Washington
The U.S. Department of Education received new suggestions on Tuesday about how it might change federal rules that spell out how colleges can and cannot compensate student recruiters. The new proposal came from a panel of negotiators who are examining that issue and 13 others that affect for-profit colleges and other sectors of higher education.
The panel, which consists of federal officials and representatives of colleges and other parties, is trying to reach agreement on a set of new rules the Education Department has proposed. The panel is meeting for its third and final session this week.
During last month's meetings, the department proposed eliminating the 12 "safe harbors" created in 2002 to clarify a ban on incentive compensation for student recruiters. The safe harbors specify types of college compensation plans that do not violate the ban.
Most panel members were taken aback by the department's decision and voiced strong objection, because eliminating the safe harbors would leave institutions without any guidance on what is or is not permissible. The language proposed by the department is a single paragraph, which stipulates that employees could not receive commissions, bonuses, or other incentive compensation based on securing enrollments for their institutions or financial aid for students.
To counter the department's proposal, a group of panel members agreed to develop alternative language for consideration.
That group presented its suggestions at Tuesday's meeting. The proposed alternative language would still eliminate the safe harbors but would provide more guidance to colleges than the Education Department had offered. The group's proposal would clarify that merit-based adjustments to employee compensation would be legal, provided that no more than two such adjustments are made in a calendar year and that the adjustments are not based on success in securing enrollments on a per-student basis. The same frequency limit would apply to employees who make decisions about awarding student aid.
The Education Department will now review the proposal and is expected to respond later this week.
Comments
1. charlesgross - January 27, 2010 at 07:28 am
Having watched too many of the for-profits violate the harbors I would strongly suggest that DOE provide clearly defined wording and than inspect each for-profit on a regular basis since they spend significant time finding means to hide this issue from both the Department and their accrditing bodies which are made-up of their peers. cg
2. 11180037 - January 27, 2010 at 10:20 am
Has no one considered the question of what unique characteristic relates to the roles of recruiters, admissions reps, and financial aid administrators that would warrant the unusual practice of two evaluations and pay adjustments per year? It is obvious unless the practice is required for all school staff, which if the safe harbor of two adjustments per year were to be adopted it should be contingent upon its universal application to all staff. A better approach would be to make such adjustments contingent on job placement of graduates enrolled and processed by such individuals. Now you have real accountablity as an incentive balanced by a sense of organizational mission beyond simply the bottom line.
3. jesor - January 28, 2010 at 12:23 pm
Regarding 11180037's comments, given the average time in job with student recruitment staff, it would unlikely that an employee would actually be working for a school long enough to have a student be recruited during their senior year of High School, attend for four years, graduate, and then find a job in 6 months. Imagine if you told faculty that you could be hired, but you'll have to wait 5 1/2 years before we'll even consider you for a pay raise, and you don't get tenure.
I could possibly see some sort of bonus system based on earlier indicators of student success, but there are still many intervening factors (i.e. does a recruiter get punished if their retention numbers go down because a tenured freshman seminar faculty is abusive and causes 15 students to withdraw in the first term?)
The reality of it is, as long as there's an enrollment based incentive system, there will be motivations for abuse.
4. jesor - January 28, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Let me revise my previous comment....imagine if you did that to a full-time faculty, sadly, I think adjuncts face this all of the time.
As for special qualities of admissions recruiters, I think any job that requires more than half of your time to be spent away from home and family, living on the road, eating bad food, driving in stressful trafic, explaining and defending faculty and administrative decisions that impact your work, but you have no imput on, dealing with parents, students, and school counselors on your own with nobody to refer them to, and still requires that you keep up on the lastest happenings back in the office and maintain ethical standards without direct supervision is challenging enough to warrant more periodic review for pay. It also warrants a higher pay rate than most people receive, hence an average time in job of just a couple of years.