ED’s New Proposed Regulations, Part II: Changes for Programs Leading to Professional Licensure

As we revealed in our recent post, ED’s New Proposed Regulations: Part 1, State Authorization Reciprocity, the Department of Education’s new package of proposed regulations includes issues that could have a big impact on institutions that offer programs in other states and upon the students they serve. While most press articles about the proposed rules focus on Gainful Employment, you will need to be aware of other nuanced issues also addressed in these proposed regulations that may have gone unnoticed during your first review. We are providing direction for you on very complicated sub-issues related to reciprocity and programs leading to a license or certification that are found in the Negotiated Rulemaking Issue, Certification Procedures. These important sub-issues aren’t the “sexy” regulatory issues getting most of the press coverage and could easily be overlooked.

It is important to reiterate that we support the consumer protection goals of the Department. We concur that it is very important to provide safeguards for students and protect the integrity of Title IV HEA programs. However, we do believe that in some circumstances there may be other ways to address the development of safeguards. This is especially true when there is a need to collaborate with state entities, such as state licensing boards, as partners to develop protections addressing programs leading to a state professional license or certification.

We encourage institution personnel to thoroughly review and discuss these additional proposed regulations to determine the impact on students at their institution. The Department invites the public to submit comments on the proposed regulations by the comment deadline of June 20, 2023. Additionally, the Department is seeking responses to directed questions posed throughout the preamble of the announcement for the proposed regulations. We will provide further information in this post on the process to submit comments. We encourage you to participate! [...}