Belinda,
Thank you for bringing up the students in this equation. While we all believe that more rigid regulations were needed to 'weed out' the 'bad actors' we fail to consider how time is involved with the new processes. We also fail to think about whether or not this time is taken away from the students.
Cindy Bryant
The number of regulatory bodies has increased exponentially over the last few years primarily due to a few bad apples in the bucket. This increase has led to increased training and ensuring that compliance and auditing are now part of the culture and not just a once a year occurrence.
William,
Hi, in the past three years the regulatory oversight has increased, creating an environment where schools must ensure that they are in compliance. This has caused a financial hardship for many campuses but in the end it gives the school the peace of mind that all is well.
Cindy Bryant
The regulatory env. was not apparent to me until we moved to Fl. The impact of compliance has added a new facet to my position. The changes have been more administrative, since the culture has always been striving for transperancy.
It has impacted my personal goal of being more organized, in a positive manner.
Alexander,
Hi, thank you for sharing the effect that program integrity has had on your daily operations and personal goals. It sounds as if you feel program integrity has been positive for you personally.
Cindy Bryant
Requiring admission departments to adhere to strict admission regulations has had a positive impact on the industry. These regulations ensure students are being provided with factual and reliable information.
The impact the current regulatory environment has had on my academy is multi faceted. First it causes us to be even more organized. All the departments within our academy must work even more closely to insure we are consistent in communicating with our students. Second although we have always been very transparent as an academy we hope the amount of stories we have heard over the years of people being defrauded by educational institutions will drop dramatically under the current regulations. Third as a small private school it has caused us to spend more time and money proving we are an ethical educational institution.
I think the Government is making it very difficult for propriatory schools to be able to continue. They are trying to take a less than two year school and make it into a four year school.
Michele,
The rules and regulations have become more strict over the past few years. Some people feel that the regulations are intended to keep the good schools in business and weed out the schools that are non-compliant. What are your thoughts?
Cindy Bryant
To be frank. I am a newcomer to the regulatory environment in the United States; I have developed my career as a professor and a trainer in other countries, mainly in Spain.
Nevertheless, I think I can contribute to this thread by making a comparison between American regulation and European regulation. European regulation is basically centered in the aspect of quality of the programs, and not so focused on admission and good consumer practices. This is probably due to the high concentration of public Colleges and Universities, which makes it rather difficult for a private school to access the market,
Ignacio,
Thank you so much for sharing your experience and point of view regarding the European educational system.
Cindy Bryant
It is imparative to not give false inforamtion. Their are lots of regualations etc overseeing the correct and best ways to do things and advertise etc. Although I have always wanted and tried to do the honest way anyway. Disclouseres and representations are important and advised by usde.
The regulatory environment has changed over the past few years as some schools have lost their main focus - the students. Especially with many for-profits colleges and universities, sometimes it is easy to lose sight of why the college or university was founded in the first place. I think that this loss of focused has caused a chain reaction for legislators to enact heavy regulation to ensure schools are doing what they should have already been doing in the first place, putting the student first. For schools who act with integrity and put their students first these regulatory changes have a huge impact. More resources are sometimes required to manage all of the continuous changes and because of the shift in focus can pull attention away from being a student-centered organization to a compliance-centered organization. The impact of these changes are especially noticeable in small to medium schools with limited resources and it can be a struggle to compete with larger institutions who are able to implement more resources.
Susan,
Welcome to the forum. You are right that the environment has changed drastically over the last few years. I believe that we have seen an entire shift in the dynamic of the proprietary industry and that this will eventually have some effect over the more traditional learning institutions.
Cindy Bryant
Unfortunately I have only been in the education field for the past couple of years. I have not seen too many changes in that short time but I am constantly seeing changes to financial aid guidelines which has impacted some elibibiity for students. It is important that as financial aid representatives we are constantly making sure that we are up to date on the latest changes.
In the past year its has been a veery dramatly change in the enviroment since the goverment had make alot of changes and has impact in our school.
The regulatory environment has changed over the past few years by causing schools to report gainful employment statistics that were not requested before. This has put a much larger attention on our Career Services' success in placement and has required our school, and others, to place the statistics of our successes and oportunities on our main webpage for all to see. This can directly affect our enrollments in both postitive and negative ways depending on the success of our placements.
Sterling,
You are right! The spotlight on career schools has skewed the general public views on our commitment to training in the U.S. The good thing that has come out of this scrutiny is transparency. Transparency has placed us all on level playing field.
Cindy Bryant
The regulatory environment has changed in the past few years exerting more control over higher education business practices to ensure educational quality with the highest degree of integrity. These regulatory changes have impacted our campus in a positive way by ensuring that we solely focus on the student welfare by establishing and enforcing practices which contribute to the development of the student's success and preparing them for the competitive workforce. Several recruitment practices were aligned for the better as well as new policies established to ensure we always work with the student's success in mind.
Iza,
THank you for sharing the positive impact that Program Integrity has had on your school. The regulations were put in place to protect the students and it sounds like it is working well at your school.
Cindy Bryant
