Negotiated Rulemaking Program Integrity and Institutional Quality - 2/6/24

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 DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

OFFICE OF POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION

NEGOTIATED RULEMAKING PROGRAM INTEGRITY 

AND INSTITUTIONAL QUALITY

SESSION 2, DAY 2, AFTERNOON

FEBRUARY 6, 2024

On the 6th day of February 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

MR. WEATHERS: Hello, everyone. 

Welcome back from lunch. We are actually going to, at 

the request of the Department, take a 15-minute caucus to 

start this session, this afternoon session. So, we'll 

actually be back in approximately 15 minutes. Greg, 

anything else we need to address before we do so? 

MR. MARTIN: No, I think it'll be 

brief, and we'll just come back [inaudible]-

MR. WEATHERS: Excellent. Thank you. 

Alright, alright. See everyone in 15 minutes. Alright, 

welcome back again, everyone from the lunch and our short 

caucus. Before we get into the continuation of state 

authorization, I'd ask Greg, is there anything we need to 

talk about before we begin that? 

MR. MARTIN: No, we can go directly 

into the discussion of state authorization whenever

you're ready. 

MR. WEATHERS: Excellent. Thank you. 

Greg. Alright. We have, two people that were in line. 

Questions, I've got Robyn and Carolyn before we move 

along. SoMR. MARTIN: Oh, actually, John, I 

forgot there are questions in the queue. So- but prior 

to entertain- we're going to go right back to the queue 
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obviously when I'm done. So don't want to preclude that. 

First of all, I want to thank everybody for their 

indulgence during that brief hiatus we had. This is 

important because this question was implied before we 

left for lunch. I do want to make some clarifications 

here. So, with regard, if we could go back and look at 

600.9 again, (a), (a)(1) romanette one where I think a 

lot of the confusion stems from here. So we have an 

institution described under 600.4, 600.5, and 600.6, is 

legally authorized by a state if the state ensures the 

institution complies with any applicable state 

authorization or licensure requirements, except as 

described in subsection three of this section, and 

continues to meet the state's general purpose or 

educational-specific laws and regulations. We want to 

acknowledge first of all, back to Jillian's point and 

some others that the language there is not optimal. It's 

somewhat confusing, but we understand that, and we are 

going to think about how to clarify that. But I want to 

talk about the intent. I understand that there probably 

are multiple ways at least two different ways of reading 

what is there. But our intention is that this section is 

only to apply to institutions that are not in a 

reciprocity agreement. We'll see how that interplay of 

this works when we get to subsection D, where we talk 
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about the general purpose of this. Lastly, in 

considering, we want to make it clear to Rob's point in 

considering education-specific laws. If a state chooses 

to exempt institutions in a reciprocity from its 

education laws, we agree that that would be allowable. 

We are considering how to allow states that want to 

enforce their specific laws can have the ability to do 

so. So, we'll get to what's in (d) and read what the 

language is there but we are soliciting discussion and 

comment on exactly how states could enforce within the 

confines of a reciprocity agreement, their laws, both a 

general purpose and education-specific. So, I want to, 

before we move on, invite my two colleagues, either 

Denise or David, to add to anything I've said or any 

clarifications they would like to make before we move 

forward with the discussion. Okay, hearing nothing from 

them on this topic right now, we can move forward with 

who's in the queue. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Greg. 

Alright, I had Robyn, then Carolyn. Robyn? 

MS. R. SMITH: Sure. Thank you. 

MR. WEATHERS: You're welcome. 

MS. R. SMITH: I just want to sort of 

do a couple of things. I want to give some examples of 

some higher education consumer protections. And I also 
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want to just refer back to the question that's at issue 

here. And the question is, should online out-of-state 

students not have the same consumer protection as instate students who are online or brick-and-mortar 

campuses? And I don't think there's any justification 

for not giving the out-of-state online institutions the 

same level of consumer protection as those that are instate have. There's no reasonable justification, and 

there's no evidence that out-of-state institutions and 

online-institutions are not likely to engage in fraud to 

the same extent as in-state institutions are. So, we 

need to really think about what protections are students 

deserving. And I think the problem is that SARA sort of 

goes way in the direction of reducing and getting rid of 

most of the burdens on schools for complying with out-ofstate laws. What I think the Department is possibly 

suggesting, and certainly what Carolyn is proposing, is 

to sort of make it a more balanced process where schools 

don't have to apply for approval at every state that 

they're doing business in, that other states can accept 

those approvals. And I understand that's a very 

burdensome process, both for the state agencies and for 

schools. But on the back end, make those schools subject 

to the consumer protections in state laws to the same 

extent in-state schools are. And have to comply with 
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those provisions to the extent the state determines they 

have to apply. So, for example, if a state determines 

public institutions don't have to, they can exempt those 

institutions. Typically states again focus mostly on the 

riskiest state actors and schools which are the forprofit institutions because of the profit motive. So, I 

just really think we need to keep that in mind as we 

engage in these discussions. And then I wanted to 

provide, and probably running out of time already, but 

one example of a consumer protection that we're talking 

about that's extremely important is the refund rights 

that are often provided in state laws, which provide that 

if a student withdraws early, and there's different time 

periods, sometimes it's 60% of completing the terms, 

sometimes it's 75%, depending on the state law, the 

school has to provide a refund of any funding it's 

received for that student, a pro-rata refund. That can 

include [30 seconds]. It also provides a protection, 

which is that the school cannot then go after the student 

for the unpaid portion of the tuition for the remainder 

of the contract. Otherwise, state contract law allows 

schools to go after students and collect from them on the 

interim of the entire contract, even if they've withdrawn 

after 10% of the program. That's a huge consumer 

protection for students that people need to be aware of 
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that is not in SARA. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Robyn. 

Next, I have Carolyn. 

MS. FAST: Thanks. I appreciate 

that, Robyn. I think it's helpful to point out the issue 

of making sure that online students are protected and 

that states have the ability, if they so choose, to 

extend protections to those students. It was raised 

before that SARA itself has some kind of prohibition on 

making misrepresentations. And that's true, but SARA 

doesn't address the issue for a couple of reasons. First 

of all, it doesn't have the specific higher educationspecific laws that many states do. And I think this is a 

very important point. There are, as mentioned before, 

there are state laws that prohibit schools from doing 

specific things like misrepresenting government 

affiliation or affiliation with the military, promising 

or guaranteeing employment, misrepresenting outcome 

metrics, misrepresentations related to accreditation or 

transferability of credits, practices such as recruiting 

outside welfare offices, paying compensation to students 

in exchange for signing enrollment agreements, enrolling 

students who are unlikely to be able to complete the 

program or qualify for employment. Those are just 

examples. And to the extent those are completely 
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prohibited from states being able to enforce those rules 

with respect to SARA schools operating in their states 

that are based outside of their states, to the extent 

that SARA has its own prohibitions on misrepresentations, 

there's also the problem of enforcing those standards. 

There's no mechanism for a state attorney general, for 

example, to enforce a SARA standard, since it's not a 

state law. And while states can take some actions under 

SARA with regard to in-state school, there's no mechanism 

under SARA to take actions that they otherwise would be 

getting refunds for students who are harmed or ordering 

specific actions to rectify violations under SARA, even 

for in-state schools, to take those kinds of actions. 

And moreover, SARA prohibits states from applying their 

own misrepresentation laws, to protect students that are 

enrolled in out-of-state schools. That means that states 

are hamstrung from protecting students in their state 

from misrepresentations made by schools operating in 

their state that are based out of state. Even under 

SARA's rules, there's no way for a state to take action. 

So, these are the reasons behind our proposal to try to 

give states the option of enforcing laws where they wish 

to, even if they wish to also participate in a 

reciprocity agreement, our proposal is intended to 

accomplish that. Thanks. 
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MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Carolyn. 

Barmak, I saw that you were in queue, then out of queue, 

then back in. 

MR. NASSIRIAN: That was intentional. 

MR. WEATHERS: Okay, fantastic. 

Thank you. Alright, Robyn, you're next. 

MS. R. SMITH: Oh, sorry, Barmak, did 

you want to go? Okay, okay, sorry. Okay, thanks. Just 

to piggyback a little on what Carolyn said, the reasons 

that those specific prohibitions are important is, number 

one, they're based on the fact that for-profit schools 

have engaged. Those are very common misrepresentations 

that are explicitly prohibited by higher ed-specific 

laws. The reason it's important that those prohibitions 

are there is that because the state legislature has then 

made the determination that those are deceptive and 

illegal business practices, neither the AG who can 

typically also enforce those laws, nor the state agency 

has to prove under a UDAAP statute that they're unfair, 

deceptive, or false. And that means it removes a huge 

burden from both the state licensing agency and the AG 

from having to go through that to take action against a 

school. It also provides licensing agencies with 

authority to go to the school and say, hey, you need to 

stop doing this, and then the school can stop without 
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sort of the extreme measure of an AG trying to stop

through a lawsuit. So again, we need to be mindful that 

licensure isn't always just about closing down a school. 

It's often about dealing with issues that they see as 

they are occurring, so that a school can continue to 

operate when it is meeting its standards under state law 

and fix small problems that arise. And that is precluded 

pretty much by SARA as it's currently drafted. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Robyn. 

Barmak. 

MR. NASSIRIAN: Yeah, I again want to 

caution against any attempt at parsing applicable state 

laws. You know, this conversation reminds me of the 

early days of internet commerce when out-of-state 

providers were exempted from the requirement to collect 

taxes. And that's, you know, when you asked why the only 

cocktail party invocation, we got was the internet. 

Somehow the internet was this utopian device that was 

going to alter everything. Well, it did alter some 

things. And what it altered was that it gave an enormous

advantage to out-of-state providers vis a vis brick and 

mortar operations that were actually located in various 

states. And it took some time for regulators to kind of 

wrap their heads around the fact that this was 

fundamentally unfair and put people at a disadvantage. 
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The big difference here is that we understood that we 

couldn't do without the collection of state sales taxes. 

My concern with the Department attempting to articulate 

what laws do apply and what laws don't apply to out-ofstate providers is that you're creating a tremendous 

incentive for the elimination, instead of application of 

state laws to out-of-state providers, you're creating an 

enormous incentive for the removal of consumer protection 

laws to in-state students. So be careful about the 

dynamics of how this thing is going to unfold. A 

question was asked earlier about what is it that I meant 

by mega universities? Mega universities are the extreme 

examples. What I would hope to see is an example of some 

predetermined size of enrollment beyond which the proper 

remedy is to say, look, you know, you have enough of a 

presence in this state to go through the front door of 

approaching this state authorizing agency and obtaining 

direct authorization. We can talk about what that size 

might be. It can relate to the average size of 

institutions within the state, etc., but there has to be 

a proper mechanism by which institutions that do 

significant business in a given state to obtain direct 

authorization from that state. Thank you. 

MR. WEATHERS: I see Denise has her 

hand up. So, Denise? 
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MS. MORELLI: I was just wondering, 

I'm not trying to stifle anybody's comments or anything, 

but would it be helpful if we would go into the 600.9? 

Unless somebody has a discussion about what we talked 

about this morning, because we did try to add some stuff 

in (d), I'm sorry, 600.9(d) on the reciprocity agreements 

that it might facilitate the conversation if we kind of 

look at what we did and whether that meets anybody's 

desires. But I don't want to cut anybody off. 

MR. MARTIN: We can take the people 

in the queue and then move into that. 

MR. WEATHERS: That's what we'll be 

doing, everyone. So, I've got, Diana, John and Erika, 

and then we'll be moving on to 600.9(d). So, Diana, 

please. 

MS. HOOLEY: Thanks. And I going to 

piggyback on Carolyn's proposal and the points that Robyn 

made. I just wanted to add to that, that I think some of 

the question posed earlier about what are the potential 

harms that we see and whether or not to allow states to 

enforce their education-specific laws. And I think some 

of the harm in not allowing it, again, it's not just the 

current inability to enforce, it's the concern that that 

may have, if it isn't already, a future chilling effect 

on states responding to the proliferation of distance 
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learning, as we've seen, that's continued to increase 

over the last ten years. And so, I just want to make 

that point that it's not just a concern of what we 

currently can't do. It's a concern of, is this 

prohibiting states from meeting the occasion, being able 

to respond to the harms against consumers that they may 

be seeing sort of going forward as the number of people 

enrolling online out-of-state. So, I just wanted to 

state that point. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Diana. 

John Ware. 

MR. WARE: Yeah, appreciate all the 

comments on states enforcing their consumer protection 

laws. And I've gone on record previously, a number of 

issues, concerns I've had about SARA. But I think that 

this whole issue, if you're going to let states enforce 

whatever consumer protection laws, they deem important, I 

don't know who would even make the decision. I'm 

assuming the states would have to pass some law to do 

that. I think it would create quite a chaotic situation 

and may just really implode the whole reciprocity thing, 

whether that people feel that's good or bad, I don't 

know. But, and, you know, getting back to my earlier 

point about I think there's a lot of focus here on state 

enforcement actions. And as somebody who takes state 
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enforcement actions, I can tell you that I don't ever 

recall taking an enforcement action against a school in 

another state. And I think those are extremely, 

extremely rare. And by the way, there's a lot of online 

institutions and still some correspondence schools that 

operate outside SARA, and they're big ones too. We have 

one in Ohio that are 6,000 students, not accredited, not 

online. And again, as far as I know, no state has ever 

taken an enforcement action against that out-of-state 

school. And I know they enroll schools all across the 

country. So my belief is that the Department in focusing 

on what's really important for Title IV purposes. I 

think, at the state level is to make sure that states can 

protect students in the event of closure. I think that's 

the biggest issue. And, you know, if they take 

enforcement actions, it may end up in closure anyway. 

But, again, I appreciate the sentiments about consumer 

protection, but I don't know that that's ever taken place 

before SARA, and that it's taking place right now in 

terms of cross state enforcement actions. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, John. 

Erika is next and, Robyn, we were going to be ending with 

Erika before we went on to 600.9 sub (d). So, Erika. Go 

ahead. 

MR. LINDEN: Thank you. I appreciate 
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the opportunity to ask this question. And perhaps it's 

hypothetical, but I guess I don't understand what is 

preventing or what's stopping states and regulators who 

are dissatisfied with NC-SARA, for example, with creating 

an alternative reciprocity arrangement that then states 

could choose to join and schools could choose to be part 

of. And because I think one of the concerns is obviously 

there are some negotiators who don't like, how SARA 

operates now, which is fine. There's always ways for 

improvement, but what's stopping there from being an 

alternative to that then makes broader choice for both 

states and institutions? So, I'll end there. And I know 

we want to talk about the next section, and I may want to 

follow up with another question. Thank you. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Erika. 

Alright, I'm going to hand it back to Greg to go to the 

next section. 

MR. MARTIN: Thanks, John. We're 

going to go look at (d). I mean, we should reference 

(c). Most of the changes in (c) conform to repositioning 

of language from other sections into D, so I'll move 

right to D, which is if an institution is authorized to 

offer distance education in another state under a state 

authorizing reciprocity agreement as defined in 600.2, 

such an agreement must. And before we go into that, a 
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couple things, I think. I'm not going to read everything 

in there, but a couple of observations on what we've done 

here. So, in 600.9 (d), we have created a new section to 

specify the requirements of a state authorization 

reciprocity agreement outside of the definition. Most of 

the language here reflects language that we did receive 

from negotiators. First, we added a provision that the 

agreements must provide a state-led process for states to 

adopt, modify, or eliminate substantive policies of the 

agreement and specify that external entities cannot 

overrule that process. Next, we move to the provision 

from the definition that says such agreement cannot 

prohibit participating states from enforcing general 

purpose education laws. We would like feedback on the 

negotiators' proposal to also include education-specific 

laws. I think I referenced that earlier that we do want 

discussion on that. In romanettes three through eight, 

we added language from negotiators related to the 

requirement for state authorization reciprocity 

agreements to include a process for providing student 

complaints to the state in which the student is enrolled. 

Lastly, we moved the proposed language related to 

governing bodies of reciprocity agreements from the 

definition of 600.2 into 600.9(d)(2). We narrowed this 

provision to simply require that governing bodies consist 
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of representatives from state regulatory bodies, 

enforcement agencies, and attorneys general offices. 

While this proposed language was new for session one, the 

provision is simply a clarification of the Department's 

established position on the regulations. So we'll go 

into (d) and you will note that where we wanted 

clarification, especially and not just this, but 

especially you'll note that in romanette two any member 

of any member state of the agreement to enforce its own 

general purpose state laws and regulations outside of the 

state authorization of distance education. That was 

moved from 600.2 and still does reference general purpose 

laws. But again, we invite discussion on whether or not 

education-specific should be included there and what 

parameters ought to be put around that term. So, with 

that, I'll open the floor to discussion on what we 

proposed in (d), 600.9(d). 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Greg. Any 

questions or comments about what Greg just spoke to (d)? 

Alright. Jo? 

MS. BLONDIN: Yes, Greg, would you 

mind clarifying? And this may seem like a really 

simplistic question, but I don't think it is a state-led 

process. I know what state-led can mean in Ohio and 

other states, but specifically, where is that clarified? 
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Thank you. 

MR. MARTIN: I think the intent here 

for the state-led process is that the authority for 

proposing collectively to adopt or modify or eliminate 

policies of the agreement that that's moved to the state 

and the states are generally directing that. And I think 

that that's clarified where we say such process and such 

state-adopted modified policies cannot be overruled by 

any external entities that administer the agreement, so 

that the process of changing these should be at the state 

level, and that they can proceed with that without any 

interference from any other entities. I would invite 

Denise or David to offer any additional comments if 

they'd like to. I think that's what the intent is. 

MR. WEATHERS: David or Denise? 

Okay. Go ahead, Dave. 

MR. MUSSER: I just said we're okay. 

MR. WEATHERS: Okay. Thank you. 

Appreciate it. With no other comment from the 

Department, I do want to note that Rob Anderson is going 

to be coming in for state regulators in place of John 

Ware. Next on our list is Carolyn. Go ahead, Carolyn. 

MS. FAST: Thanks. I just want to 

start by saying that I appreciate the Department's 

attention to this issue. I think it's one of the major 
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concerns about a reciprocity agreement is that it is 

supposed to be an agreement between regulators, and it is 

intended to be a vehicle for essentially oversight. And 

so, as a result of this, it's very important that the 

states cannot delegate to any other entity, the 

responsibility for developing and administering oversight 

over regulated institutions. And that means it's very 

important that regulated institutions don't have control 

over what the standards are, and the determinations made. 

And it also means that people who are not state 

regulators should not have that kind of control, as they 

are not accountable to the states and/or may have 

conflicts of interest and/or don't have the expertise in 

regulation that would be useful. So, all of these things 

are important. And I appreciate the Department for 

entertaining these proposals. However, I don't think 

that state-led process works at all here because stateled process is kind of what already happened and exists. 

I mean, state-led as they being the people working on it, 

view it as state-led. That's why I think it's important 

to be more specific about who has control over decisionmaking, and to make it clear that those people are state 

agency regulators. I know that there's language later on 

about the governing board, but the governing board is 

just one particular way that a reciprocity agreement 
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could delegate power to a non-state regulator. And we 

see that even within NC-SARA, there are other ways that 

they do it. I think I mentioned last time that the NCSARA board president has authority to overturn decisions 

about in-state schools on provisional status made by a 

member state. You could imagine any other sort of 

delegation. They could delegate to a working group to 

come up with policies. It just seems to me that we need 

clearer language that says something to the effect of the 

decision-making and determinations about state and 

institutional membership in the agreement not delegated 

outside of state agencies. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Carolyn. 

Robyn, you're next. 

MS. R. SMITH: Thank you. I just 

want to piggyback sort of on what Carolyn said, which is 

it's really important to make sure the language is clear 

that it's state regulators who must be the ones that are 

making the decisions and overseeing any kind of 

reciprocity agreement. And that's because state agencies 

have a very specific expertise. A) They understand and 

they're trained on the specific provisions of the laws 

that they're charged with enforcing and that's a very 

specific type of expertise; and B) They are trained in 

investigations and how to conduct investigations, how to 
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obtain evidence, particularly with specific kinds of 

businesses like for-profit schools. They are trained 

often by investigative people from the AG's office and 

from other agencies. They also have specific regulatory 

powers. They have subpoena powers. The statute grants 

them authority to request documents from the school to 

talk to employees. And so, it's really important they 

are the ones that have the administrative authority, the 

legal authority, to take action against a school, either 

by revoking a license, putting a school on probation or 

taking other actions. And so, this is why you really 

want it to be the state regulators, who are the ones that 

are making these decisions. The other issue is, of

course, the state regulatory body is answerable to a 

state legislature. There are often sunset review 

processes where they have to report to the legislature, 

and the legislature could change their authority 

depending on how well they're doing. They're subject to 

taxpayer oversight as well through the budget process 

that the legislature enacts. And so, there are checks 

and balances within a state government that is there to 

make sure that the state regulatory agency is doing its 

job. And so, again, that's why it's really important to 

ensure that it's a state regulator and not some other 

entity that is going to be the one doing any type of work 
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on reciprocity. And so, I think I would propose that the 

language be tightened to make sure that that's very clear 

from the federal regulation. 

MR. WEATHERS: [Inaudible] Robyn. 

Barmak, your next. 

MR. NASSIRIAN: You know, I obviously 

want to echo the comments that Carolyn and Robyn made. 

And I want to be very specific. You know, delegated 

state authority and derivative state authority can be a 

pretty slippery slope. I know that my colleagues, for 

example, within the compact view themselves as state 

actors. In my book, they tend to be higher ed folks. 

They're not state regulators. I think you want to be 

very concrete and very explicit that this authority 

should remain with people whose business it is within the 

state system to be authorizers. And that's where their 

expertise is. So, that's really important. And I want 

to make sure of that for two reasons. One, I think we 

all agree that fraud deception and predatory practices 

are probably easier on the internet than in person. And 

yet, if you don't have a robust system that actually 

protects online people in lieu of whatever it is you want 

to waive, you're actually engaging in an odd practice of 

providing less protection to the people who are more at 

risk because they're online than the folks who are in 
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person and under the direct jurisdiction of some 

regulator. So that's really important. The more tightly 

the organization remains a regulator-only organization, 

the more comfort I have that maybe whatever it is they 

end up substituting for their own rules and regulations 

is deemed, sufficient by people who know what they're 

talking about. So that's a really critical piece of 

this. The other comment I wanted to make is, and this is 

a mistake that in my humble opinion, we make too often, 

just because you describe something on paper doesn't mean 

it's going to happen. It is important for the Department 

in provisions like this to kind of operate like a 

prudential regulator, where there is no mention whatever 

of adequacy of funds, adequacy of administrative 

resources to actually implement whatever essay is 

submitted to the Department as the substance of the 

agreement. It is really important that resources flow to 

the folks whose job it is to do whatever these agreements 

mandate. And I don't see any mechanism here where you 

couldn't just come together [30 seconds] with some 

critics of accreditation, alleged accreditation where the 

people come together, write a nice essay, and the fact 

that there is looting and pillaging going on outside is 

completely ignored because the essay reads right. So be 

mindful of requiring resources and adequate 
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administrative financial capabilities here. 

MR. WEATHERS: Rob Anderson. 

MR. ANDERSON: Thank you. You know, 

I have some counterpoints to make, but I want to step 

back first. And, you know, as I think about this, when 

we started last month, we were mainly talking in this 

camp about complaints and board governance, which I think 

we've addressed in a lot of our comments. And, you know, 

kind of the Department had no stance really, but wanted 

to hear from us. And now, put forward a new provision 

that's education specific. So, it seems to have changed 

a bit since last month from what I kind of thought we 

were addressing. But it is what it is. And I know how 

these things are organic. And with that said, we did put 

forward language that we're very happy you adopted trying 

to limit what some thought is overreach by our board, 

that fact that they did have that veto and taking that 

out of play, that we see ourselves as stewards of a 

process that has been created and in place for over a 

decade. And no, we will not veto decisions made by 

states. And when it gets to states, you know, SARA is an 

agreement amongst states, not regulators. States make 

these decisions for how they go about those processes. 

It remains within state purview how they want to address 

that. And even if it's to use representatives, which 
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they often have through their compacts, many of these 

which are in code and are within their own state 

regulations regarding the relationships and how they want 

to manage that. Many, most don't have the resources to 

put towards a lot of these specific, education-specific 

statutes and, excuse me, regulations that they've agreed 

upon this reciprocity baseline. And getting at what John 

Ware said earlier, if this ability to agree upon these as 

a reciprocity agreement is taken away, states will peel 

off quickly. And as he also noted, maybe that's not such 

a bad idea to some people around this table. I think 

it's a travesty to some of our students. I think while 

there are gaps, while we are working on policy 

modifications, there is a process. All 49 of those 

states are involved with it. They're free to put forward 

proposals. And when they decide to adopt them, we'll 

raise that. If it doesn't meet their needs, just pull 

out of the agreement. So that's where I stand on this. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Rob. Next,

I have Jillian. Jillian? 

MS. KLEIN: Yeah, thanks. I just 

have a question on romanette five in this section. I'm 

just thinking- wait, is that right? Yes. Just thinking 

through. So, I don't have a concern with this. I'm just 

thinking through from the lens of the student perspective 
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and what's most efficient in getting the students’ issue 

resolved. And I'm thinking in particular, California has 

a process similar to this already, where students can 

send complaints directly to state prior to working with 

the institution, which is fine, but a lot of times what 

we find is, some of those complaints are literally 

students complaining about a grade or a grade change or 

something like that. And the process, as you can 

imagine, becomes much longer than it needs to be for the 

student. And so I don't have a suggestion, but I'm 

asking in the spirit of opening up a conversation with 

Robyn and Carolyn and Barmak and others, if you have any 

ideas about ways we can still get at what you're 

suggesting, which I think is super important, but also 

make sure we're not creating the conditions where the 

student is automatically going to the state and getting 

their issue resolved ends up taking much longer than it 

would need to take if they went to the institution. So 

just throwing that out there in the spirit of trying to 

find something that works the best for students. Thanks. 

If the Department has an idea on that too, that's fine. 

Sorry. Didn't mean to exclude you from the conversation. 

MR. MARTIN: No, I don't feel 

excluded. I think you do make a point that not all 

complaints are created equally. As someone that's dealt 
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with plenty of very serious complaints against schools 

that were very, very valid, you also get the one about 

the professor didn't give me the grade I thought I should 

have received. Well, that's pretty much a complaint all 

of us have had. It's one point or another and sometimes 

complaints are born of misunderstanding, just not 

understanding a process you know, well. And some of the 

stuff is pretty complex. You know, for instance, I've 

got lots of complaints about SAP, for instance, which is 

just born of the fact that if you're not in this 

business, it's a little bit difficult. It's opaque. So,

I do take your point. I don't know how the problem with 

it is, though. You've asked for comments on how we might 

look at that, but it's awfully difficult to. I think, 

bake into a regulation how you know, how you're going to 

separate- I don't know what you would call them, nuisance 

complaints or ones that don't carry a lot of weight from 

those that do and how they would be broken out. 

Obviously the more important points would go here, but 

those that aren't somewhere else, because someone has to 

make that decision and as soon as you put a person in 

there, you create the possibility of somebody gaming it 

by weighting the scales, you know. So, I think your 

point is a valid one. I just don't know if there's a 

solution from a regulatory standpoint but certainly 
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that's my perspective. And I open it up to anybody else 

who has comments on that. 

MS. FAST: Would it be okay for me to 

comment? 

MR. MARTIN: Sure, go ahead. 

MS. FAST: Okay. Thank you so much. 

I think the idea is to give the state regulator 

discretion so they can make a determination whether they 

want to take a complaint before it goes to an institution 

or not. That's how we attempted to write it in our 

proposal. The issue is that right now, SARA policy 

manual says that a state can't even if it wanted to, 

accept or investigate or resolve a complaint that hasn't 

gone through the school's institution first, and we just 

want the state that is the SARA state or the state where 

the student is located to be able to, if they choose, 

accept, investigate and resolve the complaint. So, if 

they think it's a nuisance complaint, they don't have to 

look at it. We just want them to have a choice, which 

they don't have right now. 

MR. MARTIN: And I think if it came 

to language to that effect could be clarified in the 

preamble discussion about what we- what is intended 

there. 

MS. FAST: Yeah. And we included 
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language like at the state's discretion, because we're 

trying to show that the state doesn't have to take it. 

We're not trying to force states to take complaints. 

We're just saying that if they want to, they can. 

MR. MARTIN: Good point. Thank you. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Carolyn. 

Thank you, Greg. And just a reminder, folks, a protocol 

note, please keep the comments, fresh and anew for the 

sake of efficiencies as time runs short. Alright, next, 

I have Robyn. Go ahead, Robyn. 

MS. R. SMITH: Just in relation to 

the last conversation, I don't think there's any 

prohibition about the student going to the school either. 

So, the student still would have available the grievance 

procedures. And they could raise those directly with the 

school. They wouldn't be required to go to the state. I 

want to push back a little on John's statement that no 

state has taken action against an out-of-state online 

school. I think, first of all, I'd be interested in 

seeing a study or data to show that. And second of all, 

I think we need to remember that there's different 

processes at the state level. There's the formal 

administrative process where a state agency will file a 

complaint and actually seek to do something to the 

school, either revoke its authorization or limit it in 
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some manner. But there's a lot of activity that states 

engage in dealing with student complaints or issues that 

are brought to their attention, where they engage in 

investigations, and they ask the school to do something 

so that's all informal. And there's no administrative 

record necessarily about that. And so, I would be 

cautious in concluding that no states are doing anything 

about out-of-state online distance education providers, 

because I think that if you look at the complaint 

processes and what they're doing behind the scenes, you 

probably find some activity going on, number one. I also 

caution people about concluding that if states haven't 

pulled out of the agreement, then they've made that 

decision. It's very hard to pull out of NC-SARA with no 

alternative available, because, again, if they do so, 

suddenly all of their students are without Title IV Aid. 

Second of all, we just need to remember the severe power 

imbalances at the state legislative level. Institutions 

have lobbyists, well-paid lobbyists at the state level. 

Students don't. They also have them at the Federal 

level. Students don't. For a state to pull out, they 

would be required to probably get legislative approval. 

And that's very difficult to get when you have many, many 

institutional lobbyists, pushing legislators not to do 

that. And I think people need to remember there's a 
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severe power imbalance here, which is why the Department 

needs to get involved in the state authorization 

regulation on this issue. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Robyn. A 

couple administrative notes, Scott Dolan, and for 

private, nonprofit institutions. And he'll be next. And 

also, folks, a reminder, I'm hearing some suggestions. 

You have two options. One would be to put those 

suggestions into the chat. Another would be if you have 

some red-line language that you'd like to provide, do so 

under the protocols that we have previously discussed 

sent to us in a Word document. Thank you. I've got 

Scott. Go ahead, Scott. 

MR. DOLAN: Yeah, thanks. Just, you 

know, echoing a little bit what Rob noted earlier around 

where we were in the previous round of negotiations, 

where the Department raised concerns, and focused those 

concerns mostly on compliance and governance. And since 

that time, we've introduced, language related to 

education-specific laws. You know, at one point earlier 

in our conversation, Greg, not to put you on the spot 

here, but you made the statement that the Department has 

no stance on this issue, yet those provisions are 

introduced in language earlier. And then also there's a 

wider question asked of us as constituents. I think even 
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by raising the question, it clearly suggests that the 

Department has concerns, and it would be helpful for the 

Department to outline those, so we can really identify 

what the problem is that we're trying to solve from the 

Department's perspective, not just from the other 

constituencies that have introduced language. And you 

made a mention of adding language to a preamble. But in 

the new language, I don't really even see a full preamble 

for some of the language that's been added. So, I think 

it would just be helpful to hear a bit more from the 

Department's perspective about what we're trying to 

accomplish. We'd love to give input, love to inform. 

But also like to better understand the Department's 

position here. 

MR. MARTIN: I'd like to say. Well, 

first of all, what you see here with respect to the 

reciprocity agreements was the result of a proposal we 

received. And you will see that in (d). We can go back 

to (d) again, we have the language as written states, 

allow any member state of the agreement to enforce its 

own general purpose state laws and regulations outside 

state authorization of distance education. So, we did 

not include education-specific in the language we 

proposed here. We do seek discussion on it. When I said 

the Department doesn't have a stance, the Department 
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certainly does have concerns in this area about the 

enforceability of state laws. Not just general purpose, 

but education-specific because those can give very real 

and specific protections to students. So, we do seek 

conversation on that. The other thing I mentioned is 

that with respect to the term education-specific, the 

Department hasn't nailed down exact language that we have 

offered about what that means we want to hear from the 

negotiators as to what they believe it should be whether 

they believe it should just be left broad, educationspecific with no qualifying language or something else. 

So, I mean, the Department does clearly have concerns. 

If we didn't, we wouldn't have proposed any of this. We 

want to hear from both sides. And as far as it being in 

this paper and not in the original paper, it is something 

that was not specifically proposed in the original paper, 

but I would say that, again, it represents proposals that 

we have received. We invite all negotiators to make 

proposals to us. We don't include everything we get or 

sometimes none of it, sometimes all of it. But we invite 

those proposals and we come back to the table with 

language that can be reflective of what we have received 

and that's the case here. I do think that while we 

didn't raise this particular issue in round one, that it 

is in keeping with what the Department generally 
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expressed in our first round of negotiation. But I do 

want to say that our goal here is to present this 

language, but we want to facilitate some discussion 

around what we've got here and specifically with respect 

to general purpose versus education-specific. As I said 

before, we've included, just general purpose here, but 

want to hear what members of the committee think about 

that. 

MR. DOLAN: Yeah, I can say, you 

know, I think the implications are concerning certainly 

to me and the constituency that I represent. So, I think 

we can really enter into a good faith negotiation around 

what we're trying to solve here, I think is really 

important. And time is short, right? I mean, we have 

two hours left today to address this particular issue and 

another round of negotiations. And it's unclear to me 

how much time we're going to really carve out to have 

what seems to be a pretty in-depth conversation about the 

consequences of moving in this direction. So, I would 

urge the Department to either address some of these 

concerns more clearly here with the time we have left or 

a bit more directly as a follow-up to this conversation 

today. 

MR. MARTIN: The Department obviously 

wants to get input from everybody. Our overriding 
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concern is always students or Title IV recipients. The 

fact that this is the stewardship of our programs and the 

fact that these programs exist solely for the benefit of 

students who use them, and that we have an obligation to 

those students and program money, and schools have an 

obligation as fiduciaries. So, I mean, that's where 

we're coming from, as a general rule. So, we always have 

concerns about student protections. These laws that 

we're referencing here are put into place by states to do

that. And we are concerned about how that functions 

within the confines of a reciprocity agreement. So, I 

want to say to you that as far as the preamble goes, I'm 

talking about when we actually write the NPRM, not 

anything that you see here. So, I hope that’s clear - I 

mean I- our- I expressed our concerns. I mean this is 

the language we put out. But it's meant to provoke 

discussion. And, you know we certainly want to listen to 

both sides of it. If we just come down on one side, we 

could have made this language different. But we do want 

to hear, all perspectives on it and understanding that 

there's a- you know, there is definitely a spread of 

opinion on this committee. 

MR. DOLAN: Right. I can certainly 

speak for the institutions I represent. We share the 

same concern about our students, our students first. And 
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I think in order to be able to come to the table and work 

on regulations that work in their interests and the 

interests of the organizations that serve them, including 

the Department, I think it's important for us to be clear 

on what we're negotiating and where we're coming from. 

So, we're being asked to provide that perspective. I 

think we're doing that. I think it would be helpful for 

the Department to share theirs in a bit more detail than 

what we've seen thus far. And again, I've certainly seen 

some of the justifications from the other constituents in 

the language that was introduced, just haven't fully seen 

a clear perspective from the Department based on those 

regulations that have been introduced and that language. 

So, thanks. Appreciate it. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you. Scott. I 

see that Dave has his hand up. Go ahead, Dave. 

MR. MUSSER: Yeah. Can I actually 

just ask Scott for a little bit of extra clarity on what 

you need some additional information about that from the 

Department about? If it's specific language, if it's 

very specifically the provisions that we have introduced 

in this round. So, if you want to put those in the chat, 

I think that'd be helpful. And we can respond and give 

you guys a much more clearer idea of exactly where we 

stand at this moment and where we still have questions. 
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MR. DOLAN: Will do. Thanks. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Dave. As 

Scott alluded to, our time is running short. We usually 

endeavor to take a break in the afternoon session, and we 

still do have distance education to address this 

afternoon. So, I think what we'll probably do is we'll 

be taking these three questions and then move forward. 

Barmak, your next. 

MR. NASSIRIAN: Very briefly, 

addressing a point that's been made several times already 

that participation in SARA is a voluntary choice by the 

states. I accept that, but I want to point out, those of 

you who are old enough to remember Jim Barksdale of 

Netscape. He had a famous line about there are only two 

ways to make money in life, bundling and unbundling. And 

it's important for the Department as a partner with state 

regulators to understand that reciprocity agreements make 

it an all or nothing choice for state regulators, that 

the state regulator loses the nuances absent some of the 

proposals we have submitted. State regulators have to 

weigh taking action against one bad actor by opting out

of SARA, against the putative benefits that flow to other 

students who are in the hands of good actors. So, one of 

the efforts we are engaged in is to make sure there is 

nuance and discretion at the state level, that the 
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reciprocity agreement doesn't create the only other 

option for the state to be exiting the arrangement 

altogether. That's a really critical piece of this. The 

second comment I want to make is, again, there's some 

sort of an ex-nihilo creation going on here, because if 

John in Ohio is currently budgeted and tasked with 

overseeing institutions in Ohio, and if reciprocity 

extends his domain to the entire nation, where is John 

going to get the resources to do the job? That's my 

question. And if the answer is NC-SARA will make grants 

or some alternative reciprocity arrangement, I want to 

make sure those grants add up to a fractional fee that 

actually allows him to do the job that we're assigning 

him. Otherwise, we're writing fiction. So that's the 

second observation I just want to make, that these have 

to kind of click together and work together. It's not 

enough that they work on paper as feel-good assurances 

that people will be protected, but that they will 

actually protect people. And I want to address finally, 

one other point that's been made several times about 668. 

I think it's 614, the administrative capability change -

no, the program participation changes in subsection 32 

that address closures only. Part of state authorization 

is to prophylactically [30 seconds] prevent closures. So 

don't hang your hat on the idea as long as we can address 
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closures, we're done. Well ideally, we want to prevent 

triage after the disaster. You want to prevent the 

disaster. And that's why the states need to be empowered 

to do the job. Thank you. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Barmak. I 

see Robyn and John. Robyn and John, do we have anything 

new to add to this discussion? 

MS. R. SMITH: Yes. 

MR. WEATHERS: Okay, Robyn, go ahead. 

MS. R. SMITH: My comment goes to sub 

(vi). I just want to point out that, again, as I said 

earlier, state agencies often lack authority to impose 

general purpose laws because it's not in their higher 

education section. The second is to piggyback on Barmak 

is that they don't they can't charge fees to the schools, 

they often will not have the resources to follow up on 

complaints because most state agencies are funded through 

fees to the schools that they license. And so (vi), 

while helpful, is not really meaningful if they can't 

charge fees and if they can't take action based on 

general purpose state laws. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Robyn. And 

I did want to note administratively that Erika is back as 

primary or back to the table in her role. Thank you, 

Robyn. And lastly, we have John. Anything new to add to 
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this discussion, John? 

MR. WARE: Yeah, quickly. Just a 

note on the proposal regarding the governance. I'm not a 

state regulator, so I guess, you know, in theory, I would 

be eligible to serve on the SARA board, but I'm not as 

confident as some on here that that would kind of remove 

politics from the process because, you know, state 

regulators are subject to political pressure just like 

anybody else is. So just because, you know, John Ware 

thinks something is a good idea doesn't necessarily mean 

that that's going to end up in the SARA realm. And quick 

example, when the SARA Law was being proposed in Ohio, I 

opposed it and testified against it and I don't remember 

the vote in the House, but I remember in the Senate it 

passed 32 to 1. So, you know, many of the issues that 

were raised here, I raised at the time, but, you know, 

the state of Ohio felt that this is the way to go and I 

think that's the case in many, many states, that the 

states in general are not as concerned about the consumer 

protection issues. They're more concerned about, you 

know, making sure that the reciprocity that the schools 

and the state don't have burdens, unnecessary burdens for 

serving out-of-state students. So that's where it seems 

like the states, for better or worse, have placed their 

priorities. 
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MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, John. 

Greg, are there anything else to address, or are we 

prepared to take a temperature check at this point? 

MR. MARTIN: I think we can take a 

temperature check at this point. I'm keeping in mind 

that some of us are widely disparate from what we've 

heard from the conversation. But we have taken 

temperature checks and everything else. So, I do want to 

take one on both sections together where we are and I 

want to reiterate again that this is not a vote. This is 

not consensus. This is not indicating how you will vote, 

ultimately just a temperature check to see where people 

are, how people feel about where we are currently in a 

completely and utterly non-binding way. I know I've said 

it a million times, but I think it bears repeating, so 

thank you. 

MR. WEATHERS: Okay. Thank you, 

Greg. So, we'll be taking a temperature check on both 

600.2 and 600.9 as it relates to state authorization. 

Can we go ahead and do that at this point, see some 

thumbs? 

MS. KLEIN: I'm sorry. I had a 

question before. I'm sorry, I know you didn't call on 

me, but I'm unclear if we're temperature checking on what 

the language actually says or what the Department is 
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suggesting the spirit of the language. I think I feel 

personally a bit uncomfortable with the thumb because I 

feel like what I read in the words is different than what 

I think Greg told us after lunch. I'm sorry. 

MR. MARTIN: No, I understand that 

there are some language that we need to work on. I can 

see that. We've taken temperature checks for everything 

else, and I'd like to do one based on what's here, what's 

actually written as you see it. So I mean, what I'd say, 

Jillian, is if you don't think something's clear or it's 

not what you thought, then you need to consider that in 

how you express where you are on the thermometer of the 

temperature check. Let's put it that way, right? So I 

understand your misgivings, but I just wonder if it's a 

protocol we're using, so I want to make sure we adhere to 

that. 

MR. WEATHERS: Okay, so we're 

crossing the T here, and if there were anything to add, 

please do so in the chat. Or, like we had said earlier, 

submit to FMCS in a Word form. So, with that being said, 

could we go ahead and take a temperature check and then I 

believe we'll probably be taking a break. So, let's see 

some thumbs. Okay, hold them there for a moment while we 

allow FMCS to note these. Alright. Do we feel okay, 

getting the nod from my co-facilitators. Thank you. 
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Greg, it is 2:11, 2:12 eastern time. Did we want to take 

a break or-? 

MR. MARTIN: I think so. We'll come 

back at 2:30 and pick up with distance education if 

that's okay. 

MR. WEATHERS: 2:30. Okay. Yeah, 

no, perfect. Thank you. Alright, folks, 2:30, be back 

promptly so we can be efficient, and we can break. 

Alright folks, welcome back from our break, afternoon 

break. Without any further ado, I'm going to hand it off 

to Greg to introduce the next issue, distance education. 

Take it away, Greg. 

MR. MARTIN: Thank you, John. Our 

next issue that we're going to take up is distance 

education. And that would be issue paper number three. 

And David Musser is going to take over at this point and 

talk us through that issue paper. So, David, whenever 

you're ready. 

MR. MUSSER: Alright. Thanks, Greg. 

So, I think I'd like to recap, and go through the issue 

paper first, before we talk about anything else. And you 

guys will notice that we can scroll down a little bit. 

We have not made any changes to the Department's original 

proposal in our issue paper. Currently, the proposal 

includes only the addition of a virtual location, through 
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which the institution offers 100% of an educational 

program through distance education or correspondence 

courses, notwithstanding requirements for students to 

complete on-campus or residential periods of 90 days or 

less. And then if we scroll down, we have left in our 

other proposal from the first round, which is to strike 

references to asynchronous coursework, where they appear 

in the definition of a clock hour, effectively preventing 

schools from counting asynchronous clock hours toward 

additional Title IV disbursements for purposes of 

disbursement and making a number of conforming changes to 

support that. We'll scroll down just a little bit more. 

That includes adding the terms in a credit-hour program 

offered through asynchronous coursework to make sure 

that's clear that it's only credit-hour programs in the 

definition of an academic year, and a week of 

instructional time, I should say. So, I think you can 

pull that down. So today, what I actually wanted to talk 

about with the group is not necessarily those proposals, 

although I will go through and do temperature checks on 

those proposals after we discuss some of the proposals 

that have come in from negotiators since we started 

discussions on this. First, what I want to talk about 

is, well, we've received two different proposals that 

would have the Department collect information about a 
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student's distance education status at a more granular

level and I think generally, the idea is that it would be 

collected through the National Student Loan Data System, 

NSLDS. And we received one of those proposals early on, 

I believe, and then we received one, very recently, from 

a larger group of negotiators. So, the first thing I 

wanted to confirm with negotiators who submitted the 

original proposals are, is your intent to discard that 

original proposal and to focus on the new proposal that 

has just been submitted? 

MS. KLEIN: Can I answer? I think 

that was a question for me. So, please just take one of 

them. We got the sense from the lack of its inclusion in 

the red lines that y'all sent out, that you were not in 

favor of that approach. So, we tried to get creative and 

give you the same, but slightly different proposal. So,

you can take one or both. Just take one. 

MR. MUSSER: Okay, helpful. 

Appreciate that. But I think the overall view, at least 

from your group, Jillian, was that you'd like to collect 

this information through NSLDS. I think the question 

that I have first for the group is, is the intent here to 

do that in lieu of the Department's proposal or in 

addition to the Department's proposal? 

MS. KLEIN: So, the group, especially 
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that large group that signed on this morning to the 

proposal that I sent, we did not talk about that. So, I 

don't want to impart a perspective on any of those folks, 

because I'm sure they have their own individual feelings 

on virtual location. So, I think that the reporting 

language and again, anybody's welcome to jump in and the 

reporting language is just discretely different from 

that. I think from the conversation we had in January 

where I had just indicated that, of course, we're in 

favor of data on distance education students at a more 

granular level. And I think you joked about, well, maybe 

we'll make you do both of these, and that's fine. I 

mean, I think everybody's going to have a different 

perspective. So, I don't want to speak on behalf of 

anybody else that signed on to the specific reporting 

language. But it wasn't teed up with anybody in that 

group as a replacement for the virtual location idea, 

though some people may want it that way, if that makes 

sense. 

MR. MUSSER: Okay. Does anyone else 

want to speak to that who signed on to the new proposal 

before I make any more comments from the Department's 

perspective? 

MS. R. SMITH: No, I think that 

Jillian's right. I think from our perspective it would 
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be in addition to the current proposal. Because I do 

think they cover different areas. 

MR. MUSSER: Okay. In that case, I 

want to give a few remarks about the Department's view on 

the most recent proposal. So, we agree that having that 

level of granularity in the data would be beneficial to 

both the Department and to the field. We also think that 

as Robyn just said, our original proposal provides 

additional benefits that couldn't be captured by the 

NSLDS reporting specifically. So, we are amenable to 

adding the NSLDS enrollment reporting concept to the 

regulations in addition to that existing proposal. We 

took a careful look at the place that it's been proposed 

to add that to the regulatory language. We have a few 

concerns about adding it to the program eligibility 

regulations. We understand why it was suggested to add 

it there, because that is a place where there is a 

specific requirement that focuses on enrollment in 

distance education. But we're concerned that, legally, 

that could, cause program eligibility implications for a 

school that failed to report. That's not necessarily 

what we want to do. We think, legally, we may be able to 

open up another part of the regulations that would be 

more- it might make more sense to add that language in, 

for example, the consumer Information Regulations. So,
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we'd like to take some time to go back and offer what we 

think would be the best place for that. It sounded like 

there was fairly broad support for the idea. So, as we 

start that work, I wanted to pause one more time and ask 

if any of other negotiators had other thoughts on this 

topic, wanted to comment on any of the proposals that are 

already out there, or wanted to say anything else on the 

subject before we start on that work and provide the 

committee with actual language. 

MS. KLEIN: I'll just say one thing, 

which is, I think that makes total sense, Dave. I think 

we tried to go with what was already open, so it's, I 

mean, that's the sort of spirit behind where we put it, 

but I think it doesn't make the most sense. So,

appreciate you guys being willing to look someplace else. 

The one thing I will say to your very first question, so 

I personally feel like this language, the most recent one 

that we sent this morning is clearer in terms of what the 

expectation is on institutions because I think we did get 

some feedback on the first one from some of the 

negotiators that- like the word hybrid was- it's never 

been defined, right. So, we had that in the original 

one, which is why this one looks a tiny bit different, 

where it just talks about exclusively online, exclusively 

in person or both online and in-person to stay away from 
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that. So just to save you time from a language 

perspective, that was the spirit behind that change. So,

it would be more clear to institutions that they wouldn't 

have to make a determination about if their program was 

hybrid or not, so. 

MR. WEATHERS: Jamie, I see your 

hand. And if we could queue up for any other additional 

comments or questions. Go ahead, Jamie. 

MS. STUDLEY: In general, the idea of 

understanding where helping the Department do the 

tracking that it's talking about makes sense. I would 

just be interested in institutions explaining if they- if 

different types of institutions have the same view that 

this would be manageable, what kind of workload and 

effort is there, and whether the definitions that are 

being used are consistent enough with something else that 

they fit as opposed to having lots of different 

definitional targets to have to use if that's not 

essential to the project. 

MR. WEATHERS: Okay, thank you, 

Jamie. Alright, DC, go ahead. 

DR. PRINCE: Yeah. The question is 

for Dave. I caught what you were saying, and then it 

kind of got lost. So, help me understand the 

Department's assumption of why this particular writing 
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wouldn't fit in the current regulatory text, but might 

fit somewhere else? You started to speak to it, but I 

think in my sense it kind of glossed over into where you 

wanted to go. And I wanted to hone in on that particular 

piece. So, could you just help me understand why? 

MR. MUSSER: Sure, sure. So, I'll 

speak to the most recent language, since I think that 

seems to be where a lot of folks are coalescing around. 

The proposal was to add some language to the definition 

of a Title IV eligible program in 34 CFR 668.8. And 

right now, that section in 668.8(m) includes requirements 

for programs offered through distance education. So, it 

was a natural place to put some additional requirements 

related to distance education. The Department's concern 

about doing it there as opposed to somewhere else, is 

that generally everywhere else in the program eligibility 

regulations in this section, if one of these requirements 

is not met, a Title IV eligible program could lose 

eligibility. That meaning that all the students in that 

program are no longer Title IV eligible as soon as that 

requirement is met. And we wouldn't want to because 

there are numerous occasions where schools may report 

data slightly incorrectly, they may be late. And it 

wouldn't be the kind of problem that would the Department 

would want to take, you know, a compliance action on and 
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end a program's eligibility. So that's really the main 

source of our concern about putting it in this section. 

We could, I don't mean to say that it's impossible, but 

in thinking it through, there are better places to put 

it. And I think, as Jillian noted, the group might have 

suggested another place if other parts of the regulations 

had already been opened, which they aren't right now, but 

the Department can propose another place like the 

disclosure requirements that we think it might be more 

appropriate. 

DR. PRINCE: The [inaudible] question 

is one, why would it be in more than one place? And then 

too, what is this issue around risk aversion that I'm 

hearing you say that people would lose because they can't 

report? Which I think I'm interpreting as more of a risk 

aversion of your institutions rather than as I'm 

approaching this as a cultural change in higher education 

that needs to probably happen. That just seems like 

we're not really addressing the issues that we need to in 

a systematic way to say, if we put it over here, it 

doesn't seem to be less important, let me just say in the 

discussion, then if we kept it where it currently is. 

MR. MUSSER: I see that Denise has 

her hand up. I think she may be wanting to speak to the 

consequences of having it in the program eligibility 
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regulations, so I'll let her speak for a moment. 

MS. MORELLI: So, I don't think 

there's an issue about risk aversion, but I think from 

the Department's perspective right now and having just 

read this, and we haven't had a lot of time to digest and 

talk about it, the Department believes it's more aligned 

with other reporting requirements, which, as Dave said, 

might be in the disclosure. We had talked real briefly 

about potentially it would be in the PPA section, because 

it will have implications for that program eligibility if 

it stays in. 668.8. So, if that's what the negotiators 

would like, they certainly can voice those concerns or 

they advocate for it to be in 668.8. But that was the 

Department's initial reactions when we spoke about it 

this morning. And so, we just don't know that reportingin general, most of the reporting requirements that we 

have do not implicate like a loss of program eligibility 

or loss of institutional eligibility. They might warrant 

a fine or something like that. But they don't usually 

result in a program or the institution not being eligible 

and putting it in 668.8 could result in a loss of program 

eligibility. 

DR. PRINCE: And so, as I understand 

it, this would be a new requirement that they have that 

institutions haven't necessarily done before. Is that 
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correct? 

MS. MORELLI: Correct. 

DR. PRINCE: So, Jillian, I guess 

you're the author of this. 

MS. KLEIN: Sorry. I mean, I think 

the original one was Robyn and Sophie and I worked on it, 

and then I thought you were on the email when I sent it 

around earlier this week. I'm sorry if you weren't, but. 

DR. PRINCE: I was on the one this 

morning or the one at 12:35 on the 2nd of February. 

MS. KLEIN: Yeah, okay. But yes, 

then other folks because there had been broad support 

when we talked about this in January, other folks wanted 

to sign on as well. You can also sign on. It's not too 

late. 

DR. PRINCE: I'll hold judgment. But 

my only thing is whether or not it makes sense to move 

it. But if the authors are okay with that, that's fine. 

I would just take into consideration the justification 

for moving it seems more risk averse, which it would seem 

to be a lot of- a huge problem for, you know, trying to 

make some adjustments of what we're trying to achieve, 

which might be more important than some other things that 

we're having discussions about in this particular space. 

MS. KLEIN: Yeah, thanks for asking. 
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Thanks for raising that question. Like I said, we don't 

have concern. We literally were just trying to find a 

section that was already open that we could put it in. 

So, if the Department feels like they have the legal 

authority to open a different section, that's magic I'm 

unfamiliar with, but I think that it makes sense to put 

it in the right place more than the places we tried to 

shoehorn it into. 

MR. WEATHERS: Alright. Thank you, 

Jillian. Thank you, DC. Dave, I presume you wanted to 

direct this conversation a little bit more. 

MR. MUSSER: I just first wanted to 

just point to JoEllen's comment in the chat that she's a 

little concerned that if a school is struggling with 

reporting requirements, students in that program could 

lose aid eligibility. And that's sort of the same 

concern that we were voicing earlier. And if it gets 

where negotiators want to go, you know, when we come back 

with language and with our proposal, we'd be glad to hear 

the counter proposal, you know, to put it back in program 

eligibility regulations, as Denise just said. Well, I 

appreciate that. I do think we also heard a separate 

proposal that noted the array of different distance 

education definitions that are out there in various 

Department requirements, including IPEDS. I think one of 
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the Department's intents here is to try to keep any 

requirements for reporting Title IV purposes to be as 

consistent as possible with IPEDS reporting. That may 

not always be possible if there are distinct differences 

in what's being reported on, etc. But we'd like to keep 

that as closely aligned as we can, so we will also keep 

that in mind as we draft language to put forth in the 

final round here. The other part of that earlier 

proposal was to define a distance education course and a 

distance education program. And part, I think, of the 

intent of the proposal, if I understood it correctly, was 

to create greater alignment between the IPEDS definitions 

of those terms and the Title IV definitions of those 

terms, which are becoming increasingly important, that 

they are now referenced in the accreditation regulations 

that the Department is proposing. As we'll see tomorrow, 

I'll give you a sneak preview, the return of Title IV 

regulations now points to a distance education course 

when speaking about an important requirement related to 

attendance taking. So, the Department is also amenable 

to adopting a definition of a distance education course. 

We thought that the proposed language was good. I can 

put that in the chat for everyone to look at and I think

because I want to have everyone's thoughts about exactly 

what was being proposed here. So, the proposal for the 
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course definition was distance education course. The 

distance education course is a course that follows the 

definition of distance education in 34 CFR 600.2, where 

that's located, and instruction takes place exclusively 

at a distance, notwithstanding face-to-face engagement 

for orientation testing and academic support services. 

We think that's a reasonable definition for a distance 

education course. We wanted to be sure that if we define 

this term, we're careful not to include courses that, for 

example, are primarily on campus, in person, and merely 

have a little bit of interaction through online

electronic means, for example, maybe there's an LMS, you 

get assignments through the LMS, you submit assignments 

through the LMS. That is not a distance education course

and we don't think that we would want schools to report 

that as a distance education course. It also would not 

be something we think that rose to the definition of a 

distance education course for purposes of the substantive 

change requirements in the accreditation rules. So, I 

just wanted to pause for a second and seek some comment 

from the committee on that definition. Do you have 

concerns with it? I know that it's been a little while, 

probably since some of you have looked at it. But does 

anyone have other thoughts about what you think would be 

more appropriate? Or if there are, if you have 
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particular concerns with what's in there now? 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Dave. I 

see Jo's hand is up. Go ahead, Jo. 

MS. BLONDIN: David, could you repeat 

the last comment that you made about substantive change 

requirement? I'm sorry. That just flew right by me. 

MR. MUSSER: Sure. The proposed 

language in the accreditation section, which I will say 

right now that I am not an expert on, so I don't want to 

get too deep into that. But it references thresholds for 

when a substantive change evaluation would be required. 

And there is a threshold that relates to a percentage of 

distance education courses. That's what I was referring 

to. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Dave. 

Barmak, go ahead. 

MR. NASSIRIAN: It suggests you need 

the same symmetry in terms of commingling of physical 

face-to-face encounters with distance delivery as you 

have here in the other direction. I can see reasons why 

institutions may schedule a nominal face-to-face 

encounter, for the sole purpose of evading this 

definition. So, my suggestion would be to use some 

language to exclude incidental or minor physical 

interactions from rendering a course not subject to this 
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definition. You see my point, right? I mean, it doesn't 

have implications here. First of all, you really kind of 

do want to know what courses are primarily delivered via 

distance, even if there is a one-session requirement for 

people to meet face-to-face. I think just for purposes 

of data, you want to have that information. But more 

importantly, there could be reasons why an institution 

may wish to avoid the substantive change requirement by 

scheduling classes a particular way to evade this 

definition. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Barmak. Go 

ahead, Jillian. 

MS. KLEIN: Thanks. I was 

frantically trying to scroll the language that goes into 

effect in July, and I don't feel like I need ten more 

minutes, but, so I'm just going to throw this out there. 

And Dave, I'm sure you have it at the top of your brain, 

but I remember in, I think it's certification procedures, 

but it might be administrative capability. There's 

language that Department put in around, I think distance 

education programs, programs that are fully online not 

being subject to something related to making sure that 

programs lead to licensure. If you give me like five 

minutes I'm sure I can find it. But that was the only 

thing that occurred to me when I was reading your 
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definition is wanting to make sure that we're not getting 

crosswise with that, or another place where the 

Department has sort of leaned in on how much of a program 

is or isn't offered online. Do you know what I'm talking 

about? 

MR. MUSSER: I do. 

MS. KLEIN: Okay. Good. 

MR. MUSSER: The Department 

established exceptions to the requirement for a school to 

adhere to the state's minimum requirements for licensure 

and have a program that has no more hours than that. We 

exempted schools that are offered exclusively online from 

that requirement because that requirement is primarily a 

place-based requirement. So, schools that are programs 

that are being offered in that physical area, in the 

Department's view should be subject to the requirement 

that distance education programs that didn't make as much 

sense. We'll take that back and think about the 

interaction between those requirements. That's a good 

point. 

MS. KLEIN: Okay, I can take a look, 

too. Thanks. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Dave. 

Barmak. You are muted, Barmak. 

MR. NASSIRIAN: I'm having flashbacks 
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to that regulatory process, and I just want to suggest 

there was another mechanism that the Department could 

look at, and that is the location of the student at the 

point of enrollment. I think that's only pegged to the 

program, not to the particular courses. But my 

recollection is that for licensure purposes, you had to 

satisfy licensure. The program had to have the 

accreditations needed for the student to be eligible to 

sit for licensure in the state in which the student was 

located at the point of enrollment. And for programmatic 

purposes, that would not be a bad definition of who's in 

distance ed, because it may well be that the student is 

online most of the time, even if they have to come in for 

a weekend, you know, for one term, just to satisfy some 

other requirement. 

MR. MUSSER: We could consider that. 

What about students who are living across state lines, 

sort of the nearby but they're commuting to schools. I 

think that'd be an exception. But we could consider how 

that would work. 

MR. NASSIRIAN: If they're crossing 

from Maryland into Virginia to physically attend, their 

location is Virginia, not Maryland. It's not residency, 

it's location. We went through a very careful sort of 

discussion of, we don't want to peg it to residency. We 
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want to peg it to the physical, geographic location of 

where the program is delivered. So, a student who 

voluntarily crosses state lines physically and subjects 

him or herself to the jurisdiction of whatever state that

a distance ed student, but a student who sits across the 

state line and somehow is delivered education, you peg 

the definition to that location. No, I don't see any 

reason why you couldn't do it on a course-by-course basis 

in terms of who you count as online versus in person. 

MR. WEATHERS: Alright. Thank you, 

Barmak. Anything else as to this specific question? 

MR. MUSSER: Yeah, I would just say, 

we don't think that it's a good idea to create a 

definition of a distance education program, especially 

the one that is used by IPEDS. It did raise for us the 

potential differences that the Title IV program concept 

of a distance education program might have with the IPEDS 

definition. But the Department's current policy position 

is that a program is a distance education program under 

that 668.8(m) language if even one course is offered 

through distance education. And that's also another 

reason we think it might be a good idea to define a 

distance education course. And the reason for that is 

also related to accreditation. The Department's view 

right now is that once a school decides to get far enough 
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into the distance education realm to offer a course fully 

through distance education, or, as Barmak is suggesting, 

nearly fully, we believe that they should be evaluated by 

their accrediting agency for their ability to offer 

courses through distance education. So, our hands are 

somewhat tied in that respect. And right now, we're not 

leaning toward adding a definition of a distance 

education program, separate from what's already in 

668.8(m). So, I want to pause one more time. Does 

anyone have any comments about that before I move on to 

the other section of the distance education regs? 

MR. WEATHERS: Jamie. Actually, I'd 

like to make a quick administrative note that we have 

public comment coming up in just over 30 minutes. Those 

of you that have been notified of your participation, 

please remember to log on approximately 15 minutes prior.

Thank you. Jamie, go ahead. 

MS. STUDLEY: Yeah. Dave, I 

appreciate the sensitivity to the interaction with 

accreditation requirements. An institution, in order to 

be able to offer any education through a distance 

modality, has to get approval to show that they have the 

capacity to do that on whatever scale, or institution 

wide. And then they have other requirements to both 

continue to assure us of that capacity some changes for 
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courses by distance education are reviewed in a 

particular way and so on. Could you be a little more 

specific between the two so that we and institutions can 

let you know if there are dilemmas, or do you think that 

you've solved it by the way you've done it and it leaves 

the accreditations' regime in place related to distance? 

MR. MUSSER: I think we had in mind 

that defining a distance education course in this way 

would effectively make it clearer when a school is 

subject to each of those requirements that you just 

described. Meaning if they offered that first course, 

they're subject to that initial review. And then under 

our proposed accreditation requirements, they offered 50% 

of their courses through distance ed. They're now 

subject to the substantive change evaluation that looks 

at ow they're really offering a substantial portion of 

their courses through this modality. 

MR. WEATHERS: Alright. Anything 

else? Anything to add to this? Alright. Not seeing 

anyone else. Dave- oh, Diana, go ahead. 

MS. HOOLEY: Thanks. I'll just be 

quick. I had raised in the first session whether the 

Department had considered the feasibility of also 

tracking the OPM servicer through this process and I was 

wondering if you could speak to that question. 
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MR. MUSSER: It's a good question. 

The Department is watching the area of online program 

management companies and their relationships with 

institutions and their distance education offerings. We 

do have some concerns about some of the effects of those 

agreements between institutions and those entities. 

However, the Department has not yet reached a particular 

conclusion about its exact policy approach toward those 

entities. We do plan to provide more information about 

that in the near future, but these particular 

requirements we are proposing to add exclusive of 

anything that we did in that realm. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Dave. One 

more opportunity. Okay, Dave, as a matter of process, 

were we doing temperature checks as we go along or? 

MR. MUSSER: Well, before we do. I 

did want to talk, at least briefly, about the second set 

of changes that the Department proposed last time. 

First, we are still in receipt of the request for 

additional data on clock-hour programs and which ones are 

offered through distance education. I will tell you that 

after looking at the data that we have and talking with 

our experts, it is going to be very difficult for us to 

give meaningful information to you guys on this topic 

because while we know how many clock-hour programs there 
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are and we can do at least a rough job of determining how 

many students there are in those programs, we don't have 

the distance education status of the program. We don't 

know how much of the program is offered through distance 

education. We don't know whether it's being offered 

fully online. And in fact, the requirements that we're 

proposing right now are intended to, you know, help us 

avoid this in the future to give us this information 

about these programs, moving forward so that we have a 

much better idea of what we're dealing with. We think 

there might be a way to identify at least institutions 

that are solely comprised of clock-hour programs that 

offer at least some distance education. I'm trying to 

see if our data people think that's worth giving us. But 

if so, we will provide that information to you guys, as 

soon as it's been validated. But just in general, I want 

you to understand it is a difficult data point for us to 

produce right now. 

MR. WEATHERS: Okay. Real quick, 

Scott, obviously, Scott Dolan is in for Erika for private 

nonprofits. Go ahead, Scott. 

MR. DOLAN: I guess understanding the 

difficulty of potentially collecting that data on the 

number of institutions that are offering at distance or 

using asynchronous as a component. But on the flip side, 
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maybe data that the Department has around the issues and 

concerns that are raising to the elimination of this 

provision around asynchronous learning, which I would 

imagine, given the fact that that's what's motivating, 

the change in regulation. There's a bit more information 

about specifics there, including instances and examples 

of, of where institutions are not following the guidance 

and the rules that are currently established, which is 

what I think is motivating the change. So, maybe you 

were going to address that and I'm jumping the shark, so 

I apologize there, but that was also part of the data 

request. 

MR. MUSSER: Yeah. So, to get to 

that one, we did give some examples already of the 

challenges that we've already seen in schools that are 

attempting to implement the programs. There is probably 

going to be limited information about compliance with 

this in large part because the Department has not been 

able to include some of these requirements in audit 

guides until very recently. So nonfederal auditors, 

which are the ones responsible for evaluating schools 

annually, would not have been able to review this. We 

are still trying to track down program review data to see 

if we can track down exactly how many times this has come 

up in program review settings. So, if we have that, if 
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we can get that information, we'll get that back to you 

as well before the last session. But appreciate that 

request, it makes sense, and we'll get back to you on it. 

MR. DOLAN: Is it fair to ask a 

question because one of the last parts of the data 

requests was around what sort of guidance or guides were 

given to institutions and, you know, in fairness to 

institutions who have the technology, who are able to do 

this, and there are examples that could be shared, now or 

later, it’s hard to say you haven't been complying with 

this without first giving the true guidance around what 

compliance would look like. So it sounds like you 

suggested that these guidelines or these audit guides 

were not yet shared with institutions at a level that 

would, kind of mirror their expectations around 

compliance. So that was the last question and part of 

the data request, too. So, I guess what I'm hearing is 

that some of those guides were not yet provided to these 

institutions delivering clock-hour programs. 

MR. MUSSER: Those were the audit 

guides. Those were the guides to the auditors of the 

institutions. The schools have gotten some guidance on 

how to implement these provisions. And you're right, 

that's another item that we can get to before the next 

session. 
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MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Dave. 

Thank you, Scott. Anything additional, go ahead, Dave. 

MR. MUSSER: Go ahead, go ahead, 

John. 

MR. WEATHERS: Oh, I was just going 

to ask if there was anything additional before I hand it 

back to you. Alright, Dave. 

MR. MUSSER: So, I think that's themost of the discussion that we wanted to have on this 

topic. Before we go back to the drawing board and make a 

few additional changes and bring it back to the group. 

I wanted to be consistent with what we've done up to this 

point. I think I'd like to take temperature checks on 

the existing reg text that you guys received in the issue 

paper. So, none of the additional proposals included 

just what's in the original text, so that we can get a 

sense of where people are on what's currently been 

proposed. And then we can go from there. 

MR. WEATHERS: Erika Linden is back 

for private nonprofits. And Dave has proposed doing a 

temperature check on the prior red line. 

MR. MUSSER: And if possible, John, 

what I'd like to do is do two checks, one on the addition 

of a virtual location, and one on the changes related to 

asynchronous coursework offered through clock hours. So 
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actually, if we could pull up the text really quickly for 

the addition of a virtual location. This is the one I'd 

like to have a temperature check on first. 

MR. WEATHERS: Give people a quick 

moment before we go ahead and move to a temperature 

check. Okay, we can take the language down. Alright, 

could we do a temperature check on the language we were 

just looking at? I see some thumbs. Hold them for a 

moment so that we can make sure we get everyone. Dom, 

okay. DC, okay. Thank you, DC. Alright, it looks like 

I do not see any down thumbs. Alright, thank you. I 

presume, Dave, that you're going to throw up the language 

on asynchronous, also? 

MR. MUSSER: Yep. 

MR. WEATHERS: Go ahead. 

MR. MUSSER: Throw it up on the 

screen one more time. Definition of a clock-hour 

striking async references to asynchronous. Scroll down. 

And then adding to the definition of a week of 

instructional time for academic-year purposes, the terms 

credit-hour for the word program. 

MR. WEATHERS: Okay. Alright. Let's 

go ahead and take a temperature check on that. I see 

some thumbs, hold them there for a moment so that FMCS 

facilitators can record these. Hold for a moment. I see 
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several down thumbs. Okay. I think we're good. Okay. 

Thank you. Thank you folks. Alright. Dave, anything 

else? 

MR. MUSSER: Yeah. I think since we 

have a few minutes here, I'm a little reluctant to start 

the R2T4 discussion, although I'll defer to Greg on 

whether he wants to do that. Would any of the 

negotiators who gave thumbs down to the proposal on 

asynchronous coursework like to explain their objections? 

MR. WEATHERS: I see Jillian's hand. 

Go ahead, Jillian. 

MS. KLEIN: Sure. I think Mike, two 

things. One, I know that Scott asked for a variety of 

items, which I know you just talked through, and I feel 

like that would be helpful to me to get in a better place 

in terms of what the proposal says. I also think I'm 

still a bit unclear, and I understand that the language 

as written, relates just to clock-hour programs, but I am 

still struggling to find the line that sort of 

disaggregates between making this change for clock-hour 

programs and what the Department may be suggesting with 

respect to credit-hour programs. In the absence of what 

I feel is a sort of strong rationale for the Department's 

decision to take this approach, aside from it's hard for 

institutions to keep good records around this type of 
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work. So, I'm not maybe a forever thumbs down, but I 

feel like I need more information, both from the 

Department with respect to sort of a clear rationale on 

how this is different from what the requirements are on 

credit-hour programs and also some of what Scott asked 

for in terms of artifacts from the Department. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Jillian. 

Anything else? Anyone as to your thumbs down? Okay, 

Scott, go ahead. 

MR. DOLAN: I guess technology is 

evolving quickly and there are plenty of instances that 

exist within clock-hour programs of technology that does 

allow programs, including cosmetology programs, to 

monitor and track asynchronous learning to the minute. 

And to do that well, in accordance with the guidance that 

the Department has provided. So, I guess I would at 

least caution some hesitation around kind of a blanket 

removal and elimination of the provision, which seems 

like it's an effort to address where we have seen some 

instances of bad actors. But to do so, and punish good 

actors, especially when we are in a world where 

technology should and will be able to allow us to do this 

in a much easier way. I don't want to sound snarky, but, 

since the advent of the printing press, learning has been 

asynchronous and in a good way. Right? And it's 
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democratized learning in a lot of, great ways. Right? 

So, there's plenty of learning that goes on around theory 

and concept, that can be done asynchronously and be 

tracked that way. And I just hesitate to go so far in 

the other direction because of isolated incidents, that 

we might have seen where maybe some folks were subverting 

the rule rather than following the rule. So I think a 

lot of this conversation in my perspective on this does 

really hinge upon the data and evidence that the 

Department does compile to the data of request. But, you 

know, there's also evidence to the contrary as well. So,

I think it's a worthwhile discussion, though we've been 

given short shrift to have that conversation. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Scott. 

Obviously, Scott had stepped in for Erika for private 

nonprofits. I'd also like to make another note that Zack 

Goodwin will be coming in for JoEllen Price for financial 

aid administrators. Next, I have Barmak. Go ahead, 

Barmak. 

MR. NASSIRIAN: I'm a little confused 

about the comment on technology. The issue we're dealing 

with is whether parking people in front of a passive 

information dissemination device qualifies as 

instruction. It may be educational. People learn stuff 

on YouTube. I don't think that's instruction. I think 
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that's just general sort of information collection. And 

general information collection is a good thing, and I 

hope it gets better. But it's not instruction. In 

language learning, there is tremendous progress. I 

agree, using technology on the road and mechanical 

components of foreign language instruction. But that's 

not instruction. Those are just educational aides that 

layer on top of real instruction. And I think it is 

important, unless somebody can give me an example of a 

modality of asynchronous delivery that is 

indistinguishable or substantially indistinguishable from 

actual instruction by a qualified instructor, I think the 

Department's move is the right one. We get a lot of 

complaints from veterans. Literally I mean, I'm 

capturing their verbiage about the school was nothing but 

a bunch of YouTube videos. We want to avoid that to the 

extent practicable. So, I think the Department is headed 

in the right direction. I'm happy to accommodate any 

reasonable exceptions if somebody can come up with 

something that would be violated by this language, that 

shouldn't be. But just the abstract invocation of 

technology is not very compelling to me. 

MR. MUSSER: Well, do you want to go? 

I had one more comment there beforeMS. MORELLI: No, go ahead, Dave, and 
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then I'll go. 

MR. MUSSER: So, I do want to point 

out in response to Scott and following on to what Barmak 

said, that part of our rationale for making this change 

is not entirely related to specific violations of the 

requirement as it's written. It's also a more 

fundamental concern about program integrity of the Title 

IV programs. And that's because I think I mentioned this 

the first time we discussed this, that since the 

inception of the Title IV programs, clock-hour programs 

have been treated differently from credit-hour programs.

Clock-hour is defined as a unit of time during which the 

student wasn't receiving direct instruction. They were

in the classroom with the instructor actually working 

face-to-face with them, which I think most of us would 

admit is a different experience than interacting with 

online coursework. In some cases, the online coursework 

might be great, and I think it has certainly a lot of 

value. But in the Title IV world, most students were 

expected in these programs to do homework, and the 

homework was assigned between instructional periods. And 

they did not get credit for that homework. When they 

completed the homework at home, they only got credit for 

coming back into class and actually sitting with the 

instructor and working on site again. So effectively, 
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the Department made the change to allow for asynchronous 

clock hours to be included in the definition of a clockhour. We believe that we may have inadvertently expanded 

beyond what we had intended to do, the reach of the Title 

IV programs, and the expenditures that we were making for 

these programs, primarily because it may enable 

institutions to reduce the amount of in-person 

interaction that they have and replace it with 

interaction of another kind, essentially not with a 

human, which was never permitted before under the clockhour definition. The credit-hour definition has always

contemplated a portion of off-campus work. Credit hours 

traditionally have been comprised of both on-campus work 

and an expectation of work that's done at home by an 

individual. So that's partly why the Department does not 

have a fundamental sort of philosophical concern about 

asynchronous coursework counting toward credit-hour 

programs. But clock-hour programs are a different story. 

So, I'll pause there. That's one of the fundamental 

pieces of this. But the compliance part of it is 

important, too. And we do believe that you guys deserve 

some more information about that before, you know, we 

make a final decision on it. 

MR. DOLAN: I know my time might be 

up, but I guess the question for me would be whether 
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we're talking about replacement or a supplement, right? 

And a supplement for how some of this instruction was 

delivered in place. And I think there are some providers 

that are concerned about space limitations, right? And 

kind of shifting that requirement back to in-person and 

what that might mean for their ability to deliver their 

programs at the right scale in areas where there are 

great needs. So, back to the original point, we'd love 

to see more data and have a more informed conversation. 

MR. WEATHERS: I see Denise wants to 

make a comment. Go ahead, Denise. 

MS. MORELLI: I just want to

piggyback on Dave and Barmak, but part of this was a 

compliance and integrity issue. I do a lot of work out

in the field with students, and we, as Barmak had said, 

we also have gotten a lot of situations where students 

were supposed to be in hands-on programs and were not 

getting the hands-on training that clock-hour was really 

designed for, right? It was a lot of hands-on 

cosmetology, welding, mechanics, all kinds of different 

things like that. And so, we believe that this is an 

area of abuse. And I know there's always this balance. 

Right? We can't really regulate down to the bad actors, 

but we have to regulate sufficiently to deal with the bad 

actors. And I think this is an area that we've seen 
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abuse in. And like they said, we'll get you the 

information that we can gather from our reviews. But 

having been out in the field and on the ground, I can 

tell you it has been a problem that we believe needs to 

be addressed. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Denise. 

I'd like to make another announcement. Folks that have 

been notified that they are going to participate in 

public comment, please start signing in. And a reminder 

to sign in under the name that you registered with so 

that we can identify you. Thank you. Jamie, I see your 

hand's up. Go ahead, Jamie. 

MS. STUDLEY: Yeah. I just want to 

say I appreciated the first part of the Department's 

proposal to collect information to allow the evaluation 

of where student learning and other outcomes are taking 

place. I think that makes a lot of sense. I long for 

the day when we will spend less of our time, maybe none, 

deciding what the modality is, and all of our time 

looking at the institutional capacity and most important, 

the outcomes, the things that both Denise and Barmak and 

many others are talking about are critically important 

issues. I'd rather be using what we know from the 

veterans that Barmak talked about to know whether they 

learned something in their program, and not debating over 
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what percentage of what input by what kind of faculty 

member, and so forth. Accreditors are moving toward 

outcomes. The Department is upping its game about the 

data that it's able to provide, and it’s making smart 

recommendations like this to be able to help us know and 

test these assumptions. And Denise is right, but the 

problem is trying to regulate, to close the barn door 

when there are other ways out of the barn and so forth. 

Rather than talking about the definitions and think about 

all the person hours we have spent trying to regulate by 

category. Let's regulate by results, and as we are 

trying to do wisely in other pieces of this. I just 

think we are slicing up with these definitions when we 

should really be thinking about, do students get what 

they came for? Do they learn what, you know, what they 

wanted to? And do they know, and can they do what the 

program promised? And are we meeting our collective 

expectation for what Title IV should be used for? I know 

that sounds like a rant, but I think it just needs to be 

said into this conversation. We're working so hard to 

have smart regulations. Let's do them in a way that 

looks forward as the Department's first part of this 

proposal looks, and as the work that quality assurance 

entities are doing. Let's look at the results. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Jamie. In 
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an effort to begin public comment on time, I see that we 

have Zack and Barmak left, and I still want to hand it 

back to Dave. Please remember, adding anything new. Go 

ahead, Zack. 

MR. GOODWIN: Actually, John, I might 

be able to kind of pull back on mine anyway because I 

just noticed that Scott posted something in the chat 

about licensure clock-hour programs for those that do 

need to licensure. So, there are implications far beyond 

even what the students learn in the program itself. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, I 

appreciate that. And lastly, Barmak, go ahead. 

MR. NASSIRIAN: Yeah, very briefly. 

I certainly agree with my friend Jamie that outcomes 

matter, but the fundamental epistemological problem, 

methodological problem with outcomes is that they are 

lagging indicators. They come in, in some cases, years 

after the decision to enroll, the decision to allow the 

program to be eligible is made. So that is the reason 

you want to have some guardrails on the front end based 

on history and what we have learned from prior 

experience. And based on theory to ensure that better 

outcomes will arrive when they do. So, I don't think the 

two are incompatible. I certainly think outcomes should 

be factored in, but they are always sort of a retroactive 
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recognition of decisions made in the past. And we want 

to prevent victimization on the front end. I have yet to 

hear from any vet who tells me, oh, you know, the program 

was nothing but a bunch of YouTube videos, and it was 

great, I'm so happy. They call us to complain, not to 

congratulate the fact that they were in very passive, 

essentially worthless, publicly available program for 

which they paid tuition. So, let's try to balance the 

two. I agree with Jamie. We do need to factor in 

outcomes, but we need guardrails. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Barmak. I 

will hand it back to Dave for anything before we start 

looking at public comments. Dave? 

MR. MUSSER: [Inaudible] for me. I 

would just like to thank the group for a robust and an 

interesting discussion. I appreciate all the feedback. 

Thanks. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Dave. 

Alright, folks, we've got a couple minutes before the 

bottom of the hour. Were we endeavoring to go ahead and 

begin at 3:30 Eastern time, Greg? 

MR. MARTIN: Yes. I think we should 

start at 3:30. 

MR. WEATHERS: Okay, so we've got 

several minutes, prior to that, so, we will be back at 
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3:30 on the dot. 

MR. MARTIN: Okay. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you. 

MR. WEATHERS: Welcome back folks. 

We are now in the public comment section of our day. 

Remember, if you are still logging in to do so with your 

registered name. This is your opportunity to speak 

directly to the negotiating committee. And, you will 

have three minutes with a 30-second reminder and take it 

away. Krystil, who do we have first? 

MS. K. SMITH: Our first commenter is 

Patrick Lane from Western Interstate Commission for 

Higher Education, and Patrick is in the room. 

MR. WEATHERS: Excellent. Patrick, 

are you there? There you are. I see you're on camera. 

Patrick, like I said just a moment ago, you have three 

minutes for comment. You'll be given a 30-second notice 

and your time begins right now. 

MR. LANE: Thank you. My name is 

Patrick Lane, Vice President for Policy Analysis and 

Research at the Western Interstate Commission for Higher 

Education, known as WICHE. I'm commenting to clear up 

confusion about the regional higher education compacts. 

And I'll be clear that I'm only speaking for WICHE. In 
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some of the materials presented to negotiators and in 

comments during sessions, the compacts and their role in 

reciprocity have been inaccurately described. Western 

Regional Education Compact is an interstate compact 

ratified by Congress in 1953, signed by President 

Eisenhower and adopted into law by the Western states, 

forming WICHE. To put that into context, that was 70 

years ago and more than a decade before the Higher 

Education Act was adopted. Our membership now includes 

all Western states and territories and freely associated 

states and stretches from the Dakotas across the 

International Date Line into the Pacific. Our board, 

known as our Commission, is appointed by our members' 

governors. While WICHE is tax-exempt under Internal 

Revenue Code, our compact, which again is in state 

statute, establishes WICHE is an agency of each of our 

member states. Compacts can be and are both. To imply 

that WICHE is non-governmental and not serving states' 

needs is not accurate. Our mission is to work 

collaboratively to expand educational access and 

excellence for all residents of the West. While our 

states have diverse perspectives and may not always 

agree, we work on behalf of our states and their 

students. Our portfolio of work is broad. Our tuition 

savings programs save nearly 50,000 students more than 
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$500 million last year. We also focus extensively on 

behavioral health care, adult learners, transcript holds, 

OER, and effectively serving students through distance 

learning, just to name a few. WICHE also plays a crucial 

role in the state authorization reciprocity agreement, 

known as SARA. WICHE is responsible for implementing the 

agreement in the West for the 13 states that choose to 

participate through WICHE. At the behest of our states 

and commissioners, we have worked in this role to center 

states and their wishes in the agreement. Working with 

the other compacts and NC-SARA, our states developed and 

led the adoption of an open and transparent policy 

process that reflects the collective will of 

participating states in setting the policies of SARA. 

Participating states now annually consider policy 

proposals submitted by any interested party and can 

submit their own proposals. Ultimately, we feel very 

strongly that the terms of a voluntary state 

authorization reciprocity agreement are best left in the 

hands of the states themselves, not nonprofits, not the 

Federal government, and the SARA policy process reflects 

that. The discussion would also benefit from clarity on 

specifically where the Department derives regulatory 

authority at this micro level over state authorization 

and how broad it believes such authority is, as it does 
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not seem to appear in section 495 of the HEA or the 

broader part H on program integrity. [30 seconds] Thank 

you for the opportunity to address this committee, and 

please feel free to reach out if there are any questions 

about the compacts or governance or our role within 

reciprocity. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Patrick. 

Krystil, who do we have next? 

MS. K. SMITH: Our next speaker is 

Kyle Southern who is the associate vice president of 

Higher Education Quality, T-I-C-A-S, and Kyle is in the 

room. 

MR. WEATHERS: Kyle, hello. Welcome. 

This is your opportunity to speak directly to the 

negotiators on this committee. You'll have three minutes 

for comment, and you'll be given a 30-second warning, and 

that time is to run. Your time begins now. 

DR. SOUTHERN: Thank you and good 

afternoon. I am Dr. Kyle Southern and I serve as 

associate vice president for higher education quality at 

the Institute for College Access and Success, also known 

as TICAS. We have an organizational mission to advance 

affordability, accountability, and equity in higher 

education. As part of that mission, we advocate for 

stronger protections for students, borrowers, and 
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taxpayers' investments, and Title IV aid programs. The 

current negotiated rulemaking process addresses many 

critical issues facing higher education. But today, I 

will elevate our perspectives on accreditation and state 

authorization. Accrediting agencies serve as gatekeepers 

for institutions to access Federal funds, but recent and 

dramatic failures of institutional oversight demonstrate 

the need for clearer guidelines about how accreditors 

should treat institutions that fall short of quality 

control expectations and requirements. For example, weak 

oversight by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools 

and Colleges over the schools operated by the Center for 

Excellence in Higher Education led to years of waste, 

fraud, and abuse. This lax oversight resulted in 

excessive costs to taxpayers when fraudulent colleges 

suddenly shuttered, and to students taking on a 

collective $1.8 billion in Federal student loans they 

were poorly situated to repay. We share the Department's 

concern about a potential rise in accreditor shopping, as 

well as the potential of a disturbing but growing number 

of state laws that would compel institutions to change 

accreditors in advance of their next accreditation 

reviews. Such laws are recipes for a race to the bottom 

of quality assurance. Accreditation should be an 

indicator of academic quality, not subject to the 
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political whims of a given moment or legislative 

majority. We applaud the Department's effort to uphold 

this essential principle, protect students, and shore up 

the quality of institutions accessing Federal Financial 

Aid. We support an ambitious overhaul of accreditation 

regulations. For too many years, state authorization 

requirements have met too little, with significant 

variation and capacity, will and knowledge to conduct 

oversight, some states have virtually no effective 

requirements for obtaining authorization. We believe the 

SARA Agreement inappropriately limits the ability of 

states with strong protections to enforce their own state 

higher education laws and safeguards with respect to outof-state schools. To better protect students interests, 

we encourage the committee to lift the floor for state 

authorization processes and capacity, ensure programs

lead to licensure where applicable, and improve oversight 

of distance education programs through regulation. Thank 

you for considering these comments and for your work to 

advance a more affordable, accountable, and equitable 

approach to higher education nationwide. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Kyle. 

Krystil, who do we have next? 

MS. K. SMITH: Yeah, John. So next 

we have Nico Castillo, who is representing himself. And 
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Nico is in the room. 

MR. WEATHERS: Nico, welcome. This 

is your opportunity to speak directly to the negotiating 

team. You have three minutes and you'll be given a 30-

second warning when your time is about to run out. Your 

three minutes begins now. Niko, you- you're muted. Down 

on the bottom there should be a microphone. There you 

go. Well, you're three minutes will begin right now. 

Take it away. 

MR. CASTILLO: Sorry about that. 

Thank you for your time to explain my experience at 

Living Arts College. So, in September 2021, after a sixyear stint in the U.S. Army, I decided to enroll because 

I was interested in film school and they seemed like a 

good fit. They advertised that their students landed 

jobs at major companies like Epic and Disney. At first, 

that seemed okay to me. I was one of the older students 

and mostly kept to myself and focused on my work. I 

started to notice things were not going well after 

talking to students who had been there longer.

Classmates told me that the school had not given them 

enough support and resources, other students told me that 

the Career Services Office was not particularly good. 

While I was there, six different advisors left that 

office and even had three different directors of 
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education during that time. The turnover pointed to a 

general problem that the school was not stable, the 

classes were not well planned, we were given little time 

to prepare for and produce big projects. Because of the 

lack of preparation and training that makes students stop 

coming to class, I began hearing through the grapevine 

that the school was on a shaky footing and may be 

closing. Nevertheless, I stuck it out. In November 

2022, the administration called for all-hands on deck 

meeting with the entire school. The vibe was that Living 

Arts was struggling to come up with funds. As soon as 

winter break started, the students were told that the 

school was closing. You might think that once the school 

closed, problems would end, but as soon as the school 

closed, the career office was nowhere to be found, 

leaving us to find jobs on our own. I now have a job 

that has nothing to do with what I studied, and because I 

use veteran benefits to pay for my education, I have to 

wait through the GI Bill restoration process for closed 

schools before I can even go back to school. I have had 

to throw the idea of going to school out the window and 

instead focus on work. I also know that some of my 

classmates recently went back to the school to pick up 

artwork they left there. When they tried to take it 

home, they were told they couldn't due to a clause in a 
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contract with the school, Living Arts reserved the right 

to restrain samples of the students' work for the 

college's permanent collection. There were too many red 

flags at the Living Arts for it to go fully unchecked. I 

think more should have been done to make sure that the 

school was sound and a good investment for students. And 

again, thank you for your time. 

MR. WEATHERS: Nico, thank you very 

much. Krystil, who do we have next? 

MS. K. SMITH: Our next speaker is 

Rachel Sumekh, who is the founder of Swipe Out Hunger and 

Rachel is in the room. 

MR. WEATHERS: Rachel, welcome. You 

will have three minutes to make your comments to the 

negotiating committee. You'll be given a 30-second 

warning as your- before your time runs. And your three 

minutes begins right now. 

MS. SUMEKH: Good afternoon. My name 

is Rachel Sumekh, and I'm the founder and former CEO of 

Swipe Out Hunger, a national nonprofit committed to 

ending college student hunger, which, as you know, one in 

three college students experience. I'm joining today to 

provide comment on the cash management rule about 

crediting a student's ledger account. I helped found 

Swipe Out Hunger back in 2010, along with my friends at 
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UCLA, as a single program to help our peers who were 

experiencing hunger. Today, we have scaled that program 

to 750 universities, demonstrating the incredible need 

and action universities are taking to support their 

students. Having dedicated the past 13 years of my life 

to ending student hunger, I was delighted to see the 

Department consider ways to ensure students can use every 

dollar of their financial aid to provide for themselves, 

instead of those funds being used by the school to just 

balance budgets. I applaud the cash management 

regulation that would send any unspent dining dollars 

back to students at the end of the year. Food should not 

be used as a revenue source for a university. 90% of 

students who receive Pell still face unmet need, and the 

difference between how much the college costs them and 

how much financial aid they receive, which systemically 

marginalized students are more likely to face unmet need 

when compared to their white peers. While the amount of 

money at stake of these leftover meal plans might seem 

small in context to college budgets, those extra funds 

make a huge difference to the students who are low 

income. As Greg Martin, the Federal negotiator, said 

earlier in these proceedings, this is the student's 

money, and they should be able to choose how they spend 

and support themselves throughout college. The proposal 
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on the table is good, but to avoid creating a loophole 

where colleges remove dining dollars and turned them into 

meal vouchers with assigned cash value, the proposal 

should include a provision with a student who used Title 

IV Aid to pay for that meal plan, should have that 

refunded as cash value, of both unused dining dollars and 

any unused meal vouchers. Including this language would 

protect against creative ways around the new regulations. 

Thank you for considering my comments and your amazing 

dedication to our students. 

MR. WEATHERS: Rachel, thank you very 

much. Krystil, who do we have next? 

MS. K. SMITH: Next we have Saige 

O'Rourke, who is from Pearson Campus Ambassador, and is 

representing herself. Saige is in the room. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you for being 

here today, Saige. You will have three minutes to make 

your comment and you will be given a 30-second heads up. 

Your three minutes begins now. 

MS. O'ROURKE: Hi everyone. My name 

is Saige O'Rourke and I'm a junior student at the 

University of Tennessee. I'm studying business analytics 

with a concentration in workforce analytics. To be 

transparent, you all should know that I'm also a Pearson 

Campus Ambassador, which means that I work directly with 
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fellow students to collect feedback through focus groups, 

surveys, and individual interviews. I hear from my 

fellow students about what they think about course 

material programs like Macmillan, McGraw-Hill, Cengage, 

and Pearson at the University of Tennessee, and I relay 

that information back so publishers like Pearson can 

constantly improve their programs. This is how I know 

that the proposed strike to the cash management rules 

that support access and affordability programs will 

negatively impact students across the country, and 

specifically at my campus, which has had an access and 

affordability program since 2016. And it saved students 

up to 70% of the retail value on their course materials. 

These programs are often called inclusive access, which 

allow universities to acquire course materials for an 

entire class of students with a single order, ensuring 

that students get the materials on their first day of 

class. These programs also allow students to pay for 

their materials using the Title IX Financial Aid to their 

grants and loans, rather than going out of pocket to get 

the course materials that they need. I personally 

appreciate not having to find outside sources of funding 

to get access to materials, because I come from a lowincome household. Not incidentally, the current rules 

established under the Obama-Biden Administration require 
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that publishers offer the course materials included in 

these programs at below current market rates, and as a 

result, inclusive access programs have made a really 

dramatic contribution to affordability. In fact, the 

independent research group, Student Monitor, reports that 

these programs fueled a decline of 41% in spending in the 

category over the past decade. And the other groups that 

look at this student watch, they found a 57% decline in 

spending, also, in large part because of these programs.

The College Board's most recent report on college pricing 

notes that students now spend an average of just $310 a 

year in the category, making it a very rare but bright 

spot in higher education affordability. As a college 

student, I value the quality of the online learning 

solutions that are available through these programs, and 

I really appreciate the role that they have played in 

driving significant progress in affordability. The 

proposed rule changes will end the right of colleges and 

universities to provide these programs that have resulted 

in a decade long decline in student spending on course 

materials, and an improvement of student outcomes. I 

support greater transparency, and I do think that 

students should be able to know more about how the 

process around these programs work, so a rule change 

regarding greater transparency would make sense. But the 
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fact of the matter is that these programs have truly 

delivered [30 seconds] on the promise of affordability, 

and they must be protected and preserved. Thank you all 

for your time. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you for your 

comments, Saige. Krystil, who's next? 

MS. K. SMITH: Our next speaker is 

Austin Reid from the National Conference of State 

Legislatures. Austin is in the room. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you very much, 

Krystil. Austin, welcome. This is your opportunity to 

speak to the committee directly. You have three minutes. 

You'll be given a 30-second notice of your time running. 

And your three minutes begins right now. 

MR. REID: Thank you for the 

opportunity to make comment. My name is Austin Reid and 

I'm making comments on proposed state authorization 

language on behalf of the National Conference of State 

Legislatures, the nonpartisan organization that works in 

a bipartisan manner to serve all legislatures in the 

states and territories. Speaking across K-12 and higher 

ed contexts, state-led reciprocity agreements are 

inherently delicate and require significant coordination 

among the states involved. But these compacts, 

especially at scale, are formed by a push and pull among 
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states, often with differing standards. It's NCSL's 

sense that Federal involvement in these compacts makes 

them potentially more complicated to establish and 

manage, and actually may interfere with interstate 

cooperation. However, NCSL believes in cooperative 

federalism. So, I've been listening to these 

conversations on behalf of state legislatures to 

understand how these proposals might complement, but not 

substitute for, state authority and responsibility in 

higher education. To that end, proposals related to 

facilitating communication about student complaints could 

potentially be constructive to reciprocity and could 

strengthen existing agreements and protections for 

students. However, NCSL is concerned with new language 

that would define for states via Federal regulation what 

a state-led process to create a reciprocity agreement 

should look like, or what kind of state actors would 

qualify to serve on a governing board with a reciprocity 

agreement. Principally, these proposals do not promote a 

sense of cooperative federalism, as they would substitute 

Federal regulation for state authority, and these 

proposals could also unduly constrain states should they 

pursue adopting new agreements beyond the current SARA 

agreement. On the broader proposals of- or broader 

issues of reciprocity, state legislators have access to 
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pathways beyond Federal rulemaking to make important 

changes to reciprocity agreements. My experience working 

with legislators suggests that they are far more directly 

engaged with their regional higher ed compacts than they 

are in this negotiated rulemaking process, and I would 

observe that this rulemaking committee includes only one 

state representative among 15 sector representatives to 

discuss what is fundamentally a matter of state policy. 

In the end, these reciprocity agreements are created by 

states and are adopted by states on a voluntary basis. 

NCSL believes that states should lead changes to 

reciprocity and urges the Federal Government to defer to 

states when it comes to authorization and other matters 

of accountability in higher education. Thank you. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you for your 

comment, Austin. Krystil, who's next? 

MS. K. SMITH: Our next speaker is 

Doug Lundrigan, from Lighthouse Leadership, LLC. 

MR. WEATHERS: Doug, are you there? 

MS. K. SMITH: Doug is still joining. 

Doug is in the room. 

MR. WEATHERS: There's Doug. 

Welcome, Doug. You, have three minutes to make your 

comment. You'll be given a 30-second notice of your time 

running, and your three minutes begins right now. 
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MR. LUNDRIGAN: Okay. Hello, 

everyone. As you said, my name is Doug Lundrigan. I 

became an immigrant to the United States in 1988 and a 

citizen in 1994. Thank you for allowing me to join 

today's public comment and share my insights into higher 

education. As I see it, we need more colleges and 

universities to step up and provide high quality degree 

programs for working adults like me, who are already well 

into our professional careers. When I chose the 

University of Phoenix more than 12 years ago, my employer 

at the time offered a tuition assistance program benefit 

that I took advantage of. They stipulated that the 

school I attended had to be accredited and meet the 

standard levels of academic program integrity and the 

price tag needed to fit our benefits package. I 

researched several master's programs and was thrilled to 

find University of Phoenix met all the criteria. I 

completed coursework in both online- on online and at a 

campus one night a week. The model of instruction worked 

perfectly for my schedule. I valued the faculty who 

worked professionally themselves and who brought 

tremendous real-world experience to our coursework 

discussions. At the start of my MBA, I heard negative 

comments about my choice to attend University of Phoenix 

from a close relative. I said, okay, let's compare the 
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coursework, the instruction, the textbooks, the rigor of 

assignments, and the quality of academic material. As we 

did so, it matched up almost identically to what my 

relative experienced at the University of Utah MBA 

program. Today, I am the CEO of Lighthouse Leadership. 

We train adults in leadership skills. My largest client 

has been the Federal Government, and I have performed my 

work in seven of these United States. I'm also on the 

Leadership Council of the National Small Business 

Association. I'm presently working on bringing my 

instructional materials to a popular online learning 

platform. I take great pride in upholding the highest 

evidence-based standards, and that is what University of 

Phoenix does as well. I've been very vocal with the 

Department of- with the Department. I've also weighed in 

with the University of Idaho, a longstanding state 

institution that sees real challenges on the horizon and 

is working to affiliate with University of Phoenix to 

address what is needed in higher education in this 

country today. I believe that University of Phoenix is 

filling that need, and so I will continue to share my 

story until leaders in this country acknowledge the needs 

of working adults in higher education. The regulations 

you are writing will directly impact working adult 

students, and I recommend that you seek out our voices 
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[30 seconds]. Thank you. I'm finished. Any questions? 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Doug. Who 

do we have next? 

MR. MORRIS: Alright. Our next 

speaker is Greg Morris from Dallas College, and he's in 

the room. 

MR. WEATHERS: Alright. Greg, 

welcome. This is your opportunity to speak directly to 

the negotiating committee. You'll have three minutes, in 

total, 30 seconds' notice, and your time begins now. 

MR. MORRIS: Alright. Great. Thank 

you so much. Members of the Committee, thank you again 

for this opportunity to speak. My name is Greg Morris. 

I serve as the senior vice provost for academic services 

with Dallas College, and today I'm representing our 

chancellor, Dr. Justin Lonon, on behalf of Dallas 

College. And we just wish to express our concern about 

some of the implications and proposed changes that are 

being proposed with section 668.164, which deals with 

matters around textbook and learning material acquisition 

for our students. We really believe that these changes 

could have some real significant negative impact on our 

educational outcomes and ultimately our students. You 

may know this, but Dallas College serves a pretty wide 

demographic with 130,000 students that reflects the 
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broader diversity of Dallas College in the community. 

Our population is about 50% Hispanic, about 30% African 

American, and the remainder of other ethnic communities. 

Many of our students face unique educational challenges, 

particularly in acquiring essential learning materials 

they need for school. Historically, for us, about 20% of 

our students either delayed or skipped coming to class 

because they didn't have learning materials. And almost 

a third of our students went an entire semester without 

books and learning materials. With our inclusive access 

program that we launched several years ago, without it, 

our students would have continued to struggle to obtain 

textbooks. With the implementation of this program, we 

have been able to ensure that 97% of our students have 

access to essential resources at the day one of classes. 

This change has also helped us accomplish several 

significant things in reducing the overall cost for our 

students. We definitely understand the concerns about 

transparency and student choice in the context of 

inclusive access programs. However, our primary goal is 

to address our students' immediate and practical needs, 

who many of us- who many of them come to us with severe 

economically disadvantaged backgrounds. So, we believe

the potential impact for this regulatory change would 

inadvertently heighten the barriers of success for our 
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students. It would lead to increased academic 

challenges, and it is for this reason that we 

respectfully request a thorough reconsideration of these 

changes. We're really eager to engage in dialog and to 

explore practical solutions that balance transparency, 

student choice, and the urgent need for accessible and 

affordable educational resources. With that being said, 

I really appreciate your time today and we look forward 

to supporting you in the direction that you go. Thank 

you. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you very much, 

Greg. Have a good day. Krystil, who do we have next? 

MS. K. SMITH: Our next speaker is 

Katie Cook, who is representing herself. And Katie is in 

the room. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you. Katie, 

welcome. This is your opportunity to speak directly to 

the negotiating committee. You'll have three minutes in 

total and you'll be given a 30-second warning. Your time 

begins now. You are muted. 

MS. COOK: Okay, here we go. 

MR. WEATHERS: Your time begins now;

we can hear you. 

MS. COOK: Thank you. Hi, my name is 

Katie Cook. I am currently a cosmetology student going 
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to beauty school. As a future hair stylist, I am 

attending a 1,600 clock-hour program, of which 1,000 

clock hours is physically on site at my school and 600 

hours is completed online through asynchronous distance 

education. I complete both my on-site education five 

days a week for four hours a day with approximately two 

hours a day online. None of my hands-on portion are done 

online, only the theory portion. I wanted to share a 

little bit about myself. I am a nontraditional student. 

I am 42. I'm a 42-year-old mom making a career 

transition. My son is going to Washington State 

University, and my daughter is going to a high school 

where they have access to online education. I do not 

feel it's equitable that unless I went to traditional 

credit-based college like my son, I would not be able to 

participate in distance education like I am today. I 

heard that the Department is concerned about the learning 

that takes place at beauty school when it's done online. 

I believe the learning through my current program is 

tracked more closely than any credit-hour program would 

be. For example, when I study anatomy and physiology, 

any videos that I watch, quizzes that I take, information 

that I've reviewed is tracked on a per-second basis. If 

I get distracted and have to step away, the program 

automatically logs me out if I forget to. It allows me 
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to take my education away from the confines of the walls 

of a classroom. The current hybrid setup offers me the 

ability to study when I can. This often happens late at 

night, early in the morning, during my lunch, or when I'm 

caring for my family. If I need to reach out to my 

teacher, I can do so through our online setup, where they 

can respond back to me, or I can just connect with them 

the next day when I'm in class. I can assure you that 

the credit I receive in my current program is scrutinized 

more than any time spent at a more traditional college, 

and the hours are not awarded hastily. I would like to 

share, the platform that we use is utilized by over 75% 

of beauty schools across the United States. Eliminating 

asynchronous education from a program like mine would 

hurt many students. To take the asynchronous portion 

away would mean that I would have to be 100% confined to 

the classroom, which in turn would not allow access to 

this career change. I know other students that are with 

me, that are people of color, single mothers, immigrants, 

people caring for their parents, and those working two 

jobs that need access to the way that we are currently 

studying. Thank you so much for your time. 

MR. WEATHERS: Thank you, Katie. And 

I believe Katie was our last commenter for the day. 

Greg, I don't know if you have any final comments before 
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we sign off.

MR. MARTIN: No, nothing for me. 

Just want to wish everybody a [inaudible]. Thank you 

everybody for your efforts today. And I look forward to 

seeing you all tomorrow. 

MR. WEATHERS: [Inaudible] very much, 

folks, for a productive day. And we will see you 

tomorrow for session two, day three. 

 
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Zoom Chat Transcript

Program Integrity and Institutional Quality- Session 2, Day 2, Afternoon, February 6, 2024

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

From P, Jillian Klein. Proprietary Instit to Everyone:

I'm sorry, I'm still confused. Just to confirm, Greg indicated this section in question is 

intended to apply just to non-reciprocity schools, correct? I think I'm hearing Carolyn, Robyn and 

others speaking about this section as if it related to SARA schools and just want to make sure, 

again, we are all on the same page.

From Robyn Smith, Legal aid orgs. to Everyone:

I am also confused; and I was talking about Carolyn’s proposal.

From P, Jillian Klein. Proprietary Instit to Everyone:

Reacted to "I am also confused; ..." with �������

From P, Jillian Klein. Proprietary Instit to Everyone:

Replying to "I am also confused; ..."

at least I'm not the only one!!

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

agreed, remain a bit confused about the language and which schools it applies to. Further 

complicated by Greg's comments about the interplay of language introduced later

From P. Jo Blondin, Community Colleges to Everyone:

I just want to know what institutions are referenced in 600.9 a (1) i

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

NY AG has taken enforcement actions against out of state based online schools including 

DeVry, Colorado Technical University/American International University, and others

From A, Emmett Blaney, Students/Borrowers to Everyone:

Reacted to "NY AG has taken enfo..." with ���

From P, Jillian Klein. Proprietary Instit to Everyone:

Reacted to "I just want to know ..." with ���

From P, John Ware, State Regulator to Everyone:

Rob Anderson has a comment on these issues

From A, Emmett Blaney, Students/Borrowers to Everyone:

+1 to Carolyn’s point; it increases student protections to allow states to take up complaints 

at their own discretion instead of being prohibited.
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From P - Erika Linden, Private Nonprofit Institutions to Everyone:

Scott Dolan has a comment for the table. I am stepping away.

From P., Diana Hooley, State Attorneys General to Everyone:

Replying to "NY AG has taken enfo..."

The MA AG has also enforced its regulations against out-of-state online schools.

From A, Emmett Blaney, Students/Borrowers to Everyone:

Reacted to "The MA AG has also e..." with ���

From P, Jillian Klein. Proprietary Instit to Everyone:

+1 on Scott's comments. This is what I was suggesting earlier, that without specificity it is 

very challenging for us as negotiators to know what it is we are responding to.

From (A) Dom Chase - Business Officers to Everyone:

I agree with those comments as well.

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

i will step aside and let the primary come back to the table

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

Will try to summarize the questions we have for the Department. Will want to take a 

minute to address the different issues succinctly.

From (P) Barmak Nassirian, Veterans & Mil. Students to Everyone:

I misspoke when I cited the certification language that is scheduled to go into effect this 

July 1: the correct citation is 34 CFR 668.14(b)(32)

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

Reacted to "I misspoke when I ci..." with ���

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

I also wanted to make sure I didn't lose track of Dave's important question on the earlier 

subject: 1) Please define what is meant by an education-specific law?

2) In introducing the conversation about education-specific laws, what issues or problems is 

the department trying to address? 

3) For the issues/problems identified, what evidence or data can the department provide 

about the scale and scope of the issues? 

4) How will the introduction of education-specific language help to resolve these issues and 

in what ways? 

5) Given the concerns raised by other constituencies about enforcement across state lines, 

will the new regulations actually work to the desired end?

6) Would the Department’s proposed language disallow SARA’s current policy that prevents 

states from enforcing education-specific authorization requirements on out-of-state institutions?

From A, Scott Dolan, Private Nonprofit IHEs to Everyone:
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agreed with Jillian that language this morning is clearer

From A, Magin Sanchez, Civil Rights/Consumer to Everyone:

+1 to the proposal, important to have such information to support oversight efforts from a 

civil rights perspective

From P. Jo Blondin, Community Colleges to Everyone:

Jamie--From the Community college perspective, the newest proposal is much more 

definitive. It will be a lift for some colleges, but it is important to capture.

From A, Magin Sanchez, Civil Rights/Consumer to Everyone:

Reacted to "Jamie--From the Comm..." with ���

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

Reacted to "+1 to the proposal, ..." with ���

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

apologies, we did have one more question on state authorization: 7) Where, specifically, in 

the Higher Education Act does the department derive regulatory authority over state 

authorization? Such authority is not included in Section 495 on state authorization. 

This question was asked at one point in the session 1 on this topic, but not fully addressed

From P. JoEllen Price, Financial Aid Administrators to Everyone:

I am concerned that if a school is struggling with reporting requirements for a specific 

program, students in that program would lose aid eligibility to complete the program.

From P, Jillian Klein. Proprietary Instit to Everyone:

Reacted to "I am concerned that ..." with ���

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

Reacted to "I am concerned that ..." with ��

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

Replying to "I am concerned that ..."

@P. JoEllen Price, Financial Aid Administrators I think the question I still have is "so what"? 

Schools consistently struggle to report now and so it wouldn't make it any harder for them to 

report if it was added there.

From Dave Musser, ED FSA to Everyone:

Distance education course: A distance education course is a course that follows the 

definition of

“distance education” found in 34 CFR 600.2 and instruction takes place exclusively at a distance 

not withstanding face-to-face engagement for orientation, testing, and academic support 

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

Replying to "I am concerned that ..."

I could be wrong, but I don't believe NSLDS enrollment reporting falls under 

institutional/program eligibility in the CFR. If the new reporting requirements are 'housed' there, it 

puts program eligibility -- and therefore students -- at risk.

From P. JoEllen Price, Financial Aid Administrators to Everyone:

Replying to "I am concerned that ..."

I just don't want students negatively impacted, especially during a time that schools are 

experiencing staff turnover in all areas, especially offices that complete reporting requirements.

From P. JoEllen Price, Financial Aid Administrators to Everyone:

Replying to "I am concerned that ..."

Enrollment reporting, for example, is a top audit and program review finding.

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

Reacted to "I just don't want st..." with ���

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

Scott Dolan will be coming to the table for private non profits.

From P. Jo Blondin, Community Colleges to Everyone:

Yes--that was my data request.

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

apologies misheard that piece

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

Erika will step back

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

Scott back in

From P. JoEllen Price, Financial Aid Administrators to Everyone:

Zack Goodwin will be at the table in my place as I need to step away.

From (P) Barmak Nassirian, Veterans & Mil. Students to Everyone:

https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/reports/cautionary-tale-correspondenceschools/introduction/

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

agreed, especially when there are licensing requirements for many of these programs
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From A, Scott Dolan, Private Nonprofit IHEs to Everyone:

Question for the department: is there a statutory definition of clock hour that we can refer 

to? Can be addressed between sessions

From P, Jillian Klein. Proprietary Instit to Everyone:

Reacted to "Question for the dep..." with ���

From P-Jamie Studley, Institutional Accreditors to Everyone:

Barmak: Reasonable, sensible guard rails, with credit for effective past performance (so 

that we can use history wisely )

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

Reacted to "Barmak: Reasonable, ..." with ���

From (P) Barmak Nassirian, Veterans & Mil. Students to Everyone:

Agreed!

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

Replying to "Question for the dep..."

Great question. Though the HEA mentions clock hours in many contexts (e.g., how many 

must be included for a program to be Title IV-eligible) I am not seeing a definition.

From P, Jillian Klein. Proprietary Instit to Everyone:

Replying to "Question for the dep..."

That's my read as well. I heard Dave say that there is a "direct instruction" requirement but 

it appears that is only regulatory in nature.

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

Reacted to "That's my read as we..." with ���