State Approving Agency Jurisdiction Rule

DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS <CFR>38 CFR Part 21</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. VA-2021-VBA-0024]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2900-AQ89</RIN> <SUBJECT>State Approving Agency Jurisdiction Rule</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Department of Veterans Affairs. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) publishes a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking (SNPRM) to amend its definitions of the terms “independent study,” “distance learning,” and “resident learning,” and to establish a new term, “standard curriculum.” These proposed amendments, which distinguish distance learning from resident learning and independent study from standard curriculum, address concerns from VA stakeholders who view independent study and distance learning as having distinct and separate meanings and clarify State Approving Agency (SAA) jurisdiction over courses taken solely by distance learning. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by VA on or before November 3, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> under RIN 2900-AQ89. That website includes a plain-language summary of this rulemaking. Instructions for accessing agency documents, submitting comments, and viewing the rulemaking docket, are available on <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> under “FAQ.” <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Thomas Alphonso, Veterans Benefits Administration, (202) 461-9800. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> On October 14, 2021, VA published a notice of proposed rulemaking to amend its regulations that govern State Approving Agencies' (SAA) jurisdiction for approval of courses, including online distance learning courses, to distinguish online distance learning courses from resident training and independent study-resident training courses, to clarify SAA authority and jurisdiction regarding the approval or disapproval of any course, and to clarify the adjudicatory outcomes available to an SAA when reviewing an approval application. 86 FR 57094. In response to the notice of proposed rulemaking, two commenters questioned the appropriateness of VA's categorization of online distance learning and recommended that VA “modernize” its definitions to improve oversight of distance education programs. One commenter stated that distance education is an alternative delivery mode to in-person instruction and must include regular and substantive interactions with qualified faculty. Another commenter also stated that distance learning must include regularly scheduled interaction between student and instructor, whether synchronously or asynchronously, and that the rules governing independent study are not applicable to distance learning. Furthermore, in the past, our stakeholder partners, including SAAs and veterans' advocacy organizations, have expressed concern with the potential negative impacts of defining all distance learning as independent study. They have asserted that considering distance learning as a subset of independent study has effectively barred SAA approval of non-college degree (NCD) programs, which are not accredited, conducted via distance learning. Because VA is not authorized to approve enrollment in independent study programs unless they are accredited and lead to a standard college degree or certificate offered by an institution of higher learning, see 38 CFR 21.4267(f), under current regulations that define distance learning as independent study, VA cannot approve enrollment in NCD programs conducted via distance learning, even though such programs may be high quality and provide many vocational and economic opportunities to veterans. There is a comprehensive set of rules that govern SAA approval of non-accredited programs to ensure the integrity of the programs that are available to veterans. Specifically, 38 U.S.C. 3676(c)(1) requires that non-accredited “courses, curriculum, and instruction [be] consistent in quality, content, and length with similar courses in public schools and other private schools in the State, with recognized accepted standards.” Thus, considering distance learning as a subset of independent study limits the otherwise many worthwhile vocational and economic opportunities available to veterans. Moreover, classifying all distance learning programs, which are often offered as programs with regularly scheduled classes, as “independent study,” when a student does not have independence over what he or she studies, is confusing for VA beneficiaries and educational institution partners, as the commenters expressed, because it contradicts the plain meaning of the term “independent study” and VA's interpretation of that term in 38 CFR 21.4267(b)(1) in implementing 38 U.S.C. 3680A(a)(4). Merriam-Webster defines “independent study” as “a course of study done by a student without an instructor or with help from an instructor but not as part of an organized class.” See <E T="03">Merriam-Webster.com</E> Dictionary, <E T="03">www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/independent%20study,</E> accessed August 14, 2025. And VA currently considers a course to be offered by independent study if it includes interaction between student and faculty, whether the interaction is in person or through use of communications technology, and the course is offered without any regularly scheduled, conventional classroom or laboratory sessions. 38 CFR 21.4267(b)(1). Thus, considering distance learning as a subset of independent study is in conflict with our current interpretation of the term “independent study” in § 21.4267(b)(1). VA agrees with the points raised by commenters and stakeholders and believes it is not appropriate to continue classifying all online training as independent study merely because the training is online ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> not conducted within a traditional classroom setting). Finding no basis for continuing to define distance learning as independent study, VA proposes to amend the definitions of the terms “independent study,” “distance learning,” “resident learning” and add a new term, “standard curriculum,” to round out the modalities of learning and to distinguish distance learning from resident learning and independent study from standard curriculum. The proposed changes would allow VA to approve enrollment in NCD programs conducted via distance learning if otherwise warranted and would improve veterans' opportunities without diminishing safeguards. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed Definition of Standard Curriculum</HD> VA proposes to include four modalities of training in our regulations to encompass all possible modalities, which would require adding a new term, “standard curriculum,” at 38 CFR 21.4200(mm). We would define standard curriculum as a class in which the instructor dictates a uniform structure for all students and which would accordingly not meet the definition of independent study. Current 38 CFR 21.4267, which governs approval of independent study courses, treats “resident training” and “independent study” as mutually exclusive by describing “resident training” courses as requiring “regularly scheduled, standard class sessions” and “independent study” courses as not having “any regularly scheduled, conventional classroom or laboratory sessions.” However, educational institutions do not view these modalities as mutually exclusive, and we understand there can be an independent study program that involves some resident training. VA believes the new differentiation of standard curriculum from independent study, which would more accurately describe the different modalities of learning for purposes of more accurately approving courses, would best serve our beneficiaries, as well as our educational partners, and would help us to better administer 38 U.S.C. 3680A(a)(4) with its limitation on enrollments in independent study programs. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed Definition of Independent Study</HD> VA proposes adding a new definition for “independent study” at 38 CFR 21.4200(nn) that bases the classification of “independent study” on the level of autonomy a student has regarding the subject matter and content of the course and allows for periodic and substantive interaction with an instructor. We propose to allow a student to pursue independent study through either resident or distance learning. We also propose to remove the distinction between a course offered entirely by independent study and in part by independent study as unnecessary. This approach better aligns with how our educational partners, including those who commented on the proposed rule, understand the term “independent study,” and is consistent with the commonly accepted definition of that term. Accordingly, we would remove the paragraph (a) designation and heading and paragraphs (b) and (c) from current § 21.4267 and incorporate the content of those paragraphs, which provide the definition of independent study, in the new definition of “independent study” in § 21.4200(nn) with appropriate cross references. We further propose to remove paragraphs (d) and (e) from current § 21.4267 and incorporate the examples of undergraduate and graduate resident training from those paragraphs in § 21.4200(nn)(2) as examples of training that would not be independent study. Paragraphs (f) and (g) would be retained in § 21.4267 as new paragraphs (b) and (c) since they contain course approval rules not related to the proposed definition. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed Definition of Distance Learning</HD> We currently define the term “distance learning” in 38 CFR 21.9505 as any program that satisfies the Department of Education's (ED) definition of “distance education” in 20 U.S.C. 1003(7). ED's definition of distance learning, which invo ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 29k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━