GAO Takes Moderate Stance on Online Program Providers
Inside Higher Ed
Doug Lederman
May 6, 2022
Eagerly awaited U.S. review of companies that manage colleges’ online academic programs urges more Education Department scrutiny but doesn’t appear to significantly threaten revenue-sharing deals.
A long-awaited federal review of companies that many colleges contract with to help design and manage their online academic programs was anticipated—by those who favored such a move as well as those who did not—to potentially undermine the legality of the revenue-sharing agreements that underlie some of those deals.
The report released Thursday by the Government Accountability Office, after a year and a half of study, suggests that some of those arrangements with online program management (OPM) companies may run afoul of federal law that prohibits student recruiters being compensated based on their success in recruiting students, as some congressional Democrats and consumer groups strongly assert.
But the GAO report largely affirms the view that revenue-sharing arrangements are legal as long as a company or other provider “bundles” recruiting help with other services such as instructional design or student support (as laid out in 2011 guidance from the Obama administration). The agency focuses on urging the Education Department to require more and clearer information from colleges about the extent and nature of these outsourcing agreements, to help auditors and others analyzing the deals better understand whether or not the companies and their recruiters are being compensated based on how many students they recruit. (It’s important to note here that some online program management firms have abandoned or de-emphasized their use of revenue-sharing arrangements, charging fees for direct services instead.)
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