student-based (for example, an institution might receive payments to fund the education from employers looking to hire graduates). Student- centric university models, such as a competency-based model that assigns a “badge” to represent demonstrated knowledge, can offer stu- dents a focused education that is much lower in cost. As a result, schools may be able to increase scale and attract a greater number of qualified students to such low-cost offerings.


All of these ideas, as helpful as they might be to improving the bottom line, are likely to draw a regulator’s interest. Hopefully, careful consideration will cause regulators to encourage such innovations.


FURTHER DOWN THE ROAD


While new regulations are likely to focus on change driven by short- term economics, much of the direction is yet to be decided. Part of this is politics–the identity of the next President and the party in control of the next Congress is currently unknown. But there is a growing number of policy makers that are coming to see much of the Higher Education Act as anachronistic. It is possible that an HEA reauthorization–whenev- er that may occur–could act as a vehicle to re-imagine higher education and how it is regulated. Such an approach could be designed to take into account the changes affecting the modern university, as well as creating a disclosure regime that is responsive to actual consumer information demands.


All told, the regulatory scheme is not likely to change dramati-


cally in the remaining days of 2012. While the upcoming negotiated rule-making will deal with important issues, including the use of student “debit cards” as a means of tracking federal education funds, the new rules are not likely to be as sweeping as the program integrity regula- tions. In the next 18 months or so, it would be surprising if there wasn’t a call for new regulations on accountability measures or on dealing with new innovative models of delivering education. As we look further on, we may have an opportunity to remake higher education through regu- latory changes. Hopefully our regulators and policy makers will be up to


the task.


such as financial aid counseling, and allow students to take classes across the consortium, can provide a better experience for students and improve efficiencies. Te move- ment toward Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) holds tremen- dous potential for schools as they can lead to funding models that are not


Dennis Cariello is the chair of the Regulatory Compliance and Strategies section of DLA Piper’s Education and Education Services industry sector group. Mr. Cariello can be reached at: Dennis.Cariello@DLAPiper.com


JULY/AUG 2012 • TODAYSCAMPUS.COM 11


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