Interesting Reads: Possible Distance Education Rule Delay, GDPR, and Online Education

With our "Interesting Reads" blog posts, the EDUCAUSE Policy Office highlights recent articles on federal policy issues and developments that are directly relevant to members or provide insights on higher education policy in general.

• The 100k Club, Inside Higher Ed, April 23, 2018. (Western Governors University and Southern New Hampshire University are both approaching 100,000 students online, leading observers to believe the two nonprofits could soon overtake the University of Phoenix as the largest online university in the United States.)
• Distance Education Rules May Be Delayed, Inside Higher Ed, April 23, 2018. (The Department of Education has submitted a proposed rule to the Office of Management and Budget entitled, "State Authorization; Delayed Effective Date" — a sign that the federal rules governing online education may be delayed, with a rewrite possible.)
• Learning Innovation Is Evolving Into an Academic Discipline, Inside Higher Ed, April 26, 2018. (A Dartmouth academic argues that the idea of learning innovation should be examined by studying the way colleges and universities change over time combined with a focus on how people learn, in order to determine how and why the innovation occurs.)
• Most U.S. Firms 'Not Ready' for Data Privacy Rules, The Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2018. (A CompTIA survey has found that only one in four US-based organizations with some level of data responsibility say they are "very familiar" with the General Data Protection Regulation, while the rest expressed uncertainty.)
• Study: Online learning improves retention, graduation rates, Education Dive, April 23, 2018. (A new report finds online courses may be more effective in retaining students and keeping them on the path to graduation — but it is as important as ever for online instructors to be as engaging as possible to promote maximum skill building and material comprehension.)
• Pearson conducts experiment on thousands of college students without their knowledge, The Washington Post, April 23, 2018. (By adding language into some of its software programs and then tracking how it impacted problem-solving, Pearson conducted a social-psychological experiment on students without their knowledge.)

Kathryn Branson is an associate with Ulman Public Policy.