In recent years the U.S. Senate has done plenty of hand-wringing over "bad actors" in higher education, many of them for-profit and online. And that tension goes back to policy debates on distance education in the 1990s.
"We don’t want to repeat debacles," said Senator Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat, during a Senate education committee hearing on Wednesday. "That actually is the theme of our committee."
Franken was kidding, mostly. The hearing was one of several in the run-up to the eventual reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, the law that governs federal student financial aid.
The title of Wednesday’s event was "exploring barriers and opportunities within innovation." During the hearing several senators and the four witnesses said they are optimistic about the potential of competency-based education and noninstitutional boot camps to provide a quality higher education at a lower price than traditional colleges typically charge.
The U.S. Department of Education is working on an "experimental sites" project that would allow some of those providers to offer federal financial aid to students by partnering with traditional colleges.
The goal of that project, and of experimental sites more broadly, is for the feds to craft limited, controlled experiments they can learn from in creating policies.
Senators from both sides of the aisle support that approach. But during the hearing, senators and witnesses said they want to prevent an opening of the floodgates of federal aid to undeserving institutions.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/07/23/senate-hearing-features-familiar-tensions-between-innovation-and-quality-assurance