Friday Follow Up

As a reminder, we’re holding our second interactive webinar on Tuesday, December 17th, at 9am PST / 12pm EST for On EdTech+ subscribers. Register here for “Reading the Tea Leaves: Online and EdTech Growth and Investments.”

The first section is being delivered in front of the paywall to correct some faulty reporting.

Getting It Wrong

On Wednesday, the Career Schools Private Education Network (CSPEN) reported a breaking story that “Biden-Harris Administration Sends Proposed Final Rules On Student Loan Debt Relief & Program Integrity and Institutional Quality To White House for Final Approval.” On Thursday, Inside Higher Ed (IHE) reported the same story as “Biden Finalizes Student Debt Relief Rules.”

The problem is that this information appears to be incorrect and unfounded. When I (and several others) looked at the OMB / OIRA website that shows pending regulations (agencies must submit to OIRA prior to issuing final rules), the US Department of Education shows two student debt relief packages as pending, but these were submitted in the summer. IHE linked to this page in its description of the submission.

Nothing has been submitted in December, and the summer submissions were put on hold by a court order in October. Unless CSPEN or IHE have different sources of information that they did not describe, this is a case of shoddy journalism just getting it wrong. I reached out to both organizations yesterday to ask if they could confirm the information, and I also reached out to several other people who might have inside information. Nothing came back.

Today, however, IHE did what I consider a stealth edit. The article it published was taken offline, but with no explanation and no notice. Social media posts have not been corrected or updated. This is not good. If you make a mistake, apologize, acknowledge the mistake publicly, and then move on.

IHE taking down the article appears to be a tacit admission that the story was either wrong or at least could not be backed up. Unless some new information comes to light, the CSPEN and IHE stories were wrong, and the Biden administration has not submitted final rules to OIRA for review. If either organization has different information backing up the stories, they owe it to the public to explain the situation.

CSPEN has not taken down its post or issued any clarification.

Subscribe to Premium to read the rest.