ASU+GSV Debate

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For On EdTech+ premium subscribers, as an update to yesterday’s post, I took a multi-hour exploration of the modern legislative process to gauge any changes to the House Reconciliation bill. Let’s just say that Kabuki Theater is the metaphor and not Schoolhouse Rock. There was no debate or mark up to the bill, just posturing - there were no amendments that passed (and all votes were purely party-line).

Helpfully, the House committee released a readable summary of the bill here. Yesterday’s summary was accurate, but you can read additional coverage at Inside Higher Ed or Education Dive. But the deepest analysis, by far, is from CSPEN.

ASU+GSV Power Behind the Throne

I mentioned several times that I was going to debate Stephanie Hall (formerly from The Century Foundation, then Center for American Progress, and now the Student Borrower Protection Center), with Goldie Blumenstyk moderating. I have to admit that the debate was not all that I was hoping for, but it was still interesting. ASU+GSV have released the audio of that session on Spotify, and below I’m going to share the audio followed by a transcript.

Transcript (lightly edited)

Goldie:I'm Goldie Blumenstyk. I'm a now a contributing writer at the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Stephanie:Stephanie Hall I'm a fellow with the Student Borrower Protection Center, former senior director of higher ed at the center for American Progress.

Phil:And I'm Phil Hill, publisher of the on EdTech newsletter that I write with Glenda Morgan.

Goldie:this is a fun little panel. It started with a tweet. it started a little bit before tweet. It started with, a lot of disagreement between Stephanie and Phil over what Phil was complaining about was Phil was calling one sided and flawed analysis and some sloppy analysis by work that Stephanie had done. And Phil was very suspicious of the work that Stephanie and others were doing, because it was all funded by a coalition In of Arnold Ventures, a coalition of organizations all funded by a foundation called Arnold Ventures. Phil, you should kick us off here a little bit and why, what was this conspiracy that you uncovered a year or two ago about what was going on in higher ed regulation?

Phil:we're jumping right into it.

Goldie:That's what they told us to do. Phil: the by the way, somebody had a great idea. Nothing against Goldie, but we should have had Linda McMahon up here.

Goldie:Oh. Wrestling match.

Phil: But, when I started writing much more about policy, it's just I realized you couldn't cover educational technology without understanding the federal policy moves, particularly because they change. The Biden administration was not the Obama administration. I started covering it, and there were some very aggressive moves in the regulation, obviously gainful employment, third party servicer expansion, etc. and where the I haven't used the word conspiracy, but [00:02:00] the issue that I saw was the fact of this is not just different advocacy groups working on their own. That there is not 100%. I don't want to imply that Arnold Ventures provides 100% of the funding for all the work they do, but these are very tightly tied groups advocating together and referring to each other. there was a the coalition is the key word. I started writing about that, that they were behind many of the education policies, particularly around online learning and OPM. The reason it was important to me, you could interpret this as a criticism of press and the fact of it's a transparency issue. It should be understood who's advocating what and what's happening. the coalition was the issue of, hey, these guys are all referring to each other and working together. And we need to understand that because there are implications there. I could take say, say it stronger, but it really originated from that point, the awareness of how tightly tied they were together.

Goldie:Fair enough. And I think probably a good point, noting that the press was not identifying necessarily all the funders, although they don't always necessarily we don't always understand who the funding is for on these organizations.

Phil:But I did try to fix that problem.

Goldie:it was good. Stephanie. At the same time, I wonder when I was reading Phil's arguments, I thought, it feels right. We should be understanding more about this. But one thing Phil was never really saying was what about the financial interests of the other side of the organizations that were, fueling that had that had already had a lot of influence in how policy was being made about the regulation of online program managers and other organizations that were third party players in higher education, the whole corporate influence.

Stephanie:And I really appreciate ASU+GSV for hosting this panel that we can talk about who is influencing and why. That transparency [00:04:00] is important. Because I think transparency, we're going to come back to us throughout this panel. I'd start with before I get into who are the other people funding other people to push for particular positions on this? I do to think about this through the lens of, the nonprofit industrial complex, because a lot of the organizations Phil is looking at are places where I've worked, center for American Progress, the Century Foundation, these organizations that you would call consider think tanks or education policy research organizations, these exist within this complex of organizations that also give direct services to students and to communities and to schools, etc.. I, I've been thinking about it from this perspective. There's not a nefarious set of people pulling strings of the think tanks, per se. It's rather, an information system where we have direct service organizations letting people know this is where we have some weaknesses, this is where we see some needs in the field. And then we've got folks at organizations I've worked at who are in a position and with the platform to elevate those problems and propose some solutions.

Stephanie:And you can Google it. There's a handful of very prominent funders and philanthropic organizations that fund this work. They fund those organizations that do direct services, they fund think tanks, they fund, policy research organizations. And their mission is, if you can make the case that the work you want to do is aligned to their goals. And in the higher ed space, those folks usually have things college completion as a goal or increasing access. Then you can get funding for your work. I really am glad for this panel to clarify that. this. Work on OPMs really bubbled up from, recognizing some of the trends [00:06:00] that consumer protection advocates had seen in the for profit education sector were being embedded within the public university space. And that's really the origin of it there. and I do think it's important to think about too, we do have, some financial support to do this work, but no one's getting rich doing it there. There certainly haven't been funders showing up to policy teams and saying, hey, we want you to take down this industry. Here's the money. Create some research that makes it show that we should we should do this. That's that isn't the direction it's happening.

Goldie:Phil it makes you when you talk about it, it makes it sound you make it sometimes sound that is what's happening. That the Arnold Foundation and other groups were, but primarily in this case, in this particular case, Arnold Foundation, that it was a concerted campaign by them and that these groups were being stooges a little bit or not stooges. This is my word, not your word. Sorry.

Phil:the thing I disagree with is nefarious pointing out that groups are coordinating and that we need to understand that is different than saying it's nefarious with bad intentions. for example, if you look at it you keep hearing the thing about, USC sued over the OPM relationship, and it's always portrayed in the media as a class action lawsuit led by students, when in fact, that's led. And it was funded and led by the National Student Legal Defense Network, one of the groups that primarily funded by Arnold and other groups are referring to that to justify. Oh, and we see what's happening and we see this lawsuit happening. it's the coordination. I'm not implying that there aren't good intentions behind it, but I do think and I have said in many cases that the research definitely becomes very targeted. This is not bottoms up research for the most part. And there was a very recent example. The Century Foundation just came out and they wrote a they wrote a paper about students want to have [00:08:00] or online students should have more oversight and we have data to prove it. you look at and that's what they want to say. That's what's always been said. you go look at the actual research.

Phil:And it was embarrassing. I can't believe Morning Consult even signed on to this. And the first question had nothing to do with online. But the question basically said, essentially, should there be more oversight of predatory institutions that prey on students and, and to trick them or that's not quite the right word, but predatory is always used, and they're defaulting students and tricking them into enrolling when they don't want to. That was the framing of the question. that's the classic, do you are you still beating your wife type of question? There was a second question that also asked that did try to differentiate between online and face to face. And it really got to the state authorization reciprocity question, which ahead of time they're fully convinced is a bad thing. the question is written in a way that there's no way the general public understands the distinctions between resident versus domicile, student and or the and consumer protection laws and reciprocity. that's an example, a short example. But a former company of yours, where I would argue very strongly that research was 100% targeted with the outcome in mind. that's one example to back up what I'm saying.

Goldie:Go ahead.

Stephanie:Oh I don't know specifically about the one the example you gave. But I will say too, though I think we should take it as a positive that for many years, when advocates come from the consumer protection consumer advocacy space. We have that lens and that is our focus. We are looking at students as consumers and trying to right size how many protections they have as the consumer of the education product. [00:10:00] that is how America runs. Okay. whether we want to consider students, consumers or not, that is the reality. And that's how they're treated when they are moving through a recruitment process in some places. what we had was, this boom and bust cycle of the for profit college industry back in the 90s through the 2000. And the consumer protection advocacy community really started to recognize that the things we saw there were happening within public universities, those same practices. And that was the concern. the motivation, I think if there is some motivating force behind the consumer protection work, it is to grab some of that power back on behalf of students and on behalf of public institutions, that there's a bit more balance between the power that we see from the corporations and the private providers.

Goldie:I think it's important to just note here in general that the reason there is an OPM industry to begin with was because the education department put out a letter in 92 or something. Phil: 92 was the incentive compensation ban. 2011 was the Dear Colleague letter.

Goldie:2000 2011, the Education Department put out a letter that basically enabled the OPM business to exist. And obviously that was because of corporate influence. That's because companies got together and found a way to get the education department to, sanction their business model.

Stephanie:But also public universities, they wanted that they wanted the 2011 bundled services guidance, this letter that Phil just mentioned, because they wanted to be able to compete with the for profit colleges who were first out the gate online. Fair enough. And my position has just been that letter, that loophole that it created has run its course. I think colleges can get by without it, without needing to pay per head for recruitment. when there's a third party involved.

Phil:And I definitely agree [00:12:00] with that. But and I respect that opinion. And that's the debate we should be having. There's a meta issue here, which is how this is getting advocated and getting in the supporting research. I'm all for people who have that opinion and want to protect students, but it gets broken down based on the methods being used.

Goldie:I that term meta because it's basically what we're talking about here, and it's one of the reasons that we ended up not writing a story about it in the Chronicle. I think because I think at the end we decided this was this meta argument happening up here, and most of our readers wouldn't didn't know how much our readers really cared about it, but it mattered a lot. It matters a lot if you're inside the industry and you're trying to follow who's doing what, because you want to really understand what's the authentic concern And what's the manufactured concern? And you also want to understand what's the authentic power play on the other side and what's the authentic concern. In some ways. in some ways, I think we're talking a little bit about whether this is astroturfing regulations or is this real? Is this real bubbling up concern? I when we talked about doing this panel initially, I think we were having it in the context, in this context of what's going to happen next? Who are going to be the next big players in this? And then we were wondering, will there even be any regulation at all coming forward? Is there going to be traditional regulation under the Trump administration, or is there going to be a new model? I think we saw last week they announced some plans for at least some nominal efforts to do regulation again. and through the traditional means, the negotiated rulemaking, which is that process the Education Department uses. let's talk a little bit about who we're likely to be the next. if we're gonna have a meta discussion in the in the next few years, who are the big players are going to be factors in the next set of conversations. Who's going to be, generating the research, generating the questionable [00:14:00] polls, generating the question, or generating the deep seated, channeling the deep seated concerns of students?

Phil:This is one we should have be in isolation booths and we both answer. And then you could compare, right. If you look at the emerging players are too much focus is put on the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025. and part of the reason I say that they are partially aligned with the Trump administration and a lot of I don't know if anybody's here from there, but a lot of project 2025 was an attempt to be relevant and to say, hey, we're part of the populist movement. I don't see as much connection with them. It's overstated in the media. I think American First Initiative, that's where Secretary McMahon and several other designees for the Department of Education, that all came out of the same group, and that gets into the revolving door issue. I think that they're a power player, particularly from providing people. I think the American Enterprise Institute is becoming very influential. And I, I personally think they're very research based and presenting data. I happen to think that they're they're not as guided. That's one thing I respect. Not all of it, but the answer of who the key power players. I would put those two groups at the top of the list.

Goldie:I don't think I mean, you don't think a lot of the policies right now are the chapter on education from project 2025. I just reread it last night and it seems a lot of.

Phil:No, there is a lineman. I'm just saying, I think because we're talking about the power behind the throne who's influencing government to do things. And I don't see I think there's alignment. I alignment. I think there's a lot of research the Heritage Foundation did and some of the things are getting implemented, but I don't think the government is listening to the Heritage Foundation right now anywhere near as much as they're probably listened to. American Enterprise Institute. there might be alignment, but I don't [00:16:00] see them as influential. those are my two answers. Is AFI and AEI?

Stephanie:can't comment on any particular organizations, but I, I would push back on this a bit because I think some of the most important parts of that, that chapter on education are happening. And they then what's happening with the department because of project 2025, the parts of it that are being implemented would make it impossible or very difficult to do any of the rather reasonable ideas that may come out of AEI. I think we have some tension here with, what is the capacity of the department to do anything? Are we going to expect Negotiated rulemaking from this department. I have no idea. I read project 2025. I didn't see them mention OPMs. but they did talk about reasonable and substantive interaction. They talked about, competency based education. I'm sure those have been major themes throughout some of the sessions you've attended here. I think that's something to look at that's related to what we're talking about on this panel. But I don't see them specifically addressing the OPM, contracting third party servicer issue. If nothing else, I see I see the that issue being nonexistent for a while or just not being paid attention to.

Goldie:I didn't see the words consumer protection at all in.

Stephanie:That either.

Goldie:Project 2025 thing. What is that? and obviously, I think consumer protection is a very, it's become an emerging theme in higher education right now. I don't remember, 20 years ago, I don't remember consumer protection even being a concept in the discussion. Although, it was always there. I'm thinking a little bit about what happens on the federal regulation side and then what happens in the states. because states also have.

Phil:Do you mind if I make a quick comment on consumer protection? I think it's, it's [00:18:00] a it's a lens into how to view the regulatory environment. And I think that what happened in the around 2010, before and after, that's when you had the emergence of a consumer protection mindset. But then that created the lens that everything, everything's too strong, that most things were viewed as consumers. And how do we catch the ones who are being defrauded. basically it's set up everything to we got to catch the bad guys who are defrauding the consumer. to me, it really started 15 years ago in earnest. And it's much more than just change of terminology. It's a mindset or a way of looking at the problem that's had tremendous influence on the regulatory environment.

Goldie:and good or bad influence?

Phil:No it's both. I mean, because I do think that some of the more I mean, we had I mean, let's get this out of the way. I mean, we have I'm not a big fan of IT or Edmc. I mean, there's a lot of abuses that absolutely happen. there's good that came out of it. But while you're talking about running its course, the consumer protection predatory mindset has run its course, because what's happening now is there's a concerted effort to take that. We got you. We found the bad guys and trying to transfer it to other groups without the outcome showing the same results. my point is it's both it's good and bad.

Goldie:Stephanie, we don't need to worry about consumer protection anymore. It's run its course.

Stephanie:No, we definitely do.

Phil:The consumer protection mindset, which is a.

Stephanie:Different and I think I could see how, from, from the outside, it looks consumer protection focused people are just going after bad guys. but in my work, what I've tried to do is instead focus [00:20:00] more on the practices. what are the things that we do not want students to experience, and how do we make sure the incentives are set up in a way that they're not likely to experience those? That's the best case scenario. That way, there are no predatory practices. We have set up a scenario where most students are going to get what they thought they were getting when they enrolled. I also think the student debt, speaking of the 2010 era, that's when we started to see more of this, the, the build up of people struggling with massive debt loads, some of it as a result of really terrible practices at places it. I think just the way we've loaded up with debt in order to finance higher ed really will make it impossible to separate this consumer protection mindset, in my opinion.

Phil:But if you don't mind me asking, you mentioned it's an interesting phrase, predatory practice. part of the issue. people and organizations are predatory. When you say predatory practice, I think that gets to an important point. What about all of the schools who truly are trying to expand access to education they're trying to use online to reach new students? They're expanding the demographics they serve, which we all know is more difficult. And some of the outcomes are there and there are some mistakes they make. If you keep treating, use the word predatory. That mindset is who do we catch as opposed to guardrails or something of that of that nature. that's part of what I think has happened, is the consumer protection mindset has changed us from a guardrails. Let's help keep honest people honest into a who can we catch because we know they have bad intentions? That's a distinction.

Stephanie:I think we can agree on the need for guardrails, though, that, that prevents the practices that we're most concerned with. Goldie: Although you're sort [00:22:00] of suggesting that it's the practices are all fine. It's just every now and then some person or two pushes the boundaries a little bit. But I think Stephanie might find that some actual practices themselves are problematic.

Stephanie:I, I do, I think, from reading way too many contracts between public institutions and third party providers, including OPMs, there are things set up within those contracts that incentivize those practices, things rushing to get the lead to grab the lead the minute it's It's generated.

Goldie:does anyone know what that means, by the way?

Stephanie:once the student fills out that form and says, I think I'm interested in this MBA, being the person that gets on the phone with them first and then following up with them through multiple channels multiple times a day. I understand that is how a lot of sales are. That's just how we do sales. But I do think we need to have a real conversation about whether that's college advising for admissions or whether it is just a sales pitch. and some of the answer to that is we've got to look at what's the product, what's the end thing that the students enrolling in. I think that also matters too. And then I would say my other concern within these contracts and I, it's not in every contract I've seen, but there's there's a steering committee aspect of this where we're giving the private third party provider equal voting power over decisions made for those programs. It subverts all of the Higher Ed governance conventions that we think, are good for students and good for the public institution in this country. it subverts the faculty decision making process. It subverts the ability to get student input. things that have a lot of concerns with those are the practices. And I think those things built into contracts set up those incentives.

Phil:Do you do you have any examples you can use of that? Because when I look at contracts, [00:24:00] for example, it's very clear and it's in regulation that admissions and instruction is in. That's the primary role. And it has to remain with the institution. And everything that I've seen certainly in the past 15, ten years at least, is Opiums are not equal partners in a steering committee relationship. They're not at all. they're not subverting. It's the schools that are still doing it, even if they get input from them. when you say there's equal input and it's subverting governance. Do you have any examples?

Stephanie:I'm not going to cite companies right now because I don't want to misspeak. but I have absolutely written about this. When I was at the Century Foundation, I even hired some of the public institutions for their steering committee meetings for their minutes. these committees are written in contracts, in some cases to be three, three, three members of the institution, three people who are involved with managing the program from the OPM side. Those six people then get together periodically to discuss, course offerings, anything related to course development, sometimes even enrollment targets, which is also runs counter to the 2011 guidance that we've been begging the department to revoke for many years. I think it's a practice that has slipped under the radar that is technically illegal. It runs counter to that guidance, and it is hopefully not as prevalent as it was five years ago when I read all of these contracts. But, certainly still today. And I think that's that's the part it's governance over a program. it's not that they're subverting the entire Board of Regents, but they are governing a program. And if you scale that out to where we've seen some schools have, 30 to 50 to 75 different online programs managed by one OPM, that OPM is definitely sharing the governance of that institution [00:26:00] with the institution. And I think we need to ask ourselves if that's okay.

Goldie:Obviously, admissions is a key area for contention, especially in an environment where companies and schools are getting paid incentives based on the number of students that they enroll. what are some of the other areas that you think there might be? We need more transparency on in this environment? I'm just trying to understand, what kinds of other student protections, pricing. I'm just wondering about the nature of the courses. I know there's a whole phenomenon in this industry about what they call white label courses, which is, some company makes the course way over there, and then Phil University buys it, and Stephanie University buys it, and Goldie University buys it. And we all pretend it's a course that we've just developed on our own. I mean, how much should the regulatory environment what else needs to be developed needs, needs transparency on.

Phil:one thing I would start out with is an area that you have bipartisan agreement right now, but that's different than saying you'll ever get two sides to agree on what to do. But that's start with the outcomes. What are the student outcomes. And I think that there does need to be increased measurement of what the outcomes are or the retention rates, the graduation and stuff that. I'll start out with that. That outcomes basis is one of the main things and I do see it increasing already.

Stephanie:you agree that we should collect data on online students?

Phil:Absolutely. hold on a second. Let's get to the specifics on the, because there were disagreements on the virtual campus. And should we flag that we have better data for online? I conceptually agree with that. And I, I do my own graphics and data. I love that stuff. Having that. And I think getting better data [00:28:00] would be useful. Some of the details that were collected planned to be collected for online, but not collected for face to face, or that prevented the ability to see what's the different demographics that you're comparing apples to apples. I thought that the policy was flawed, but I do agree with what you said. we're not supposed to agree.

Stephanie:We're not?

Goldie:No.

Phil:We're supposed. I do agree on that.

Goldie:Stephanie: the transparency question, the transparency issue for me is that, as a person outside of the government trying to research an industry that's very much embedded into public institutions, I don't have access to the information I need. that's the transparency problem. To me. That means if I can't find it and I'm working a full time job trying to find it, do the students know? No, they don't. And we've had lots of reporting that's come out over the years, showing that they had no idea there was a third party involved and they had some such feelings about it. similarly, I think the big debate over how do we change policy, around OPMs is but this would ruin everything. This would crash the online, industry. This would disrupt everything for students, would it? We have no idea. You may if you're working at one of these companies, you're holding on to a lot of information that the public doesn't have. what goes into renegotiating those contracts? The public doesn't know? I know from reading the contracts, they are often and frequently renegotiated or added, edited and revised. But other than that, we don't really know what burden this would place on the institution, and that information would be very helpful for the institution itself, as for the policymakers who are trying to trying to regulate them.

Phil:And this, by the way, comes back to the original idea for this, for this session, because there you had written about saying it wouldn't be [00:30:00] a big deal. I mean, you didn't say, we don't know. You said it wouldn't be a big deal to essentially get rid of rev share. Things would migrate to fee for service and it wouldn't impact. And the question where does that basis come from. And for example do how long it took ASU to be able to completely insource their operations once they got into online.

Stephanie:Only because I had a private conversation.

Phil:That's fine.

Stephanie:But no, the public doesn't know. And. But I think that's important information. one thing I was thinking about, you made a good point in one of your blogs about there's a lot of investment up front investment on the part of the OPM to get these programs running. And that's why we do the rev share. They're they're recouping that money through rev share over some number of years. What how much investment the public needs to know. And I think that because there is a substantial public investment going into these programs through the students, that's important information for the public to have access to.

Phil:I'm not going to argue that although the details matter, because if you put in place a policy because we don't know, and then that policy harms the ability to expand access, which the vast majority of online education. It's about doing that, then it's not necessarily a good policy. in principle I agree. But The policy issue is tricky, and part of the thing is, keep in mind, one of the things I've reported quite a bit is when you see the story saying, the OPM market is moved to fee for service. That's the new norm. That's just not true. It's much more complex than that. When OPM companies offer both fee for service and rev share, the majority of schools choose the rev share. Now, this doesn't mean my argument is everybody should do rev share, but it does mean schools are doing [00:32:00] things for a reason. And even if it's not public information, they have the information and they're making this choice to do it. we can't just ignore and say, oh, we know better than you. If it went away, it'd be no harm. A lot of the schools are the ones saying, if I didn't have this cap, low risk capital mechanism from rev share, I wouldn't be able to do these programs. I'm. I'm listening to them. That doesn't get to your point about public information, but it definitely gets to the point of the opposite view, which is, you can't just assume it has no impact either.

Stephanie:I hear you on that. I think, the capital, the financing of the development of a program, I would love for the industry and for schools themselves and for folks with a stake in the sustainability of these institutions to do some creative thinking about, should it be an OPM that's, quote, lending them the resources to set up those programs? Perhaps there's a better, more sustainable way to do this. And there's.

Goldie:Other ways. There are other forms of there are other ways to get capital which are not necessarily built into a model where there has to be a big profit return to a company in return for that capital. Right.

Phil:And I know that we don't want to make this. too much of this is already about OPM, but the for profit company does not mean that these companies are extracting profits. Right now, the vast majority have not been profitable.

Goldie:They're supposed to be though.

Phil:But that's just a tax status. Look at 2U. Look at their financial records as they went into bankruptcy. They were not profitable. The what's relevant is not to you, the company. What's relevant is there's been a net investment in higher ed from for from for profit private companies. And we need to consider that with policy. They have been investing co-investing [00:34:00] in this thing. And the consumer protection mindset goes into how are you extracting profits. The truth is in aggregate they've been investing in higher education. my point would be when we do policy, we need to take that into account. And what's the impact if we do change the policy.

Goldie:I want to think about the broader regulatory environment here for a minute, because I think we're entering a very interesting phase where it's going to be.

Phil:I heard there was an administration change.

Goldie:There's been an administration change. and whatever happens on the federal level, we still have the state level. And we also have a lot of different we have state attorney generals that may feel that the new regime is perfectly adequate, and the level of regulation is fine. And we may have other attorney generals and other states saying the new level of regulation is not nearly adequate enough. And now we need to have our own state. We need to enforce our own consumer protection laws a little more aggressively or a little bit more attentively, what's that going to look for? I mean, what's what's the outlook right now if we start to have different states, taking different attitudes about, opioids and other kinds of third party companies that are working with colleges. What, what's that going to look for me?

Stephanie:That raises a lot of equity concerns. because it will come down to the state the student lives in, and or the state in which they are enrolled and what oversight or consumer protection environment those, those states have. if we look at Minnesota, for example, they passed a law last year to essentially, ban the use of revenue sharing for recruitment. And they did this out of a motivation to safeguard what is a new large investment in a free college program. And I think we are going to see that my prediction [00:36:00] for the next year or two is we will see more states, not all of them, but a handful of states stepping up to say that they know that students or their investment is not going to be protected via a federal mechanism. And doing that through either a state legislature or beefing up consumer protection work at the AG's office.

Phil:it almost sounds And you're concerned about equity and part of what you're saying this state's going to handle it different than this state. are you also saying that there's a need for a state driven reciprocity agreement to get a consistent consumer protections across the states? Is that what I heard you say? I know we only have three minutes.

Stephanie:I am not opposed to reciprocity. I am opposed to leaving students to be protected by the least protective state. if a reciprocity agreement can address that, all for it.

Phil:we don't have time to go through it. But I mean, that's where we need to look at the details is the state, Sarah, in my view, is not defined to be lowest common denominator. There was a lot of negotiation. There were a lot of states that had practically no consumer protection. And in order to join Sarah, They had to agree to enforce higher level. I, I think it's inaccurate to say it's the lowest common denominator.

Stephanie:There's much more they could be doing though. much.

Phil:More. let's go for improvement not dismantling.

Speaker5:what was the to Goldie: Bring this back to the beginning of this thing. What were the what was the astroturfing or what were the influences that got Sarah, that national reciprocity agreement that set some nationwide standards for online education. What were the influencers who are the influencers that got that off the ground?

Phil:Oh, that's a good question. I don't have a simple answer. I mean, it did it really get started in 20 1415 when state authorization? I don't have a simple [00:38:00] answer to that question. I don't know if you do.

Stephanie:I mean, I would just say, schools have been concerned for ever since their inception how to make sure that what they are giving in terms of credentials are recognized elsewhere. There's reciprocity issues throughout higher ed. And there were always these regional compacts that were formed. Taking that regional agreement to the national level, I think was meant to be the okay, now you can drive in every state. This is your license to enroll someone in any state in the country. I think institutions are the ones who would be pulling for that, because an institution has the they are the ones hoping to enroll more students, grow enrollment if those students are across state lines. We need to make it easier to do business across state lines.

Phil:Okay. A lot of the actions don't appear to be supporting, making it easier to do business across state lines, by the way. And I'll just throw you said you threw a truth bomb. I'll throw a flame out there. This is part of the reason I don't see the Department of Education going away. Because if you truly got rid of the Department of Education, it would dramatically harm online education, which by its very nature includes students in different states. The anywhere, anytime aspect of it and I don't I, I don't think the Department of Education is going away because we need some enforcement at the federal level.

Goldie:enforcement of what and very quickly in 35 seconds, because half the education department did just go away.

Phil:No. enforcement of what they're doing a lot. they're doing a lot of negotiating. It's more than enforcement. They just did the negotiated rulemaking on the repayment plans. I think a big thing to watch is what are they going to do on the accountability I'm expecting and hearing that on the accountability, the outcomes of programs, there's going to be significantly increased accountability. Now, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating if it happens. But that's an example. [00:40:00] the gainful employment phase 4 or 5 is one example.

Goldie:we're out of time here for a second here, but I'm going to give each of you one last word to just talk a little bit about, where you think things are headed right now. What's the most salient thing for people to know about the regulatory environment. Who's pulling the strings and what we're going to get.

Stephanie:I would just say to bring this back to the higher level of what's happening, existential to higher ed. There is a connection there, and it has to do with governance. And I think that resolving those governance issues and resolving those tensions will also do wonders for accountability, but also for folks who are interested in providing services to institutions.

Phil:And I'll just say that we need smart policies that don't have unintended consequences, and we need a lot more focus on outcomes to be what we're trying to regulate against.

Goldie:if you want to stay up to date on all that's going on in the sector, read Phil and follow Stephanie at the and, look for their work, because I think both of them are going to be battling each other, along the way and social media and in dueling reports and things along the way. Thank you all for joining us today.

Phil:Thank you.

Goldie:I appreciate it.

Stephanie:Thanks, Goldie.

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