Federal financial aid dollars are
once again available to tens of thousands of California students enrolled in
online programs at nonprofit out-of-state colleges and universities.
The Department of Education (ED) last
month announced that an estimated 80,000 California online students were
ineligible for federal financial aid because the state did not have a process
in place for students to submit complaints about their institutions. That
provision was part of the so-called state authorization rules—regulations aimed
at overseeing federal aid for distance learning—that the department began
enforcing in May.
Officials in California proposed
to solve the problem by launching a new complaint process, and in a letter Aug. 2, Principal
Deputy Under Secretary of Education Diane Auer Jones deemed that process
acceptable.
Background: Last year,
the Trump administration delayed implementing
the Obama administration’s 2016 state authorization regulation to 2020, as they
worked on developing a new version. A new rule was agreed upon this spring by a
negotiated rulemaking committee as part of a package of accreditation
regulations. This regulation is not yet in effect, although ED is working to finalize
it more quickly than normal, as ACE urged in a letter to Secretary
Betsy DeVos last month.
Following a lawsuit by the
National Education Association challenging ED’s delay, Judge Laurel Beeler of
the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled
in April
against the department and ordered it to immediately implement the 2016 rule.
ED appealed the ruling to the 9th Circuit Court but announced today that it was
dropping the appeal.
That rule links financial aid
eligibility to individual states having either 1) a process for online students
to submit complaints about their institutions to a state agency in the state
where they live or 2) a reciprocity agreement with other states addressing
avenues for consumer complaints, such as the National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements
(NC-SARA).
Up until now, California has not had such a process in place. It also is the
only state that is not participating in NC-SARA, which would relieve it of the
responsibility of having its own complaint process.
In her letter, Jones noted that “although the
State of California's proposed plan presents compliance challenges,” the
department’s 2019 negotiated rulemaking process rule will provide more
flexibility to the complaint process. Therefore, ED is considering California
“to have
had an acceptable plan in place dating back to May 26, 2019” when it began
enforcing the state authorization rule and, most importantly, “no student will
experience an interruption in his or her education or federal student aid.”