Higher Education Groups Push for Suspension of Financial Responsibility Scores

April 3, 2020

HEADLINES

Suspension of Financial Responsibility Scores? (Inside Higher Ed, April 2, 2020) “Higher education groups push the Education Department to suspend measure of colleges' financial standing. Regulators that use the metrics include state agencies, accreditors, auditors and the National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (NC-SARA), which sets national standards for interstate distance education offerings.”

Coronavirus Public Health Emergency Underscores Need for Department of Education's Proposed Distance Learning Rules (U.S. Department of Education, April 1, 2020) “U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos proposed new rules today that would govern distance learning for higher education students. Although work on the proposed Distance Learning and Innovation regulation started more than a year ago, the COVID-19 National Emergency underscores the need for reform and for all educational institutions to have a robust capacity to teach remotely.”

Make American Colleges Grade Again (Forbes, April 1, 2020) “There are two groups that probably could end grade inflation nationally: the regional accreditation organizations or the U.S. Department of Education. The seven regional accrediting agencies could agree on, say, a maximum permitted average GPA for all undergraduate students of 3.20 (I would prefer 2.8 or even 2.5, about what it was when I was an undergraduate at Northwestern), and perhaps we could gradually move to such a standard.”

Report Calls for Changes to Law School Rankings, Accreditation (Inside Higher Ed, March 30, 2020) “The report calls on the accrediting agency for law schools, the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, to rethink some of its standards to remove what it describes as barriers to innovation and to expand consumer protections and increase transparency by collecting more data on tuition pricing and discounting and on student borrowing by gender and race.”