GAO Takes Moderate Stance on Online Program Providers
Doug Lederman
May 6, 2022
Eagerly awaited U.S. review of companies that manage colleges’ online academic programs urges more Education Department scrutiny but doesn’t appear to significantly threaten revenue-sharing deals.
A long-awaited federal review of companies that many colleges contract with to help design and manage their online academic programs was anticipated—by those who favored such a move as well as those who did not—to potentially undermine the legality of the revenue-sharing agreements that underlie some of those deals.
The report released Thursday by the Government Accountability Office, after a year and a half of study, suggests that some of those arrangements with online program management (OPM) companies may run afoul of federal law that prohibits student recruiters being compensated based on their success in recruiting students, as some congressional Democrats and consumer groups strongly assert.
