Giving Compass' Take:

• Sarah Butrymowicz, at The Hechinger Report, explains how gaps in colleges' financial oversight are forcing students into tumultuous positions.

• What might a college closure do to a student in the middle of a degree? How can we help strengthen colleges' financial oversight during the pandemic?

• Look for resources to support those who've had their education disrupted during the coronavirus.

Yvonne Mendez was only six months away from graduating with a registered nursing degree from Anamarc College in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, when her plans for the future fell apart. The school, a for-profit institution with campuses in Texas and New Mexico, had just told students it was shutting down, catching everyone off guard.

In theory, government agencies and accrediting bodies have safeguards to protect students from such abrupt college closures. Schools at risk of shutting down should be required to prepare smooth transitions for their students. Yet a Hechinger Report review of news reports since 2014 found more than 30 schools like Anamarc that announced their closings with little or no warning.

Such college closures expose weaknesses in the oversight of higher education’s finances, which experts say is inadequate and scattershot. To identify struggling schools, the federal government relies on data that is often outdated by the time the Department of Education receives and publishes it. Accrediting agencies collect somewhat more recent information, but act on it inconsistently. And state agencies often lack the capacity to provide much financial scrutiny.

All three groups are supposed to work together to ensure accountability in higher education, but financially failing institutions can slip through the cracks.

“There’s no one organization or entity that is truly in charge of assessing financial responsibility,” said Daniel Zibel, vice president of Student Defense, a nonprofit that advocates for students’ rights. “There’s no one who has ‘the buck stops here’ authority.”

Now, as the coronavirus crisis throws college balance sheets into disarray, consumer advocates and researchers who study higher education warn that more schools could close with little notice.v

Read the full article about colleges' financial oversight by Sarah Butrymowicz at The Hechinger Report.