On April 12 at 12 PM ET, James Ward will join other panelists during a session titled, “State Authorization in Higher Ed: Processes and Policies to Promote Opportunity and Ensure Educational Quality”. Below is the abstract:

The final paper discusses findings from research on state authorization and online enrollments. The growth of online education has resulted in a cooperative approach among states to grant reciprocal authorization in an effort to lower regulatory burdens. In their study, they assess the impact of state participation in the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (SARA). The agreement, which now extends between 49 states and nearly 2,000 institutions, is intended to

remove barriers to postsecondary opportunities by standardizing the authorization procedure for degree-granting institutions operating online learning programs in multiple states. The authors use a difference-in-differences design to estimate the effects of SARA participation on online enrollments, and examine how these effects vary by institutional type and capacity for online learning, as well as the potential that early adopters may benefit the most.