The upsurge in investigations, lawsuits, and school closures due to compliance issues may have some believing that more regulatory oversight is necessary for career colleges and universities. The reality is that career education is already one of the most highly regulated sectors in all of higher education. For example, a career college may be approved and/or licensed by several separate state agencies, an institutional accreditor, several different programmatic accreditors and the U.S. Department of Education. Amid this amount of regulation, does even more oversight sound like a reasonable solution to reducing compliance issues? Or does effective employee training have more impact on ensuring positive compliance results?
The actions of each employee either puts an institution at risk or upholds its integrity. And though school executives, directors, and managers may have a thorough understanding of applicable rules and regulations, most staff members do not. Why? Ironically, some institutions, to reduce compliance issues, focus more on the policies and procedures themselves than on actually providing adequate compliance training for their employees.
Many career colleges, though, are now realizing they need to expand compliance training to all employees as well as assess employee learning just as they would with their own students. This helps to ensure training transfers to improved performance.
Institutions that want to build a culture of compliance need to do more than instruct employees on what they can and can't do; they need to provide training that aligns institutional values with employees' personal values. When employees understand that the institution's values align with their own, they are committed and accountable. This is the type of culture that is needed. I am reminded of the video MaxKnowledge sponsored to share this message that the philosophy of simply doing the right thing for students leads to compliance as a natural byproduct. Given the extensive coverage of school investigations, lawsuits, and even closures; this video message rings even more true today!
