow required to 

opt in or opt out by their campus when they register for 

their classes, they are less likely to opt in even when 

it is in their best interest. Students who do not opt in 

may not get required materials necessary for success. 

Lower participation drives up costs for the students who 

do participate in the program. Secondly, on Monday, one 

commenter effectively described the difficulty of 

tracking and signing up a specific 90% of students who 

might opt in to such a program. It's much easier to just 
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pull in everybody. Multiply this change by the 1900 or so 

campuses that use a program like this. WVU is an 

institution with a relatively small student body, but our 

resources are also relatively small, and our online and 

external campus students are spread out across the 

country. [30 seconds] This creates an undue and 

unnecessary burden on schools and publishers. For these 

reasons, it's in the student's best interest to leave 

things as they are. Students who do not wish to 

participate in the current programs can opt out of them. 

Thank you for your time and for the ability to address 

you.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Gregg, for 

your comments. Krystal, who's next?

MS. K. SMITH: Our next speaker is 

Elizabeth Braatz, who is representing herself, and 

Elizabeth is in the room.

MS. JEFFRIES: Okay. Elizabeth, can 

you hear me?

MS. BRAATZ: Yes, I can. Can you hear 

me?

MS. JEFFRIES: Absolutely. Nice to see 

you. You will have three minutes to address the committee 

with 30-second heads up just before your time is to 

expire. So, with that, please begin.
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MS. BRAATZ: Hello and thank you for 

the opportunity to speak. My name is Elizabeth Braatz,

and I will be commenting in support of the proposal to 

eliminate the cash management provision regarding books 

and supplies. I am a second-year graduate student at 

Portland State University, studying to receive my Master 

of Public Policy Degree with a specialization in Advocacy 

and Leadership. Prior to attending Portland State 

University, I received my Bachelor of Science in Criminal 

Justice at Western Oregon University, which is also where 

I began my journey in urban education. Education is 

invaluable to me. I have paid my way through my time in 

higher education through scholarships, my savings, and 

working a part-time job while going to school and a fulltime job during the summer. My parents made enough money 

that I did not qualify for any financial aid, but it was 

still my responsibility to pay for my education. Each 

time I paid $10,000 or more in tuition fees and room and 

board, which do not include my textbooks and materials. I 

support the proposed change to cash management, because 

many institutions have taken advantage of this regulation 

to create automatic billing programs, sometimes called 

inclusive access, which inhibits students from having 

agency or knowledge that textbooks and/or materials may 

be able to be found at more affordable rates. I recall 3 
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to 4 times in my higher education academic career in 

which I had to purchase a $200 to $300 textbook to

receive the required homework codes to complete 

assignments. I was in a place of privilege to be able to 

afford these textbooks, but other students who were not 

in a place of financial privilege had no option but to 

buy a brand-new textbook with the codes included in order 

to complete and pass the course. In this case, my 

institution ensured that they were the only option for 

students to access these materials due to contracting 

with outside companies and parties. When we talk about 

what inclusive access really means, I can confidently 

tell you it does not look like the stories I have told. 

While I support the proposed change, I am also concerned 

that it does not go far enough. There are still 

exceptions that would allow automatic billing in cases 

where there is a compelling health or safety reason, or 

the institution's the only option to access materials. I 

believe that these exceptions could be very easily 

exploited, especially since textbook publishers already 

do this with access codes for assignments. To prevent 

potential abuse, I urge the Committee to eliminate 

668.164(c)(2) in its entirety, so that students have the 

right to opt into all books and supply charges and all 

[30 seconds] I implore this committee to adapt its 
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proposal to the stories, experiences and the livelihoods 

that are tethered to the decisions and regulations you 

make in this process. Thank you for your time.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Elizabeth. 

Okay. Krystal? 

MS. K. SMITH: Yes. So, our next 

speaker is Riley Street, who is representing themselves. 

Riley is in the room. 

MS. STREET: Hello, good afternoon.

MS. JEFFRIES: Hi, Riley. Can you hear 

me? Okay.

MS. STREET: Yes, ma'am. Are you able 

to hear me alright?

MS. JEFFRIES: Yes, ma'am. you have 

three minutes to address the committee this afternoon, 

and we thank you for taking time to do that. You will 

receive 30-second heads up just before your time is to 

expire. So, with that, please begin.

MS. STREET: Okay. Thank you so much. 

Good afternoon. My name is Riley Street. I am a veteran. 

I served in the Army from 2015 until January of 2020. 

After my time in the military, I decided to go to school 

to pursue art and design. I personally attended Living 

Arts College from March 2021 until its closure in 

December 2022. My time there was filled with a lot of 
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unmet promises. When I enrolled, I signed up for a degree 

in animation in 3D design. However, the course's catalog 

description of the program differed from the actual 

curriculum. Based on what I had read, I thought the 

program would begin with drawing and sketching before 

transitioning those skills to the computer for said 

actual 3D animation. Many of my artistically inclined

classmates and I thought the program would lead to a 

variety of jobs that fit our interests. Instead, the 

program funneled all its students to more technical, 

animation-related jobs. Or, just really quick, side gigs. 

So, I switched into the interactive media and graphic 

design program. I felt that this program would better fit 

my needs, but this degree was also a road to nowhere. The 

curriculum and coursework were just recycled from class 

to class. Most of the opportunities this degree led to 

were quick one-off gigs, like I said, like designing 

logos for a new business. No one offered a steady 

paycheck and benefits for people with our degree. I began 

to hear rumors around the school that something was 

happening. In August 2022, the school told us that they 

were looking to get approved by a new accreditor, but 

that we would still be able to finish our degrees. Oh, 

forgive me, sorry.

MS. JEFFRIES: That's okay.
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MS. STREET: They encouraged us to 

sign up for classes. Later, the school threw us for a 

loop. Students could continue to pay out-of-pocket with 

our VA benefits, but we could not pay any more with 

Federal Loans, aka FAFSA. Finally, in December, the 

school shut down completely. They started letting anyone 

into the dorms and began renting them out as apartments, 

leading to an unsafe atmosphere. Without asking, Living 

Arts College automatically enrolled students into another 

school, Full Sail University. But I did not want to go 

there because I had heard that Full Sail was not a good 

school. Instead, I had to go through a long process of 

requesting my transcripts, and I still do not know 

whether my credits will actually transfer to other 

schools. Schools should not be allowed to make these 

promises that they cannot keep. When we found Living Arts 

College, other veterans, and I [30 seconds] got our hopes 

up that we would find jobs aligning with our specific 

interests, but we were let down. On top of that, school 

should not be allowed to fall the way that Living Arts 

did, leaving many of us wondering what our next steps 

would be with very little warning. Please consider rules 

that would force accreditors to act before it's too late. 

Thank you for your time.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you, Riley. Okay, 
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that is the end of the public commenters that have logged 

in for their speaking slots. And it is 3:59. Just one 

quick reminder that when you submit your proposals to the 

Department, well, to FMCS to submit to the Department, 

that we ask that they are in Word format. Include your 

rationale for the proposals, and it is red line text. 

Okay? With that, Herman, Greg, any last words?

MR. MARTIN: I just want to thank 

everybody for their time and expertise this week. I 

thought the discussions were very good, very 

professional. The Department will take back what we've 

heard at this table, along with all the various 

recommendations and proposals people on the committee 

have made to us and, come back in February with some 

revised language and some more ideas. It's been a 

pleasure. I want to thank all the participants as well as 

FMCS and, especially, David Musser and Herman Bounds, who 

joined me in- negotiating this week. And with that, 

I'll just say to everybody, have a fantastic remainder of 

January. I'll see you all next month. Thank you.

MS. JEFFRIES: Thank you.

 
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Zoom Chat Transcript

Program Integrity and Institutional Quality- Session 1, Day 4, 

Afternoon, January 11, 2024 

*Chat was copied as presented, as a result minor typos or grammatical 

errors may be present.

From P, Diana Hooley, State Attorneys General to Everyone:

 We are also supportive of the Department's efforts here to 

strengthen the complaint procedures and would agree that more can be 

done. Ensuring that accreditors work with states when states request 

information from accreditors is also critical.

From A, Magin Sanchez, Civil Rights/Consumer to Everyone:

+1 on Jessi and Ashlynne’s remarks from a civil rights 

perspective

From P, Jessi Morales, Students/Borrowers to Everyone: 

 Attached is the letter I mentioned from outside organizations, 

sent to the Department that echoes and expands on many of these 

concerns.

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

 Strongly agree with points raised by Jessi and Ashlynne on need 

to address accreditor failures to protect students

From A, Sophie Laing, Legal Aid to Everyone:

Replying to " Strongly agree with..."

Same here.

From A, Sophie Laing, Legal Aid to Everyone:

Replying to " Strongly agree with..." (for Legal Aid Orgs)

From P, Diana Hooley, State Attorneys General to Everyone:

Replying to " Strongly agree with..."

We agree the risk to borrowers by accreditors' failures has to be 

of paramount concern.

From P Jamie Studley, Institutional Accreditors to Everyone:

The term "if practicable" in 602.33..(C) -- under what 

circumstances might in not be possible to share it with the agency?

From P Jamie Studley, Institutional Accreditors to Everyone:

And under 602.34 we may have some thoughts about what kind of 

information could or must be considered.

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

Amy Ackerson will come in for the entirety of 604 for specialized 

accreditors.

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

@A - D'Angelo Sands, HBCUs, TCUs, MSIs My alternate, will step in 

for me at this time.

From P Jamie Studley, Institutional Accreditors to Everyone:

This afternoon I will refer as an example to metrics relating to 
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student outcomes including disaggregated performance, trends and 

comparisons and peer benchmarking information on my agency's Key 

Indicators Dashboard (KID) to be found at 

www.wscuc.org/resources/evidence-and-data/ or directly at 

wscuc.org/resources/KID. Many other agencies also post data about 

student outcomes on their sites.

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

Alternate Scott Dolan will step in for Private Nonprofits.

From P, Jessi Morales, Students/Borrowers to Everyone:

Where it makes sense I would like us to potentially open a 

discussion on Risk-based reviews here, as there was not a clear place 

to bring it up earlier.

From P, Jillian Klein, Proprietary Instit to Everyone:

+1 Jo's comments in general, especially with respect to nontraditional student behavior (adults!), and the need to account for 

that in policy broadly

From A, Sophie Laing, Legal Aid to Everyone:

Agree with Barmak's comments and the major issues he raised.

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

Let's also keep in mind that 20 USC 1099b(o) states that 

"Notwithstanding any other provision of the law, the Secretary shall 

not promulgate any regulation with respect to the standards of an 

accreditation agency or association described in subsection (a)(5).

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

+1 to Jo and John from us in private nonprofit. The diversity 

of institutions within our constituency and the students we serve 

require us to be very thoughtful about how we create metrics/bright 

lines that can enable fair evaluations of success and outcomes.

From P, Jessi Morales, Students/Borrowers to Everyone:

Accrediting agencies have the ability to manage benchmarks 

according to the institutions they serve that includes the mission of 

the school. It is important that the benchmarks are adequate though 

and that they are being met.

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

thank you!

From P Jamie Studley, Institutional Accreditors to Everyone:

One effort to allow review and comparison of agencies is in the 

Accreditation Dashboards under NACIQI on the ED website.

From A, Magin Sanchez, Civil Rights/Consumer to Everyone:

+1 to Jessi’s comments regarding the importance of disaggregating 

data, which is crucial uncovering students who face the worst 

outcomes, and prompting action to address such outcomes.

From P, Jessi Morales, Students/Borrowers to Everyone:

To be clear students of color and students from low-income 

backgrounds are not more difficult to serve.
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From A, Scott Dolan, Private/Nonprofit IHEs to Everyone:

totally agree with Jamie here.

From A, Magin Sanchez, Civil Rights/Consumer to Everyone:

Reacted to "To be clear students..." with ���

From A. Ashlynne Haycock-Lohmann (vets) to Everyone:

Reacted to "To be clear students..." with ���

From Carolyn Fast to Everyone:

My alternate Magin is coming to the table with a comment.

From P Jamie Studley, Institutional Accreditors to Everyone:

This may track Sophie's commet: I have heard a suggestion that 

"transfer agreements" may be a better vehicle for arranging viable 

pathways than teach out agreements. Others may know more about the 

details of that than I do.

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

I am coming back in for legal aid orgs.

From A, Sophie Laing, Legal Aid to Everyone:

Primary Robyn Smith will now step in.

From A, Emmett Blaney, Student Borrower to Everyone:

Here is a link to the data I mentioned: 

https://sheeo.org/project/college-closures/

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

And Erika will come back in for me for private, nonprofits

From A, Sophie Laing, Legal Aid to Everyone:

What is the Department thinking about as a "middle ground" 

between teach out plans and teach out agreements? How would that 

middle ground adequately protect students, especially given the 

confusing landscape that already exists with teach out agreements when 

schools close?

From A, Sophie Laing, Legal Aid to Everyone:

 Reacted to "To be clear students..." with ���

From A, Rob Anderson, State Officials to Everyone:

A quick shout-out to Massachusetts who has begun developing a 

holistic state plan after Mt. Ida's precipitous closure. It hasn't 

been easy, but there's a lot more transparency and better early 

warning triggers.

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

Everyone:

Reacted to "A quick shout-out to..." with ���

From P, Jessi Morales, Students/Borrowers to Everyone:

Attached here is a report that summarizes the pilot program I 

helped design and lead focusing on risked-based reviews.:

From P, Jillian Klein, Proprietary Instit to Everyone:

Replying to "A quick shout-out to..."

Thanks for this, Rob - this was the exact example I was thinking 

of.
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From A. Ashlynne Haycock-Lohmann (vets) to Everyone:

If the Department of Veterans Affairs has the bandwidth to do 

Risk Based Reviews, there should be no doubt that the Department of 

Education does too.

From P, Jessi Morales, Students/Borrowers to Everyone:

Agree with Ashlynne. For the risk-based review process we piloted 

both institutions and state agencies appreciated the process and that 

it focused more on relevant issues.

From P, Diana Hooley, State Attorneys General to Everyone:

We agree with the concerns raised by Carolyn and Robyn that it is 

the students who bear the risk and ultimately suffer serious harm, 

particularly with respect to abrupt closures.

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

Agree with JoEllen that there should be an easy confidential way 

for former employees to report concerns about institutional practices 

to accreditor and/or the Department

From A, Emmett Blaney, Student Borrower to Everyone:

I know we’ve moved on, but wanted to post a comment in the chat 

for posterity. RE: the cost being passed on to students. As a student 

with a large amount of student loan debt, I’d far prefer my money be 

going toward accrediting schools so that I can end up with a degree, 

rather than paying for schooling that is sub-standard, leaving me with 

(more) debt as a result of lower wages and limited career options.

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

This study may be helpful to negotiators: 

https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/reports/anticipating-andmanaging-precipitous-college-closures/

From A. Ashlynne Haycock-Lohmann (vets) to Everyone:

Reacted to "I know we’ve moved o..." with ���

From P, Jessi Morales, Students/Borrowers to Everyone:

Reacted to "I know we’ve moved o..." with ���

From (P) Barmak Nassirian -- Vets to Everyone:

Re "voluntary" definition: voluntary has historically not meant 

having multiple choices; it has only meant that the institutions did 

not have to be accredited if they didn't seek the benefits of being 

accredited

From A, Magin Sanchez, Civil Rights/Consumer to Everyone:

Reacted to "I know we’ve moved o..." with ���

From (P) Barmak Nassirian -- Vets to Everyone:

Also, the question about "voluntary" from the accreditor 

perspective has to do with whether the accreditor has the right to 

simply reject an institution's request, even if the institution 

satisfies its standards

From P. Jo Blondin, Community Colleges to Everyone:

Accreditation is voluntary and choice is choice.
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From P, DC, HBCUs, TCUs, MSIs to Everyone:

@(P) Barmak Nassirian -- Vets I think we can expand "voluntarily" 

in ways that we have not considered before and should give 

institutions choice to volunteer to participate as a member with which 

ever accreditation agency of their choice.

From A, Rob Anderson, State Officials to Everyone:

When will transcripts be made available for the public?

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

thank you!

From A, Michael Cioce, 2 Year Colleges to Everyone:

See you next month!