New SHEEO Report – “Breaking Down Barriers: The Impact of State Authorization Reciprocity on Online Enrollment”

The State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) has just published a new report in a series of research reports about state authorization, this one focused on SARA, titled “Breaking Down Barriers: The Impact of State Authorization Reciprocity on Online Enrollment.” Authored by James Dean Ward, Heidi Booth, Elizabeth Davidson Pisacreta, and Ben Weintraut, and funded by Arnold Ventures, this study examined the relationship between NC-SARA participation and online enrollments. Per the abstract, “Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that colleges joining NC-SARA experience growth in students enrolling in online courses, that early adopters experience larger growths in enrollments, and that enrollments increase over time. We do not find evidence that for-profit institutions, colleges with large pre-NC-SARA online enrollments, or colleges that are highly reliant on online education benefit more than others from joining the agreement.”

• You may access and read the paper on SHEEO’s website.
• SHEEO’s website containing reports from their state authorization research projects contains an overview of the project and the additional reports (with some to come).
• Learn more about NC-SARA’s student consumer protections, SARA-participating institutions’ data for distance education enrollment and out-of-state learning placements, as well as well as resources for SARA institutions on the NC-SARA website.

NC-SARA is grateful for its partnership with SHEEO and is looking forward to future collaborations to research state authorization capacity.