AGO nixes postsecondary education regs

Finding the proposal broad and counterproductive, the Attorney General’s Office has recommended redrafting the postsecondary education regulations prepared by the Northern Marianas College.

Assistant attorney general Alan J. Barak made the request after reviewing the 28-page “policy” that the NMC Board of Regents recently proposed for the regulation of postsecondary educational institutions seeking to operate in the Commonwealth.

The college drafted the regulations in response to the Saipan University scandal in 2003, which occurred due partly to the current absence of any statute or regulation that directly addresses educational fraud and its prevention.

In a memorandum to State Board of Education chair Kimberlyn King-Hinds, Barak said the proposed regulations could not be approved by the AGO until certain legal and technical issues are resolved.

“[Your] requirements are so broad and expensive to meet, and self-contradictory that they could put many current Saipan-based, legitimate businesses out of business,” Barak said. “[Moreover], it appears that your regulations may be counterproductive—they make it so difficult, expensive and uncertain to independently open a higher education school here that virtually no legitimate program will come to the CNMI independent of the College.”

To illustrate his point, Barak cited a regulation stating that no license may be issued until the applicant has provided proof of hiring faculty, developing curriculum, leasing or building classroom space, printing materials, securing maintenance services, and fully implementing a program.

“No legitimate operator would spend the money for these items without an approval to go forward with the education business,” Barak noted.

The regulations appear to discourage anyone but NMC and its partners from establishing a postsecondary school, Barak added.

For instance, he said, the proposed application fee of $2,500 to $10,000 seems unjustified and looks like merely another way to raise money for the NMC Board, if not a penalty against applicants.

“The application fee expenditure, combined with the ‘Catch-22’ requirements that the school be all-but-operational before a license is issued, make it unlikely that a legitimate, rationally operated enterprise would seek to do business here,” Barak said.

In order to dispel inference that NMC is trying to eliminate competition, Barak said, the college should rewrite the regulations “with a sensitivity to encouraging legitimate businesses” and involve potential providers of educational services during the rewriting process.