U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced the finalized rule for accreditation and state authorization on Thursday. The new regulations will go into effect on July 1, 2020.
“We ended the stranglehold that a system designed when people traveled by horse and buggy continued to have on institutions,” DeVos said. “Accreditation has played a role in the bloat that has taken place in higher education administration, and it is time to right size bureaucracy and allow institutions to redirect their resources to students and teaching.”
The 509-page document loosens Department of Education oversight of accreditors and accreditors’ oversight of institutions. It also makes it so that states that join a reciprocity agreement can’t enforce individual state laws governing online higher education programs.
Clare McCann, deputy director for federal policy at New America’s Higher Education Initiative, said the two policy areas are “very interconnected.”
“Federal oversight depends on shared responsibility across accreditors, states and the federal government,” she said.
The state authorization piece is new, and it’s counter to the consensus reached in the negotiated rulemaking process, where stakeholders aired their views. Otherwise, the regulations released Thursday differ only slightly from the draft the Department of Education shared earlier this year.
The final rule gives schools sanctioned by accreditors double the amount of time – a maximum of four years – to fix themselves up before losing accreditation. During that time, students can continue to enroll in these institutions and these schools can continue to receive federal dollars. Institutions can also “shape shift,” Mccann said, making more fundamental changes to their programs and curriculums without notifying their accreditors.
