The Perils of Sara

?By Mike Goldstein

THE PERILS OF SARA! ??If you have been following the decades-long effort to bring rationality to the availability of quality online learning across state lines, this venerable cinema meme is not much of an exaggeration.

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) is poised to propose new rules that could severely reduce the effectiveness of the State Authorization Higher Education Agreement ?(SARA). Just a few weeks ago ED completed a highly contentious, and ultimately almost entirely unsuccessful, Negotiated Rulemaking regarding the regulation of online learning delivered across state lines. ?ED has now proposed several regulatory changes -- none of which secured a consensus among the non-federal negotiators -- that could significantly limit the value the SARA agreement brings to institutions and learners alike. The SARA Call to Action Webpage issued by the National Council for the State Authorization Reciprocity Act (NC-SARA) tells a quite disturbing story. Sadly, this is not the first time ED has challenged SARA’s fundamental premises. ?In 2016, just two years after SARA’s activation, the Department proposed rules that would have, in the words of NC-SARA, required institutions offering online learning opportunities “to go back to dealing with all of the 54 individual States, territories and districts in which they enroll students in order to retain Title IV eligibility for those students.”? My blog post on that earlier regulatory effort is here. ?

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Now, on the tenth anniversary of the ratification of the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement, that risk has again risen.

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?I will be moderating SARA at Risk?? An update on forthcoming and potential changes to interstate online reciprocity at the forthcoming ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego on Wednesday, 4/17 from 10:10 - 10:50 AM PT. ?Joining me will be Patrick Lane, Ph.D., Vice President, Policy Analysis and Research, WIICHE ([email protected]) and Marianne Boeke, Ph.D., President, NC-SARA ([email protected]).? WICHE is the interstate higher education compact made up of 15 states plus the U.S. Pacific Territories.? Patrick and Marianne are two of the most knowledgeable people regarding the importance of SARA, and why the current efforts could pose an existential threat to the continued viability of this important interstate agreement.

?The idea of an interstate compact to make distance learning available to learners anywhere across the country dates back to 1984.? That is when the head of the Virginia higher education agency, Gordon Davies, told an assembly of his fellow state regulators, convened to discuss the perceived proliferation of (physical) branch campuses, that they were, in his exact words, “Looking to improve the Pony Express while the telegraph wires were being strung.”? He was referring, at the time, to the efforts by a number of institutions, mostly public, to extend their programs beyond their campuses through the use of…broadcast television (this was when the Internet was still in its earliest infancy).? In one example, an airplane chartered by a consortium of midwestern universities circled over the states broadcasting postsecondary programming to remote communities.?

In response to Davies’ call, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) joined with the Council on Postsecondary Accreditation (COPA, later renamed the Council on Higher Education Accreditation, today’s CHEA) to examine what was seen as alternatively an emerging opportunity to expand learning opportunities to un- and underserved populations and communities or an intrusion into state sovereignty.? The result was project ALLTEL – Assessing Long Distance Learning Via Telecommunications.? In its summary report, authored by the late Bruce Chaloux, the two organizations proposed a strategy for assessing the quality and integrity of electronically-distributed postsecondary education and, importantly, outlined a structure for a compact that would allow the states, and the regional accreditors to evaluate distance learning programs (and their providers) and offer a single approval that would be recognized across all of the state and accreditors.? I had the pleasure of co-leading the ALLTEL Legal Issues task force on behalf of SHEEO; my counterpart for COPA was William Clohan, who later became Undersecretary of Education under Ted Bell.

The idea found resonance among the accrediting community, out of which ultimately came the Interregional Compact, which among other things provided that a program offered by an institution accredited by any one of the regional commissions would be recognized by all.? Quite a progressive idea at the time.

Not so much at the state level.? While there was general agreement that something needed to be done to rationalize the regulation of cross-border telecommunicated instruction, the differences in how states regulated their own schools could not be overcome: while the low regulation states, with very light (if any) institutional oversight, were ?amenable to an agreement, the high regulation states, led by New York, argued that would an interstate agreement could only work if their level of oversight was accepted.? A bridge too far.

In 2014, almost thirty years after the publication of the ALLTEL Report and long after the Internet replaced television as the medium of choice for the distribution of learning, twelve states ratified the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement, bringing SARA into existence, along with its administrative arm, the non-profit National Council for the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (NC-SARA). ?Despite the passage of three decades, and monumental advances in learning technology, the SARA structure is remarkably similar to the ALLTEL proposal.

Today, as SARA celebrates its tenth anniversary, 49 states (California is the one holdout), the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands have agreed to a set of protocols and standards that enable institutions located within their borders that meet its requirements to offer their online courses across state lines without the very considerable cost and effort of securing approval in each state where it enrolls students. SARA has been an enormous boon to colleges and universities of every stripe, structure and size in enabling them to serve a broader learner population without incurring untenable costs and administrative burden. ?More to the point, as SARA has made it administratively easier and less costly for qualified institutions to make their programs available online, hundreds of thousands of learners have been afforded the opportunity to secure the benefits of quality higher education.? ?

But even before SARA was ratified by the legislatures of the first cohort of states, there was opposition.? For many, online learning was, from its inception, suspect.? SARA was seen as one more way for unscrupulous operators to circumvent the protections states had erected.? But the reverse was – and is – true.? What SARA uniquely accomplished, and what NC-SARA managed on behalf of the states that created it, is a uniform elevation of the standards for online learning, and very importantly for the protections afforded students enrolled in those programs.? For a state to be admitted into SARA, it must demonstrate that its regulatory framework properly protects both the quality of instruction and the rights of enrolled students.? Then, and only then, can an institution domiciled in a SARA state seek to participate, and that institution must demonstrate that it meets the standards adopted by and applicable across all of the SARA states.

NC-SARA, on whose governing board are individuals drawn from state legislatures, regional higher education compacts and consortia, accrediting commissions, institutions, state higher education authorizing agencies, has for the past decade overseen and sought to continuously improve the SARA process.?? While that effort is ongoing, there cannot be any question that institutions that elect (and are found qualified) to participate in?SARA not only have a vastly reduced administrative burden by not having to seek separate authorization from each state where its students reside, but that students enrolled at those institutions are better protected regardless of where they reside. ?It is also clear that SARA has made it possible for far more independent and public institutions to develop and offer their online programs without the high cost of securing state-by-state approvals, a cost that could approach an annual sum of a million dollars.? The transformation of online learning from the province of a few giants to a vast array of institutions of all types is in no small measure attributable to the existence of SARA and the leadership of NC-SARA.

But there are those who still oppose the nature, if not the very idea, of the compact, largely based on a belief that the structure does not adequately protect student interests.? And the Department of Education, despite the fact that the foundational law governing the Federal role in postsecondary education clearly recognizes the supremacy of the states in regulating institutions, and cedes to the accreditors, in collaboration with the states, oversight of institutional quality, continues to seek to narrow if not eliminate the value SARA brings to the higher education community and the students it serves.? ?

The availability of quality online postsecondary education is not merely a convenience.? As we learned in 2020, it is a necessity.? But not only to get through a (hopefully) once-in-a-century pandemic.? It is a necessity if we are to provide access to quality learning opportunities to un- and underserved populations, to enable us to continue to provide for a skilled workforce, to enable our workforce to repeatedly re-skill as a changing world requires, and to ensure that we maintain an affordable pluralistic higher education community that offers a wide range of learning opportunities. ?Over the past decade SARA and its implementing organization have proven their worth, particularly in broadening access to quality online learning for both institutions and learners.? The continuing assault on SARA and NC-SARA is a diversion from our need to enhance postsecondary education so that it is more accessible, effective and efficient.

Mike Goldstein has long been a part of the higher education ecosystem, deeply involved in many of the seminal changes that have so altered the process and structure of higher learning.

Mike is a Managing Director at Tyton Partners, a unique combination of investment bankers, education strategy consultants, principal investors, operators, and educators solely dedicated to the Global Knowledge Sector.

Prior to joining Tyton, Mike led the higher education practice at law firms Dow Lohnes and Cooley LLP.? Previously, he was an Associate Vice Chancellor and Associate Professor of Urban Sciences at the University of Illinois-Chicago, Assistant City Administrator and Director of University Relations in the Office of the Mayor of the City of New York and co-founder and first Executive Director of the NYC Urban Corps, the nation’s first large-scale urban intern program supported entirely by the Federal Work Study Program.?

He is a recipient of the WICHE/WCET Richard Jonsen Award for leadership and service to the e-learning community, the CAEL Morris Keeton Award for his contributions to experiential learning, the President’s Medal for exemplary service to adult learners from Excelsior College, the Hall of Fame Award from the United States Distance Learning Association, and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by Fielding Graduate University in recognition of his contributions to the advancement and institutionalization of online learning.

Mike serves as chair of the Board of Trustees of Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a Board member and past chair of Fielding Graduate University.? He is a member of the Cornell University External Education Advisory Council (formerly eCornell) and serves as a Director of the University of the District of Columbia Foundation, The Washington Center, The Washington Ballet, and the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services Foundation.

He has a BA in Government from Cornell University, ?a law degree from New York University and was a Loeb Fellow in Advanced Urban and Environmental Studies at the Harvard? Graduate School of Design.?

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