Norwich University hired Nick Cooper, a lawyer, three years ago to help its distance-learning program navigate a complex, ever-changing landscape of state regulation. To the Vermont institution, he is essential—the only person standing between it and a regulatory misstep that could shut down a degree program in Massachusetts, cost the university thousands in Wisconsin, even get the president slapped with a misdemeanor in Alabama.
In blunt moments, Mr. Cooper concedes a Sisyphean weariness. Over the past three years Norwich has spent nearly half a million dollars dealing just with state regulations through his office. In the process, while working to set up online programs across the country, he has amassed maddening stories, like the year he spent trying to reach someone in Oregon who would sign off on courses, or the times he had to fly to Arkansas for routine Board of Education meetings, where officials would ask no substantial questions before rubber-stamping Norwich's programs.
Mr. Cooper hopes that one day the regulations will stop multiplying and shifting, and that he'll have most of them figured out for Norwich. "I am the only person here who tries to advocate for getting rid of his own job," he says. "I'm just a burden on the school. Our mission is to educate students and help them reach their goals, and I am not really involved in that."
Higher education is getting a lot of heat these days for its rising costs,bloated administration, and sluggish movement toward innovation. Those who work in the sector point to at least one cause: Having to devote staff members like Mr. Cooper to a vast regulatory regime of hundreds of rules from dozens of state and federal agencies with reams of required paperwork. The rules seem to have expanded with scrutiny of student debt and graduation rates. Leaders of traditional institutions often say they're paying a price for higher education's bad actors, while some observers argue that colleges just want to duck accountability. Of course, no industry relishes regulation, but many in this one wonder whether the red tape is accomplishing what policy makers intended.
Nicholas S. Zeppos, president of Vanderbilt University and co-chair of a new U.S. Senate task force examining the regulation of higher education, says the businessmen on his board of trustees tell him it's more complicated than anything they see in the corporate world. "They are stunned by the range and depth and complexity of the regulatory environment we operate under," he says. "They are asking us more and more, 'What is the cost of this?'"
At this point, only a handful of colleges have even a hazy picture. In late 2011, Margaret L. Drugovich, president of Hartwick College, asked her staff to tally the time they spent on compliance reports, and to attach dollar figures. After a year, they found that 100 employees and six contractors had spent 7,200 hours responding to more than 60 federal, state, and local government agencies, as well as accreditors, athletic associations, and groups like the National Association for College Admission Counseling. In all, Hartwick spent about $300,000 following 247 rules. To make sure it kept track of them all, Ms. Drugovich reassigned a staff member in her office as a compliance officer.
Less than two years later, the list of regulations has grown to 309. Ms. Drugovich suspects that the drive to regulate has at least something to do with talk in the news media and among policy makers that colleges are prodigal, even opportunistic, in raising tuition year after year.
"As a nation, we haven’t figured out how to pay for the education that we want our citizens to have, and yet there is an urgency to do something," she says. "Sometimes I feel that some of the requirements and regulations that are being put forth are an attempt to demonstrate that something is being done."
As large, diverse enterprises, colleges and universities can be subject to a vast array of rules—covering the eligibility of athletes, use of intellectual property, limits of research, handling of pollutants, and privacy of students, among many others. With more attention being paid to the glaring, if anomalous, failures, like six-figure student-loan debt and unemployed graduates, policy makers are trying to exert more influence.
College presidents are quick to say they don't fear accountability, nor are they calling for extensive deregulation. They just want some consistency and relief. Ms. Drugovich, who serves on the Senate panel with Mr. Zeppos, notes that because colleges "don't speak as a single voice," they haven't pushed back against the intricate rules that agencies keep layering on.
That's changing. The task force is studying how colleges and government agencies might work together to streamline some requirements. The push could lead to unlikely alliances between left-leaning educators and anti-regulation advocates on the right. In January, when Ms. Drugovich spoke at a meeting for private-college presidents, some prominent figures in the audience suggested that a Republican victory in November might bring relief.
Now Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee who led the Senate task force, is likely to be the next chair of the Senate education committee. "My principal goal in higher education is to deregulate it," he told The Chronicle this month. A former president of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, he has directed the panel to identify the most onerous and costly regulations, so when it comes time to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, Congress can "weed the garden."
Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/article/Tangled-in-Red-Tape/150059