Just before the new year, the U.S. Education Department (ED) released final rules on program integrity and institutional quality that reflect the positions of the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) in key areas.
In particular, ED has backed off proposals that all institutions must take attendance for students enrolled in distance education classes and to eliminate federal student aid eligibility for programs measured in clock hours. However, campuses will now have to report to ED all students who are enrolled in distance education courses.
The final regulations are a culmination of a negotiated-rulemaking process that began in early 2024. AACC was represented in those negotiations by Jo Alice Blondin, president of Ohio’s Stark State College, and Michael Cioce, president of Rowan College at Burlington County in New Jersey. The negotiations were followed by the publishing of a proposed rule on which AACC submitted formal comments to the department. Association staff also met later with ED officials to outline AACC’s concerns.
Nixing attendance-taking plan
AACC’s greatest concern about the proposed rule was its requirement that institutions take attendance for all online students as a means of determining a formal date of withdrawal for the purposes of making “Return of Title IV Funds” (R2T4) calculations. The proposal raised questions of how to take attendance in a digital environment, as well as how the proposed requirement would relate to the current statute, which requires “regular and substantive interaction” between instructor and student in online classes.
AACC also noted that the proposed requirement reflected an outdated bias against online education. ED’s regulatory preamble to the final regulation does directly address some of these issues. In any case, community college faculty and others will likely be relieved to learn that the attendance-taking idea has been scuttled. Other changes should improve R2T4 procedures slightly for both students and institutions.
Asynchronous clock-hour programs stay
The final regulations also maintain eligibility for asynchronous programs measured in clock hours. This eligibility was created in 2020, towards the close of the first Trump administration, which supported the expansion. The department had originally proposed to eliminate this eligibility over concerns about program abuse — in the clock-hour framework, instruction is supposed to occur for the entire number of clock hours in a given payment period, and there is no assumption that outside work is done by students.
The proposal would not have dramatically affected community colleges as a sector, though it would have significantly impacted some individual institutions. AACC is pleased that ED abandoned this policy.
New distance ed reporting
The department’s final rule adds a new reporting requirement for distance education students. Starting July 1, 2027, colleges must report to the National Student Loan Data System all students receiving federal financial aid who are enrolled in distance education or correspondence courses. According to ED, “these data will help the Department better understand the outcomes and effectiveness of online learning.”
Whatever the department’s intentions, analyses based on the new data will be complicated because online education students have widely varying enrollment patterns and enrollment intensity. Also, any conclusions about program outcomes should cite that only Title IV aid students are included.
AACC will continue to keep its members informed about these and other regulatory developments as the Biden administration winds down and new players set executive branch policy.
