Are the men and women who staff America’s colleges rugged individualists determined to swat away the overweening hand of the state? Or are they simply greedy? An ongoing dispute over attendance-related recordkeeping and compliance has brought the question newly to the fore.
As reported by Inside Higher Ed last month, the conflict began when the federal Department of Education released proposed guidance intended to “clarify, update, and consolidate certain provisions that apply to distance education.” Nestled among the new rules was a requirement that universities take and report student attendance in virtual classes, lest (to borrow IHE’s paraphrase) “students drop out of online courses while the institution continues to collect federal Title IV financial aid funds.”
The federal government wishes not to pay colleges to educate students who no longer exist.In describing its proposal, the education department noted that “institutions can often easily determine when students stop attending a distance education course.” Because “institutional systems are already monitoring when students submit assignments,” noting that an enrollee has failed to do so in a timely manner is typically as simple as consulting one’s learning-management software (e.g., Blackboard).
As standard practice dictates, the feds conceded that “the proposed regulatory change would add a burden for institutions.” Nevertheless, this hardship was expected to be minimal:
The Department estimates that each of the [affected] institutions would be required to do an initial review of their distance education system to ensure that attendance is being collected and potentially develop or add attendance taking to the system. The Department expects that this would require an average of 10 hours per institution as a one-time burden.
Moreover:
Due to the highly automated delivery of these types of courses, and the availability of such coursework on a daily basis, the Department estimates half of the institutions offering distance education courses would already be performing this task. (emphases added)
To sum up, the federal government wishes not to pay colleges to educate students who no longer exist. Ensuring some measure of alignment between accepting loan dollars and teaching the actual loan-ees will take a few minutes of administrators’ time. Many colleges already keep track of online attendance, as doing so is relatively simple. All well and good? One might have assumed so until universities responded as if the world had collapsed.
To read the public comments in response to the federal proposal is to blush at the floridness and vapidity of educated complaint:
- “‘Institutions can often easily determine’ [is] a conceptual leap … It is often sunny in summer, but we would not ban umbrellas as sometimes it rains.”
- “It would create an equity issue to require attendance or require students to turn their cameras on, as that would tend to favor students from upper-income households who do not have to work and go to school.”
- “Don’t flock shoot … the good programs because of the actions of a few bad actors.”
I would go on, but since these gems were (really!) from the first three comments I chose at random, the point seems made.
Why would so much of higher ed waste its ammunition opposing a policy that seems not only intuitive but harmless?What could account for such silliness? As a second Inside Higher Ed piece on the subject makes clear, not only dozens but “hundreds of … colleges and higher ed organizations have expressed sharp criticism of the Department of Education’s proposed regulations.” But why?—why would so much of the industry waste its ammunition opposing a policy that seems not only intuitive but harmless?
(Note: The Martin Center is highly sympathetic to pleas that colleges are over-regulated, but even we have our limits.)
In part, the answer may be some combination of inertia and cowardice. “We could not ask every individual faculty to send us [an attendance] report,” the University of Arizona’s director of online education told IHE. But, of course, that’s ridiculous. Administrators tell faculty what to do all the time, and faculty mostly comply. Since every learning-management software includes an attendance function—and since faculty are typically in the habit of taking attendance in their face-to-face classes already—this particular mandate would be little trouble. Something else must be at issue.
One wonders, in fact, if the real explanation is buried in the federal guidance itself. The current system, the feds report, “can lead to institutions failing to report an accurate date [of last attendance], or using the date that allows the institution to keep the most [loan] money.”
Aha. Now we’re getting somewhere. Why might colleges oppose a common-sense reform? Just look to the bottom line.
Graham Hillard is editor at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.