Interesting Policy Reads: Competency-Based Education Challenges, Mining Applicants’ Data, and Student-Level Records

With our "Interesting Policy 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.

• Slow and Steady for Competency-Based Education, Inside Higher Ed, January 28, 2019. (Competency-based education has not taken off as quickly as some originally predicted, and stakeholders point to factors such as a changing federal policy climate and high start-up costs as being partially responsible.)
• Colleges Mine Data on Their Applicants, Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2019. (The practice of tracking prospective students' online interactions with institutions has some concerned about the privacy rights of applicants.)
• Lawmakers Introduce Bills to Crack Down On Robocalls, Roll Call, January 25, 2019. (As scammers took advantage of the lapse in federal appropriations, lawmakers introduced legislation that would require service providers to authenticate phone calls before they reach consumers' phones.)
• An Online Tax for Rural Students, Inside Higher Ed, January 30, 2019. (Students taking online courses in the Colorado Community College System pay roughly $114 more per credit hour than their peers who enroll in traditional on-campus instruction. Some characterize this difference as a "rural tax.")
• Doyle: Net Neutrality Will Be First Subcommittee Hearing, Broadcasting and Cable, January 29, 2019. (A House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee will hold a hearing on net neutrality rules on February 7.)
• Expectations Build for College Transparency Legislation, Inside Higher Ed, February 1, 2019. (Democratic control of the House and increased appetite at the state level may signal a growing possibility that lawmakers will eventually move to repeal the federal ban on collecting student-level data.)

Kathryn Branson is an associate with Ulman Public Policy.