By Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed
New federal rules on distance education highlight long-standing tensions between consumer advocates seeking stronger state-level protections for students and higher education groups seeking shared national standards. Robyn Smith, a consumer advocate who served on the negotiated rule-making panel, said the final rules published by the department in late October are not consistent with what the panel agreed to in April. “I am outraged by the final regulations,” Smith wrote in a statement earlier this month. Smith, a lawyer who is counsel to the National Consumer Law Center and a senior attorney for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, said the department substantially changed the distance education regulation “without sufficient factual justification.”
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