UPDATE (8/4/2019, 2 p.m.) The U.S. Education Department conditionally approved California’s plan on Friday.
California officials have announced a plan meant to save federal aid for some 80,000 students who enroll in online courses at colleges outside the state. It’s not clear, yet, if that plan will be approved by the U.S. Department of Education.
It’s not yet clear whether federal education officials will sign off on the state’s proposed solution.
The state’s Department of Consumer Affairs says it has created a system to handle complaints from such students in order to comply with federal regulations, as required under the “state authorization” rules devised by the Obama administration.
The new process follows a complex back and forth on the rules, which were first delayed by the U.S. Department of Education. Then a judge ruled earlier this year in a lawsuit, filed by the National Education Association, that the federal department had to enforce the regulations.
Some weeks after that ruling, the department announced that California was out of compliance with the regulations because it did not have a process to collect complaints from residents enrolled at public or private nonprofit colleges located outside the state.
Because the guidance was issued so late in the summer, it threatened to derail the college plans of tens of thousands of California residents to start or continue academic programs at public or private nonprofit institutions. It could also have been a financial blow to colleges that enroll thousands of students in the state.
The consumer-affairs agency says it is empowered to handle the process because it also oversees the state’s Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education, which manages complaints from students at for-profit colleges.
But it still must convince federal officials that it is in compliance. The California agency says it is “working closely with colleges around the country to encourage the U.S. Department of Education to come to a speedy resolution that does not block students from accessing their financial aid.”
For its part, the Education Department is in the process of rewriting the state-authorization rules, eliminating the requirement for such a complaint process. But those rules might not go into effect until July 2020.
The department is also asking the National Education Association to drop its lawsuit and allow the department to continue to delay the Obama-era regulations until the new regulations take effect.
Debbie Cochrane, executive vice president at the Institute for College Access and Success, an advocacy group for students, said in a news release that California should have had such a system in place much sooner. But she also blamed federal officials for delaying the original regulations, saying “the department’s mismanaged implementation treated students as pawns in its effort to roll back consumer protections.”
Eric Kelderman writes about money and accountability in higher education, including such areas as state policy, accreditation, and legal affairs. You can find him on Twitter @etkeld, or email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com.
