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DeVos to Announce New Push for Deregulation, Innovation
August 03, 2018
Top Education Department official describes plan to "rethink" higher-education standards through new rule-making process, to be announced today, on accreditation, the credit hour standard, the faculty role online and more.
The Trump administration says it wants more innovation in higher education. And it believes rewriting the rules for college accrediting agencies is the best way to encourage innovation.
In an exclusive interview with Inside Higher Ed, the administration's top higher education official described the philosophy behind the latest proposed regulatory overhaul, which the U.S. Department of Education unveiled Monday by introducing a wide-reaching rule-making session.
The changes the department is mulling give the clearest sign so far of an affirmative higher education agenda from the Trump administration, which in its first 18 months has focused on blocking or watering down key Obama administration initiatives. The proposals could have far-reaching effects on the educational models colleges pursue, as well as for noncollege education providers.
Diane Auer Jones, the department's principal deputy under secretary, delegated to perform the duties of under secretary and assistant secretary for postsecondary education, said the administration's goal is to reduce compliance requirements for accreditors, freeing them up to focus on educational quality while more clearly defining the college oversight roles of those agencies, state governments and federal regulators. The broad plan from Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to "rethink" higher education is a stark contrast to the Obama administration's approach, which made a signature policy of tougher scrutiny of accreditors, often citing oversight failures involving low-performing for-profit colleges.
“Accreditation is right at the crux of almost everything you do in higher ed,” Jones said last week. “We’re looking at every aspect of accreditation and saying, ‘Does this make sense?’”
In what will be the one of the most controversial proposals, she said the department wants to drop a standardized definition for academic course work, known as the credit hour, that the Obama administration rewrote in 2010 to curb credit inflation. The rule-making session also will feature a re-examination of requirements for online education, including faculty interaction and state authorization rules. In addition, Jones said, negotiators will be tasked with evaluating rules for competency-based education and the outsourcing of academic programs to nonaccredited providers and considering changes to the federal aid eligibility of religious institutions.
“We have seen some accreditors that want to be bold. Too many times they’ve done it with the department’s blessing and have gotten blindsided after the fact,” said Jones, a former assistant secretary of education in the George W. Bush administration, who later worked for Career Education Corporation, a for-profit chain, and as a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. Jones previously was a senior policy adviser for the Trump administration's Labor Department. “If we really want innovation to take place, we have to give accreditors a safe space to support that innovation.”
The latest announcement follows the department's release last week of a proposed overhaul of the 2016 Obama borrower-defense rule. Reports followed that DeVos plans to eliminate the gainful-employment rule and instead offer beefed-up program-level data on college outcomes through the College Scorecard. The department said it could not comment on plans for gainful employment, but Jones said offering additional Scorecard data will ensure all accreditors have the same information to assess institutions.
Adding program-level data was a long-term goal of the College Scorecard's creators. But the department's proposal, which would not attach federal funding to outcomes, will do little to placate consumer groups or congressional Democrats, who have criticized the rollback of rules aimed at for-profits.