The American Council on Education (ACE) is pushing for
standards for recognizing online degree programs across different states.
Implementing uniform national standards would protect students and make sure
institutions provide a quality education.
Each state conducts oversight and regulation of its
postsecondary education, but each also deals differently with out-of-state
institutions. In addition, institutions that enroll out-of-state students
online must adhere to a variety of agencies and requirements that can be
cumbersome and costly.
In the paper A More Uniform Way of Recognizing OnlineDegree Programs Across State Lines, with SARA as a Focus,
ACE suggested that the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (SARA) provide
a solution because it would be similar to the way drivers’ licenses are
recognized across different states.
SARA, administered by four regional higher-education
groups, is a voluntary program that could help develop reasonable standards and
quality for online programs, according to the report. It also found that
participating in SARA could lead to lower costs for states and institutions,
and, ultimately, students.
“The current process is too varied among the states to
ensure consistent consumer protection, too cumbersome and expensive for
institutions that seek to provide education across state borders, and too
fragmented to support our country’s architecture for quality assurance in
higher education—the quality assurance triad of accrediting agencies, the
federal government, and the states,” the authors of the report wrote.