The U.S. Department of Education has announced it plans to offer financial aid for students enrolled in nontraditional education programs — and trying out alternatives to accreditation in the process.:
See this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education for more details:
See this article from The Chronicle of Higher Education for more details:
A Boon to Boot Camps? U.S. Extends Aid to Campus Deals With Nontraditional Programs
By Kelly Field OCTOBER 14, 2015
WASHINGTON
The U.S. Education Department is cracking open the door to federal financial aid for students enrolled in nontraditional education programs — and trying out alternatives to accreditation in the process.
On Wednesday the department will announce a pilot program that will allow federal grants and loans to flow to educational-technology companies that team up with colleges and third-party "quality-assurance entities" to offer coding boot camps, MOOCs, short-term certificates, and other credentials.
The experiment has two chief aims: to make nontraditional programs more accessible to low-income students, and to test new ways of measuring program quality that are based on students’ outcomes.
Under the plan, the new quality-assurance entities would be responsible for assessing participants’ claims about students’ outcomes, including learning and employment.
But the pilot doesn’t ditch traditional accreditation altogether. "To reassure everyone who might be concerned" about leaving quality assurance to untested entities, the colleges’ current accreditors would have to sign off on the arrangements as well, said Paul J. LeBlanc,president of Southern New Hampshire University, who worked on the pilot during a recent stint at the department. He noted that accreditors could create new quality-assurance entities too.
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Some institutional and regional accreditors have already begun expanding their purview to cover such partnerships. In April, after a two-year trial, the Distance Education Accrediting Commission launched a quality-assessment process for alternative providers of distance education. It has already approved some courses offered by StraighterLine and Sophia Learning, two online-education companies, and is reviewing the curricula of a few other providers, said Leah K. Matthews, the commission's executive director.
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The pilot announced on Wednesday is the latest in a series of experiments the department has undertaken to encourage innovation in higher education. In 2011 the department extended Pell Grants to some short-term vocational programs; last year it announced three pilots to support competency-based programs.
Rise of the Boot Camp
"Noninstitutional providers," the catch-all term for a diverse mix of ed-tech companies and programs, have become popular with lawmakers, who see them as a way to get more students to earn credentials more quickly. Students have gravitated to the programs as well. In 2015 coding boot camps are expected to increase the number of students they graduate by 240 percent, to over 16,000.
Meanwhile, partnerships between colleges and the ed-tech sector have begun to emerge, with agreements like one between the University of New Haven and Galvanize, an unaccredited coding school.
While immersive programs like boot camps can be expensive, they often pay off. Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce estimates that men with nondegree certificates in computer or information services earned, on average, $72,000 a year, which is more than 72 percent of men with traditional associate degrees.
Still, students interested in boot camps and other nontraditional programs face two main obstacles: a lack of access to aid and a dearth of information about quality. That’s because the programs fall outside the purview of accreditation, the traditional arbiter of quality and the gateway to student aid.
By making a few programs eligible for aid on a trial basis, the department hopes to encourage more partnerships between colleges and ed-tech companies while ensuring the quality of those collaborations.
Hope and Risk
Anant Agarwal, chief executive of edX, a provider of MOOCs, said he planned to apply to participate in the pilot. "I think it is innovative and will provide more opportunities for learners in our country," he said in an email.
It’s unclear, though, how many coding academies will apply. Traditionally, boot camps have operated as alternatives to graduate school, providing quick credentials to students who are seeking career changes and are willing to pay full price. That model has worked well for the companies, and there’s no evidence that they’ve been clamoring for access to federal student aid.
In fact, the chief operating office of one coding boot camp, Bloc, recently wrote an opinion article that warned against rushing into things.
"Partnering with accredited schools to deliver tech skills for credit is a dangerous back door to access federal student loans," wrote Clint Schmidt He called for the department to put "a rigorous standard in place" before federal aid could cover boot-camp tuition.
"The risk is a short-term, money-grabbing mind-set that compromises the long-term credibility of our industry," he added in an email on Tuesday.
Robert M. Shireman, a former top official at the Education Department who is now a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a think tank, suggests another accountability mechanism:requiring programs to enroll students whose tuition is being paid by employers or by the students themselves, not just taxpayers.
"I am hopeful," he wrote by email, "that the criteria will also encourage applicants that demonstrate that they are not relying too heavily on federal aid, so they are accountable to employers and students first."
Programs interested in participating in the pilot have until December 14 to submit a letter of intent to the department.
Kelly Field is a senior reporter covering federal higher-education policy. Contact her atkelly.field@chronicle.com. Or follow her on Twitter @kfieldCHE.
Correction (10/14/2015, 12:37 p.m.): This article originally misstated an earnings figure from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. The center estimates that men with nondegree certificates in computer or information services earn, on average, $72,000 a year, which is more than 72 percent of men with traditional associate degrees, not more than 72 percent of what they earn. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.
