The board of the state agency in charge of regulating private and for-profit colleges convened Monday for the first time since an Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation this summer found the agency lacking substantial oversight and a meager board of members serving mostly on expired terms.
All but two members of the Georgia Nonpublic Postsecondary Education Commission's 15-member board were in attendance for Monday's quarterly meeting at the agency's headquarters in Tucker. During and following the AJC report, Gov. Nathan Deal moved quickly to replace and appoint new members to the board that previously had five vacant seats.
Before the board’s publicized business meeting, agency director Bill Crews led a two-hour training session for the new board members. The tutorial continued through the board’s work session, which included the appointment of new officers and updates on the agency’s finances.
In August, the AJC found that the small state agency — which regulates about 300 schools — was understaffed, plagued with sloppy record keeping and was operating with outdated systems. Two state audits, the most recent from April 2013, cited similar issues with the agency.
Since then, the agency has made incremental steps to improve its operations, Crews said Monday. Most noticeable is the agency's long-awaited updated website, which debuted within the past few weeks. The site now allows students to file online complaints against schools, but it does not provide searchable information about a school's faculty, finances or other complaints. Also, schools must still print out application documents to submit to the agency.
Still to be completed is an integrated database, which leaders at the agency have long said would help streamline and modernize its processes, moving from a paper to a digital system. The database should be completed by the beginning of the year, Crews said.
“It would be nice to have a larger staff, to be able to do a better job of examining schools’ financial records,” Crews told the AJC . He plans to ask for an additional staffer during the upcoming budget session.
Selected to lead the agency board Monday were Shelley Nickel and Martha Nesbitt, both new Deal appointees with long backgrounds in state education. Nickel, currently the vice chancellor for planning for the University System of Georgia, is a former chief of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget and a former chief of the state Student Finance Commission, which administers the HOPE scholarship program.
Nesbitt was the president of Gainesville State College before retiring in June 2012. (Gainesville State College was merged with North Georgia College and State University and became the University of North Georgia in January 2013.)
“I’m interested in making sure students are protected,” Nickel said. “I think the landscape of higher education has changed, and we need to make sure we understand that and have the necessary ability and resources to carry that out.”
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