Indiana is the first state to meet a set of national standards for authorizing distance learning and online colleges from other states.
The benchmarks were developed by the country’s four regional higher-education compacts and several higher-education associations, with financial support from the Lumina Foundation.
The framework, being promoted by the newly formed National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements, is meant to help standardize the patchwork of regulations that states apply to colleges that want to offer online or distance-education courses to students within their borders. Both nonprofit and proprietary institutions have complained that the variety of laws among the states was a costly barrier to doing business in other places.
What the regional groups have established is a basic set of rules that allow online colleges to apply for and receive authorization to operate in their home state, and then, on that basis, to offer academic programs in other participating states.
In order to sign the reciprocity agreement, which is voluntary, a state must require institutions it authorizes to have national or regional accreditation, an adequate financial-responsibility score from the U.S. Education Department, and an “effective” process to protect consumers against fraud.
Legislative action is also required for most states to meet the agreement’s requirements.
Indiana’s legislature recently made the changes necessary to join the national agreement, according to a news release from the Midwestern Higher Education Compact.
The state has “enthusiastically supported the establishment” of the reciprocity agreements “from its earliest discussions,” Ken Sauer, senior associate commissioner for research and academic affairs at the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, was quoted as saying in the news release.
As the regional compacts encourage states to join the reciprocity agreement, they are also asking the federal government to accept it for purposes of meeting a proposed rule on state authorization.
The Education Department is seeking to revive a previous version of the rule that clarified the need for distance-education providers to be authorized in every state where they enroll students. A 2010 rule on the issue was thrown out by a federal judge in 2011.
