Issue Briefs

About

Each year, new statutory and regulatory requirements are imposed on colleges, adding real costs at a time when institutions are being asked to tighten their belts.  Typically, however, expressing general concern about institutional burden has not been sufficient to counter the specific individual concerns of those advocating for particular requirements. 
 

History

Former Senate HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN) was interested throughout his career in eliminating many of the outdated or inapplicable regulations impacting institutions of higher education – a process that he deemed “weeding the garden.” To help guide this deregulation effort, a bipartisan group of senators appointed 16 higher education leaders to create the Task Force on the Federal Regulation of Higher Education, which included seven NAICU members.

The Task Force published a final report in 2015, focusing on regulatory requirements in the areas of student financial aid, campus security, federal Financial Responsibility Standards, data collection, disclosures, and accreditation.  The report also identified a number of specific requirements that are particularly problematic for institutions.

The Task Force's finding proved useful when the Trump Administration sought targets for its deregulatory agenda.  

In the past, efforts to reauthorize the Higher Education Act have offered other opportunities to seek relief.  For example, Republican HEA reauthorization proposals have adopted many of NAICU's recommendations, including provisions that would repeal regulations related to state authorization, state authorization of distance education, and the definition of credit hour.  In contrast, however, Democrats' reauthorization proposals not only retain existing regulatory provisions, but also layer new requirements on top.
 

Recent Developments

Before taking office, President Trump highlighted the need to reduce unnecessary federal compliance costs imposed on colleges and universities. Subsequently, the president issued an executive order directing federal agencies, including the Department of Education, to take steps to lessen unnecessary regulatory burdens.

In response, the Department created the Regulatory Reform Task Force to review agency regulations and guidance, and to recommend which ones to repeal, modify, or retain.  A subsequent executive order required federal agencies to rescind guidance documents that should no longer be in effect and to create a guidance portal containing all current regulations. The Department’s guidance portal remains operational, but the executive order was rescinded by President Biden. 

Under the Trump Administration, the Department also took efforts to rescind or modify regulations and guidance in a number of areas, although some of these changes may have been driven more by an effort to alter policy than ease regulatory burden.  In addition to regulatory changes related to teacher preparation, gainful employment, borrower defense to repayment, and campus sexual assault, the Department revised regulations governing accreditation, state authorization of distance education, credit hour definition, competency-based and distance education, TEACH grants, and the eligibility of faith-based institutions to participate in the student aid programs. 

In contrast, the Biden Administration' regulatory agenda focused on rewriting regulations on many issues of these same topics, including borrower defense to repayment, gainful employment, financial value transparency, campus sexual assault, loan repayment, accreditation, state authorization, and more. Increasingly, regulations have become the subject of partisan battles, with each administration seeking to undo the opposing party's efforts, making it more difficult to reduce or eliminate regulations that have become outdated or unnecessary.