Anatomy of an Attack on Reciprocity, Part Deux
Phil Hill
May 31, 2024
In Wednesday’s post I described how the justifying story for the US Department of Education (ED) proposal to gut reciprocity agreements (and specifically the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement, or SARA) is simply wrong. Independence University’s (IU) in SARA did not prevent Colorado from taking any consumer protection action, it is because of SARA that Colorado was able to get a detailed list of IU students and further student information, and the issue did not begin when this administration’s ED “heard reports about one for-profit college that was accused of fraud and was in the process of closing.”
I closed that post with a hint for this one.
And no, longtime readers of this newsletter should not be surprised where this leads us.
Background
This story starts 15 years ago. Well, the threads begin before 2009, but let’s stick to direct connections.
Bob Shireman moved from The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS) into a role in the Obama Administration’s ED in 2009, where he led efforts to crack down on the for-profit sector. During the early 2010s, for-profit institutions were viewed (accurately) as multi-campus systems working across state lines, with online education dominated by the sector. A coalition developed that included ED, several activist groups such as TICAS, and several state attorneys general (AGs), pulled together to rein in these for-profit schools. And the coalition was quite effective.
