From the issue dated September 6, 2002
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A Hard-Fought Win for Distance Education May Lead to Few Real ChangesStudent-aid rule that limited online programs is dying, but fears of federal regulation remainBy DAN CARNEVALE Officials who run distance-education programs have been pleading for years
The 12-hour rule was originally intended to deny fly-by-night course providers access to federal financial aid. It requires college programs that don't operate on a traditional academic calendar to deliver at least 12 hours of course work a week for their students to be eligible to receive federal financial aid. Last month the Education Department proposed requiring those programs to offer at least "one day" of instruction a week instead. The one-day rule is already the requirement for the vast majority of college programs offering federal financial aid -- those that operate on regular semesters, trimesters, or quarters. However, the precise meaning of "one day" of instruction has never been defined, either by department officials or by Congress. Critics of the change, including faculty unions and groups representing students, argue that the one-day standard is too vague and could open the door to fraud. Meanwhile, some distance educators worry that creating programs that meet the new standard could leave them vulnerable if regulators scrutinized distance programs and disapproved of how officials interpret what constitutes one day of instruction when it is conducted online. But many distance-education proponents say that if distance programs are ever to achieve their full potential, the 12-hour rule must be repealed along with its companion, the 50-percent rule. The latter regulation requires that for students to receive federal financial aid, an institution must enroll no more than half of its students via distance education. Unlike the 12-hour rule, which is an Education Department regulation, the 50-percent rule was created by statute, and can only be changed by Congress. If both regulations are changed in ways that make it easier to provide financial aid for programs that let students study when and where they want to, backers of distance education say, more institutions may start offering nonstandard programs via online education. Few New Programs For the time being, however, only a few institutions have indicated that they may develop course programs that would not have been allowed under the 12-hour rule because they would not have met the weekly minimum. With the loosening of the time restriction, officials of these institutions are thinking about breaking courses into smaller modules that would give students more flexibility. Most colleges that offer distance-education courses don't plan to ditch the semester format when the student-aid regulation expires. Many institutions find the traditional system works well online, in part because students are used to it. The University of Maryland University College and the University of Phoenix, for instance, are among the institutions that have testified before Congress and the Education Department that the 12-hour rule is too restrictive. Now that the department has moved to kill the regulation, however, neither of those universities has any plans to change its online programs. Charles M. Cook, director of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges' Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, says that while getting rid of the rule is popular among distance educators, he doesn't see it prompting big changes. "In a practical sense, this change is not going to revolutionize higher education," Mr. Cook says. "Most institutions are, for all practical purposes, exempt from the rule already." John F. Ebersole, associate provost and dean of extended education at Boston University, says the university doesn't plan to offer courses in nonstandard formats. Students who take online courses usually have other jobs, he says, and they benefit from the discipline of the traditional semester setup. "Busy working adults, who are our typical students, need the structure," Mr. Ebersole says. The few institutions that are planning program changes say they hope to attract more students by making their online programs more flexible. John B. Muller, president of Bellevue University, says educators there have always wanted to create course programs in bite-size modules that run shorter than semesters, trimesters, or quarters. But the university couldn't do it without running afoul of the 12-hour rule in the past. Now that the rule is all but dead, the university may develop new programs using smaller modules. The modules would be more focused than courses, concentrating on specific skills. Such a setup, Mr. Muller says, would work well for corporate training, business degrees, information technology, and management, in which the university specializes. "In the online environment, you want to deliver programs in the format that's most convenient to students," he says, adding that getting rid of the 12-hour rule "just opens up the flexibility." The rule's reporting requirements were also a difficulty, Mr. Muller says. The institution would have had to track students and make sure they were spending 12 hours a week in supervised learning. "If you were staying in a semester format, then that was a safe harbor," he says. "We just avoided it by staying in the safe harbor." Classroom Time The 12-hour rule was established to combat diploma mills that were rampant in the 1980s and early 1990s, when many such institutions were created specifically to soak up federal financial-aid money while providing the least possible amount of education. The Department of Education came up with the regulation as a way to cut off their financial lifelines. But as online education became popular, some educators began arguing that the amount of time students spend in the classroom is irrelevant to the quality of an education program. Years of debate ensued. Distance-education providers pushed the department and Congress to throw out the regulation, but others raised fears that relaxing the rule would inspire a new generation of fraudulent programs. The Education Department is gathering public comment on the proposed change that would eliminate the 12-hour rule. The final language for the financial-aid regulations is scheduled to be announced on November 1. Jeffrey Andrade, deputy assistant secretary for postsecondary education at the department, says he doesn't anticipate any changes between the proposed and final versions of the rule, unless someone offers a better solution -- which he has not seen so far. Elena H. Ackel, a senior lawyer for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, is among those who have argued that the vagueness of the one-day rule gives institutions too much flexibility and could lead to a resurgence of fraud. She says that although she had expected the department's action, she still doesn't approve of it. "Now you're going to have these phony-baloney trade schools give these degrees without providing any real academic content," Ms. Ackel says. "It's an incentive to give as little amount of education as possible." But Mr. Andrade says that the one-day rule is already in effect for a majority of institutions, and that the 12-hour rule has not accomplished anything. The proposed change's few detractors are "outliers," he says. The groups that oppose the one-day rule did not offer any other solution or show how adopting the one-day rule would result in fraud, he says. "They were coming up with unsubstantiated fears," Mr. Andrade says. "We haven't found any abuse in this area." But Mark F. Smith, director of governmental relations at the American Association of University Professors, says the 12-hour rule needs to be replaced with another standard that ensures a program's quality. Otherwise the fraud the rule was meant to prevent could return, he says. "If you increase access and decrease quality, you're not improving the situation," Mr. Smith says. "I don't think we'll have the blatant massive violations. It will be more subtle." Fear of Uncertainty And some distance-education providers are uncomfortable with the proposed change -- not out of fear of fraud, but because it doesn't solve the problems the 12-hour rule presented. "Just like the department never defined what 12 hours of instruction was as an online concept, there's never been a definition of what one day of instruction was as an online concept," says Stephen Shank, chancellor of the online Capella University. "The department is just trading one ambiguity for another ambiguity." The proposed change is a step in the right direction, Mr. Shank says. But online educators might still be afraid of venturing into nonstandard programs because the repercussions of making a mistake with federal financial aid can be expensive and punitive. "The consequences of any mistake in [federal student aid] is so great, we don't want to make a mistake and have the department come in afterwards and tell us we don't like what you're doing," Mr. Shank says. D. Quinn Mills, a professor of business administration at Harvard University who offers online courses, says the 12-hour rule isn't the only financial-aid regulation that needs to be altered if distance education is to reach its full potential. "It's an important threshold, but more needs to be done," according to Mr. Mills. The 50-percent rule also needs to be changed, he says. A bill that would loosen the restrictions of the 50-percent rule has been passed by the House of Representatives but has since stalled in the Senate. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions plans to hold a hearing on the bill this month. The language in the bill, S 1445, also calls for the repeal of the 12-hour rule and for other regulatory changes that the Education Department is already undertaking on its own. And as department officials work their way down a list of changes that largely parallels those in the bill, the pressure to pass it is diminishing, one Senate staff member says. But Sen. Michael B. Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, has indicated that he will push to relax the 50-percent rule either in the current bill or in another. "Changing this rule would allow more students in distance-education programs to be eligible for financial aid and will ultimately allow for these students to have greater access to all of the advantages of higher education," Mr. Enzi said in a statement. With both the 12-hour and 50-percent rules relaxed, "you would see a real move toward distance and online education," Mr. Mills says. CHANGES INSPIRED BY END OF A RULE Now that the "12-hour rule" is all but dead, a few institutions plan to expand their distance-education offerings by providing programs for which students would not have been eligible for federal aid under the old financial-aid regulation. Among those making plans for new programs: Bellevue University University officials had wanted to offer courses in modules that were shorter than semesters, trimesters, and quarters. But such nonstandard programs would have been subject to the 12-hour rule, requiring the institution to prove that students were involved in at least the minimum amount of course instruction per week. With the rule on its way out, university officials are planning to organize some of the institution's online courses in modules, as short as four weeks, which would focus on just one aspect of a course. This approach could be especially useful for corporate clients of Bellevue, officials say. Employees of the client companies would be able to take just those aspects of the business and technology courses that fit their needs and their employers' demands. Fort Hays State University Many of the students who take courses through Fort Hays are in the military. University officials want to leave the start and end dates for online courses open so students have the flexibility to break from their course work to complete their service duties. The university chose not to take that route in the past because the courses would be considered nonstandard, and professors would have to verify that each student was receiving 12 hours of course work a week. The tracking and record-keeping is difficult, officials say, and they aren't sure what constitutes an hour of instruction when the course is online.
SOURCE: Chronicle reporting
http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Volume 49, Issue 2, Page A43
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Copyright © 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education