Stop the Department of Education’s War on Innovation
In the last decade, the expansion of hybrid and distance learning options has been revolutionary for American higher education. During the COVID-19 pandemic, universities relied on online program managers – or OPMs – to help them rapidly transition to remote learning when it became a national imperative. Since then, the lasting benefits of these partnerships have become even clearer.
Online offerings help make education more attainable for non-traditional students, breaking down barriers for those that can’t afford or aren’t best served by rigid, full-time, on-campus experiences. Despite this, for the last year the Department of Education has been on a political mission to regulate these partnerships into oblivion, ignoring protests from universities, students, and independent experts.
The purported rationale for this crackdown – that OPMs negatively impact student educational outcomes – has repeatedly been refuted by independent research. In September, a comprehensive study by the American Consumer Institute found that students enrolled in OPM-supported programs are excelling. An even more recent report by the American Enterprise Institute argues that the Education Department’s approach “seem[s] likely to harm institutions and students while contributing to increased bureaucracy and costs, reduced course offerings and choice, and decreased quality and workforce relevance in academic programs.”
Universities also oppose a heavy-handed approach. When the Department of Education issued a Dear Colleague Letter that would have severely increased the regulatory burden faced by OPMs and other third-party partners to universities, hundreds of educators and administrators urged it to reverse course. While the Department eventually relented in that instance, its overall view that it is better equipped than university leadership to determine what is best for their own students and institutions apparently remains unchanged.
This regulatory push, besides being blatantly political, also entirely contradicts the Obama administration's 2011 guidelines, which recognized the importance of public-private partnerships in higher education and consciously allowed arrangements between OPMs and educational institutions to thrive. By permitting a vocal minority of anti-business reactionaries to hijack education rulemaking, President Biden now risks overseeing further regression in the accessibility and affordability of higher education at a moment when innovation and modernization has never been more important.
Even though more stringent regulations have yet to go into effect, the threat of them looms large over institutions and online program managers alike. Institutions are hesitant to enter partnerships that, in less than a year’s time, might be rendered illegal or financially unviable, potentially leaving them on the hook for millions of dollars in legal fees and greater operational costs. It is far safer for them to cancel new online programs, even if there is student demand for them, or to try to build their own programs from the ground up at great expense, pushing costs onto students in the form of ever-higher tuition. OPMs, in turn, are struggling to develop new partnerships and help additional students through innovative online offerings.
Rather than fixing its mess and providing clarity, the Department of Education seems to believe that it can win by attrition. Instead of risking new guidance, which might trigger renewed backlash, it is biding its time and allowing uncertainty to eat the education technology from the inside out, without regard for the loss of future innovations and improvements to accessibility and affordability in higher education. The result of this will be more expensive degrees that are less tailored to the workforce preparedness needs of students, especially those from diverse backgrounds.
Safeguarding the interests of students and ensuring quality in online education is an important and vital function of the Department of Education, one which deserves to be prioritized. However, the Department’s current approach is misaligned with these goals and threatens to hinder the very innovation and flexibility that have made higher education more accessible and responsive to the needs of students.
Education policy should be designed to encourage and foster innovation, not to impede it. It also shouldn’t be weaponized to force institutions to exit or reconsider otherwise beneficial partnerships that, in the last several years, have time and time again proven their value. If a university believes that freely partnering with an OPM will allow it to better serve its students, then the Department of Education has no business preventing it from doing so.
Andrew Langer is Director of the CPAC Foundation Center for Regulatory Freedom.
