As online course agreement forms, some worry about state regulation

Complying with state authorization rules would cost $143,000 per college or university, according to a survey.

Colleges that offer online courses across state lines, after fighting a federal rule they call unnecessary and outdated, now are concerned about states’ regulatory power in deciding how schools should comply with existing regulations.

Decision makers from hundreds from online colleges from across the country gathered Oct. 3 at the Presidents’ Forum in Washington, D.C., where campus officials and policy experts parsed the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (SARA), pitched as a more reasonable approach to enforcing educational standards for schools that offer web-based classes in many states.

Online education advocates created SARA’s provisions after the federal government’s “state authorization” rules proved so onerous that schools nationwide said the costs of complying with state-by-state rules would force them to withdraw from some states.…Read More

Bandwidth demand straining college budgets

Twenty-seven percent of institutions said they capped the number of devices a student can connect to the campus network at five.

Half of college IT departments pay for broadband internet service in campus residential areas and don’t recover the costs, while six in 10 students said they would consider moving to off-campus housing if web speeds lagged.

New statistics showing how spiking broadband demand has impacted campus IT departments were included in an infographic created by OnlineColleges.net, a site that tracks technology use in education.

Half of campuses included in a survey said the money spent on satiating students’ broadband needs for their laptops, smart phones, tablet computers, and video game consoles is never recovered through tuition or student fees.…Read More

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