HIGHER EDUCATION DISTANCE LEARNING

WHEREAS, the Higher Education Act of 1965 currently restricts federal aid eligibility to higher education institutions that offer no more than 50 percent of their curriculum by distance learning (i.e., faculty-student contact primarily by electronic means) and to students who take no more than 50 percent of their courses in this manner;

WHEREAS, these restrictions grew out of congressional concern about well-documented educational shortcomings, as well as fraud, waste and abuse of federal student aid funds, that characterized many correspondence and proprietary schools in the 1980s and early 1990s;

WHEREAS, some have urged Congress to abandon all restrictions on distance learning as Congress reauthorizes the Higher Education Act;

RESOLVED, that the AFT oppose lifting existing legal restrictions on distance learning because distance learning is prone to the same problems of educational quality and fraud and abuse that attended correspondence schooling;

RESOLVED, that the AFT call on Congress to authorize comprehensive studies of the quality of distance learning programs in the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act;

RESOLVED, that if Congress were to decide to lift the 50 percent requirement, it should be done so on only an experimental basis for a limited number of institutions designated by the U. S. Secretary of Education and should be accompanied by effective safeguards for educational quality and against fraud and abuse;

RESOLVED, that safeguards for educational quality include:

• assurance of faculty control over the curriculum through normal academic processes;

• assurance of meaningful interaction between students and faculty, both in the teaching role and through counseling and mentorship;

• assurance of access to needed books, library resources, laboratories and other learning materials, as well as access to and adequate training in the use of computer hardware and software for faculty and students; and

• assurance of objective research and assessment of programs:

RESOLVED, that assurances against fraud and abuse include careful analysis - and then monitoring - of the institution's ownership, management structures and procedures to assure, for example, that students are legitimately enrolled.