Ed Department to Colleges: Read the Instructions - Inside Higher Ed

The U.S. Department of Education has a response to colleges and universities confused by how they are supposed to count students enrolled in distance education courses: Read the instructions. In a study released last month, higher education consultant Phil Hill and the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies found many colleges and universities have under- or overreported thousands of students to the federal government, which tracks those numbers through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System program, or IPEDS. Hill and Poulin, deputy director of research and analysis for WCET, identified two main reasons behind the irregularities. In some cases, institutions were confused about whether or not to report students enrolled in continuing education, and in others, institutions used their own definitions of distance education.