Dive Brief:
- The Maryland Higher Education Commission is sending out letters to out-of-state, fully online course providers asking them to self-report and pay their registration fees, if they enroll Maryland students.
- The letters are seen by some as protectionist, and they mark the most aggressive attempt so far by a state looking to enforce distance learning registration requirements, according to Inside Higher Ed.
- If an out-of-state course operator has students in Maryland, it must pay a $1,000 annual registration fee and for a bond valued at five times the average cost of tuition.
Dive Insight:
The backdrop to this is the U.S. Education Department’s consideration of new regulations for online programs that enroll students in more than one state. Those programs would have to receive authorization from the states they want to operate in—potentially 50 different regulation schemes and 50 registration fees. Inside Higher Ed quotes an unnamed provost as saying that the Maryland registration process is essentially a mini accreditation review, which could be a six-week process, repeated every year.