The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) on Monday provided formal oral input to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on regulations pending at the U.S. Education Department (ED), focusing on issues that had been subject to the “negotiated rulemaking” process on program integrity and institutional quality earlier this year. (AACC members were negotiators at those sessions.)
AACC’s comments, which were part of a formal required review process conducted by OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, focused on two issues that ED had advanced in the negotiated rulemaking sessions: a requirement that attendance be taken for all distance education courses and the elimination of Title IV eligibility for asynchronous online education courses measured in clock hours.
While covered in the same “neg reg” sessions, ED has not yet advanced rules addressing accreditation and newly prohibiting institutions from offering “inclusive access” programs, in which certain course materials are included in tuition, fees and other mandatory charges.
Nixing clock-hour courses from Title IV eligibility
AACC maintains that eliminating student aid eligibility for asynchronous online programs measured in clock hours is a short-sighted policy that does not reflect the quality of such programs offered by community colleges. Institutions have long had a variety of quality assurance mechanisms in place for online programs, and, if anything, career-oriented programs offered in these modalities have been enhanced since the pandemic.
Moreover, these programs continue to be in demand from students, particularly students with work and family responsibilities, transportation and mobility challenges, and other considerations where both quality and flexibility are critical to their success. (Preventing low-quality programs, particularly those offered by for-profit institutions, which offer higher numbers of clock-hour programs, is likely ED’s motivation for the change.)
Giving AACC further concern, ED’s most recent draft regulation appeared to cover hybrid clock-hour programs in addition to those delivered fully online.
Attendance taking for online courses
AACC also opposes proposed language requiring institutions to take attendance for online courses. ED has attempted to justify this change by claiming that it ensures that a more accurate “last date of attendance” can be determined for students who withdraw from a program and need to have Title IV returns calculated.
However, AACC maintains that the proposed solution is worse than the problem. If adopted as suggested during the “neg reg” sessions, AACC believes that it could ultimately require colleges to take attendance more broadly, with some colleges sharing that they would have to transition every course to be attendance-taking.
AACC contends that existing requirements for online education programs enable institutions to generally determine, with accuracy, when a student stops academically participating in a program and has essentially withdrawn. Adding further complexity, the proposed attendance-taking requirement would apply to students enrolled in both online and in-person courses in the same period.
The next stage in the rulemaking process is for ED to publish a formal Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in the Federal Register. The NPRM is expected to be released shortly. At that time, AACC will submit formal written comments reiterating our concerns and will ask its members to do the same. The rules must be published in final form by November 1 to take effect next July.
