Presidents Forum, governors unite to help Americans disagree better

SALT LAKE CITY (July 12, 2024)

One big thing

Indiana leaders have armed the nation’s governors with training designed to help Americans disagree better.

Why it matters

Governors have expressed concern about the rising level of vitriol in public and private discourse, including on college campuses.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox made the issue the primary policy initiative of the National Governors Association (NGA), which he chaired for the past year.

“Americans disagree about a lot of things and that’s reasonable, as long as we can debate issues without attacking individuals,” said Governor Cox. “The Presidents Forum has been an incredible partner in collaborating with our governors to create compelling and effective training to help learners develop the skills they need to disagree productively. I know the governors are eager to implement this work in their respective states.”

Go deeper

Ivy Tech Community College President Sue Ellspermann and Purdue Global University Chancellor Frank Dooley joined Becky Takeda-Tinker, president of Colorado State University Global (CSU Global) and Gregory Fowler, president of the University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC), at the NGA summer meetings in Salt Lake City, Utah to present three state collaborations to create trainings around the NGA’s disagree better initiative.

In collaboration with their home state governors, these institutions are looking to provide the next generation of leaders with the skills and competencies to handle disagreement in a more productive way than it is now handled.

“The governors are showing real leadership by combating the inability to disagree without being disagreeable. It’s a real issue with far-reaching impacts,” said Pres. Ellspermann. “Our training is designed to help students master the skills that will allow them to navigate difficult issues more effectively.”

Dooley sees the training as a key part of building a successful career.

“In today’s workplace, few skills are more critical than the ability to navigate disagreement,” said Dooley. “I believe this and similar courses will address this needed skill development very effectively, with positive impacts for our communities.”

Takeda-Tinker sees higher education as the right place to focus on developing the skills to disagree better. 

“The governors see the growing hostility in public discourse as a significant challenge that hampers their ability to address difficult policy issues,” said President Takeda-Tinker. “Our job was to provide tools that could help address the issue and we agreed that there are skills to help residents and learners of all ages to disagree better and those skills are valuable not only as they build their careers, but in all aspects of their lives.”

Fowler sees the ability to disagree better as essential to professional and personal success. 

“In the modern workplace, the ability to manage disagreements is vital and we need to equip our students with the skills they need to succeed,” said Fowler. “Courses like those we have designed will effectively foster this essential skill, benefiting our communities in numerous ways and I’m grateful for the leadership the governors have shown on this important issue.”

How it works

In Indiana, Ivy Tech and Purdue Global, joined Governor Eric Holcomb’s office, state agencies, and business and community leaders to create a four-week four module course. The course will be delivered as a microcredential and will be piloted in the fall by faculty at both institutions, then students. At the end of the training, students will earn a badge they can add to their Indiana Achievement Wallet. By partnering together and co-teaching the course, this microcredential will be able to reach dual credit, traditional, and working learners. 

In Colorado, CSU Global led the way and collaborated with Governor Jared Polis to create a fully-online, instructor-facilitated course designed to equip learners with healthy conflict styles, tools, and strategies for resolution. The four-module, four-week course available at $175 provides a college credit that can be applied to CSU Global’s undergraduate programs and has garnered positive feedback from course completers. Learner data to-date reflects that prior to the course, 44 percent of students self-reported feeling very uncomfortable or uncomfortable having conversations where they disagreed. After course completion, 100 percent of students self-reported that they felt comfortable or very comfortable having conversations where they disagreed. 

In Maryland, UMGC is working to educate learners, including their military students occupying positions overseas and on the front lines of world stages, to navigate difficult issues and conversations. UMGC has approached Disagree Better as part of a larger redesign process within their institution. They plan to integrate the principles of productive disagreement and concepts into a redesign of their general education curriculum, which is based on an explicit framework of 25 skills across five competency areas. This process will support people in the various contexts of their lives to acquire and deploy these skill sets. 

What’s next?

These trainings will continue to be refined and it is anticipated that this new focus will remain a critical focus of higher education moving forward.

About the Presidents Forum

The Presidents Forum is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization of college and university presidents and chancellors as well as leading education stakeholders committed to reinventing higher education for our diverse student population – traditional, non-traditional, and adult learners. We are dedicated to the continuous reinvention of higher education and exploring transformative education models by sharing knowledge, implementing best practices, and making policy recommendations.

Dear Secretary Cardona and Under Secretary Kvaal:

The Presidents Forum, representing 18 of the most innovative and forward thinking higher education institutions, is committed to serving working learners
in their education and in the public policy process. To that end, we write today to express our concern with the Program Integrity and Institutional Quality
Negotiated Rulemaking Committee’s proposal to alter state authorization. As institutions serving nontraditional students, many of whom cross state lines in
their educational journeys, we are deeply invested in ensuring that any regulatory adjustments prioritize the interests of students and institutions alike.
While Forum institutions are prepared to comment on any proposed rules resulting from the rulemaking process, we highly encourage the Department not to advance the reciprocity proposals.

Presidents Forum institutions have long been engaged in distance education regulatory policy within the higher education regulatory triad. For students to be well-served, it takes all three legs of the regulatory stool to do their part. In the instance of state reciprocity, the states have done an admirable job in creating a workable and efficient regulatory environment to balance operational realities with regulatory and student protection concerns. It is our view that state reciprocity issues should be addressed through the proven framework that exists within the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (SARA). Federal engagement on this issue is unnecessary and disruptive.

SARA is a state-to-state consortium agreement that has a distinguished history of solving many problems for states and institutions of higher education. While not perfect, we trust SARA, and the processes it has developed, to continuously improve and solve new issues that arise in distance and online education. The processes at SARA are transparent and the organization is actively solving some of the same issues that the Department has raised in its state authorization issue paper. In fact, the NC-SARA Board decided at its May meeting to assemble a working group on institutional closures.

The mission of the working group is to bring forth proposals for the 2025 SARA Policy Modification Process cycle on issues surrounding a SARA-wide teach out plan, teach out agreement, and records retention. The working group is made up of regional compact staff, NC-SARA staff, state portal entities, and board members.

We urge the Department of Education to honor a reciprocity agreement that has been approved by 49 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. The authorization of institutions has always been the purview of the states and the processes those states create. We urge the department to allow states to continue their stellar work in this area.

We are particularly concerned with the proposal to impose direct authorization requirements based on student enrollment thresholds. The proposed threshold is arbitrary and not supported by data. The connection between enrollment in a state and additional risk to the state has not been well established. Even if it had been well established, this risk should be handled through the SARA Policy Modification Process. The Department’s proposed threshold could reduce program offerings and hinder institutions’ ability to meet the diverse needs of students. In addition, institutions would likely either pass these costs for compliance to students or opt-out of serving students in some states, thereby harming students.

The proposal permitting states to enforce their own authorization requirements related to institutional closure undermines the benefits of a state reciprocity agreement. States willingly opted into abiding by SARA’s provisions, so it would be inaccurate to frame this issue as states being “prohibited” from enforcing these laws. Between 2018 and 2023 there were 29 closures among SARA participating institutions, far fewer than the 200-plus closures in non-SARA degree-granting institutions during the same period. In addition, states have the option to expand requirements related to closure through the SARA Policy Modification Process. As noted above, the NC-SARA board has assembled a working group to address institutional closures, using the process that states have agreed to use to handle reciprocity issues.

The suggested changes to the composition of the NC-SARA Governing Board are an interesting issue with very little positive impact. At issue are five board seats that are currently occupied by institutions of higher education on a board that consists of 18 members. We know of no instance of self-serving behavior that has been empowered through this board membership of IHEs. We are not even aware of an accusation of such behavior. However, your point is well-taken; if there is a possibility of a conflict of interest it can be addressed through the NC-SARA governance structure. The federal government has no role in dictating the board composition of a 501(c)3 organization through a negotiated rulemaking procedure. We recommend you voice this concern to the SARA community and allow the stakeholders managing that process to handle the issue appropriately.

We urge you to contribute ideas and express concerns to the states and rely on their judgment and action to continue regulating colleges and universities in their respective states. It is working and it will continue to work with your appropriate engagement.

Thank you for your attention to this critical issue. We look forward to continued dialogue and collaboration.

Sincerely,

The Presidents of The Presidents Forum

The Path Of Knowledge Is Open To All That Have The Determination To Walk It

The Presidents Forum has existed for over 20 years, and is both a venue for collaborative innovation between presidents and a collective voice for advocacy on behalf of our students.

March 30, 2023

The Honorable Miguel Cardona Secretary
U.S. Department of Education,
Office of Postsecondary Education
400 Maryland Ave. SW, Second Floor
Washington, DC 20202 Docket ID ED-2022-OPE-0103

Dear Secretary Cardona,

 The Presidents Forum has existed for over 20 years, and is both a venue for collaborative innovation between presidents and a collective voice for advocacy on behalf of our students. Our 16 institutions—including HBCU’s, community colleges, private institutions, and fully online colleges—are united by the non-traditional learners we serve, and because we embrace a shared spirit of innovation in order to meet the needs of our students. Our goal is reflected in Lyndon Johnson’s remarks in signing the Higher Education Act into Law in 1965: to ensure that “the path of knowledge is open to all that have the determination to walk it.” The institutions of the Presidents Forum are focused not on a narrow, elite set of students, but instead on the “all” that was envisioned by President Johnson. We serve those who have traditionally been left behind on the path to opportunity: low income students, students of color, veterans and active duty military students, working parents, and older adults.

 The vision for equity in education that unites us has been made all the more imperative by the events of recent years: a pandemic that has emphasized the importance of innovation and collective action; a national movement to address inequity wherever it lies; and a turbulent economy that has revealed the importance of equipping individuals with skills that can provide them with resilience and adaptation. Lyndon Johnson’s words are more true today than when they were first spoken: “And it is a truism that education is no longer a luxury. Education in this day and age is a necessity.” In order for America to realize its potential, it is necessary to ensure that access to higher education is expanded, and that opportunity is not the purview of the few. For each of our institutions, innovation has been the key that has unlocked our ability to provide education that is more affordable and more accessible than has been possible in prior generations. Higher education today shares the same goals as it did decades ago, but how we serve students looks very different—and this is a good thing. Technologically driven innovations have enabled education to reach more students, with more success, than we ever could achieve through traditional means. At the Presidents Forum, we embrace innovation that benefits students: that which makes it possible for us to define a system that meets students where they are, and supports students with the resources they need to be successful—rather than a traditional model that forces students to adapt to the institution.

Utilizing technology has necessarily made our operations more complex—and this is true for institutions that deliver education in person as well as those that employ online modalities. Software is beautiful in its ability to interface across systems, to create opportunities for students to pursue their studies at the time and place of their choosing, to support students in their learning and career goals, and to help us as institutions learn more about what works for our students and to do better by them. But these systems are developed, operated, and maintained at scale: for each of the 5,500+ Title IV institutions to hire a team of developers to create and maintain duplicative but proprietary educational software would result in exorbitant expense at no gain to students. Thus, we have partnered with a range of providers in order to build and improve our offerings. Our accreditors have worked with us to understand these changes over time. As the Department notes, we rely on more partners than we would have in Lyndon Johnson’s time. Many of these partnerships enable the technological provision of our academic program—but many more of them enable us to provide additional services to students in order to ensure their success.

We understand that the Department is curious about how higher education institutions are partnering with outside contractors in this technologically driven age. However, we urge the department to rescind its recent Dear Colleague letter issued on Third Party Servicers (TPS) for the following reasons:

• The change in the interpretation of the law is significantly different from prior Department guidance on TPS, and from how this area of the law has been historically understood by industry participants.
• It would have a significant impact and administrative burden, raising costs for students and impeding the ability of institutions to provide needed services. There is no identified harm to students that is being resolved by this administrative change that in any way justifies the costs of compliance that would be incurred.
• Outside contractors used in the provision of higher education services are already evaluated by other regulatory bodies, most notably accreditors.

 How Third Party Services have Historically Been Understood

Third party servicers were defined in the law to clearly relate to outside contractors involved in the provision of Title IV funds, including their processing and disbursement. This definition has been supported by the Department through Dear Colleague letters issued in 2012 and 2015. No Congressional action has since taken place that would support any change in Congress’s intent regarding the definition of Third Party Services, nor in Congress’s intent to change the authority of the Department to control the inner workings of higher education institutions. As a reminder, the relevant text of the law is below.

 For purposes of this subchapter and part C of subchapter I of chapter 34 of Title 42, the term “third party servicer” means any individual, any State, or any private, for-profit or nonprofit organization, which enters into a contract with–

(1) any eligible institution of higher education to administer, through either manual or automated processing, any aspect of such institution’s student assistance programs under this subchapter and part C of subchapter I of chapter 34 of Title 42;  or

(2) any guaranty agency, or any eligible lender, to administer, through either manual or automated processing, any aspect of such guaranty agency’s or lender’s student loan programs under part B of this subchapter, including originating, guaranteeing, monitoring, processing, servicing, or collecting loans.

The Burden of the DCL is Significant

This change in interpretation—from contractors related to the processing of “any aspect” of student assistance programs or those related to “any aspect” of student loan programs including originating, guaranteeing, monitoring, processing, servicing, or collecting loans, to any entity contracted for “any aspect” of any program delivered with Title IV funds—would increase the number of “Third party servicers” at our institutions from a handful, that are involved in our financial aid processing, to hundreds or thousands which are involved across the full spectrum of our activities.

 This is because higher education institutions are highly complex entities. A typical campus may include dining facilities, residential facilities, physical plant that requires cleaning and maintenance, curricular design and development, physical technology infrastructure, cloud based software services, financial and investment management, medical services, social work capabilities, academic instruction, career services, a significant HR function, sports and recreation facilities, security services, institutional research functions, daycare facilities, transportation services, and complex scientific and medical research facilities. The “technology” stack, as in most modern organizations, involves a massive number of systems that work together to enable our institutions to operate—and prepare students to operate in—the information age in which we live.

 In short, higher education institutions today, in addition to providing academic offerings—which, even for on-campus institutions, is a hugely complex undertaking—also serve as gyms, restaurants, medical offices, police forces, lawn care services, road and building maintenance crews, accounting firms, event planners, career recruiters, speakers bureaus, book publishers, and laundromats. Each of our institutions seek to focus our activities on where we can best provide value for students, and to eliminate unnecessary costs for students. To that end, each of our institutions contracts with outside entities—for everything from janitorial services to software—in order to avoid organizational complexity, to reduce costs, and to provide excellence to our students.

 The information and authority that the Department seeks in its recent DCL would require intensive and costly compliance efforts at every higher education institution—as well as at the Department. The benefit to students from these incurred costs is unclear.

 Who Evaluates the Academic Program

Accreditors have the expertise and processes in place to ensure that the “provision of educational content and instruction” meet high quality standards. The Department does not have the expertise, staff or resources to review how content and instruction are provided, and this was not the intention of Congress in defining Third Party Services, as affirmed by multiple Dear Colleague letters on Third Party Services. Accreditors, on the other hand, use expert review teams to dive deeply into how academic programs are constructed, what activities are conducted by the institution, to ensure that outsourcing arrangements are done in the service of students—to enhance quality and to reduce costs—and that the institution has ultimate governance and control of academic programs. Accreditation is not a perfect system—but significant changes to the role and scope of accreditation should not be made through subregulatory guidance.

 It is important to understand that our accreditors are up to date in how outside contractors are involved in the educational program. Where accreditors have issues with the academic program being outsourced or outside the governance of the institution, they are vocal and authoritative. This is the case for both traditional and for online programs.

 The Bigger Prize

The Department’s resources are scarce and precious—as are those of institutions, and even more so, our students. We beseech the Department to refocus away from scrutinizing every aspect of how institutions support students and deliver instruction, and instead double down on its mission to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access. We urge the Department to rescind the most recent Dear Colleague letter; it is clearly an overreach of the law and stands in contradiction to all previous guidance from the Department on this issue. We stand aligned with the Department on the bigger prize: innovating to create pathways to opportunity for every individual, particularly those most in need of them.

Best Regards,

Wesley Smith
Executive Director
The Presidents Forum
80 M St SE Suite 130
Washington DC, 20005