Financial aid systems help make higher education available to all who can benefit. To “adjust” the existing financial aid system to make it more student friendly and open doors currently closed to many part-time learners and students with the greatest financial challenges, state policy changes and greater private sector initiatives targeted at workforce can use creative strategies, including altering state-based programs, creating new learning tax incentives, coordinating employer-based aid, and distributing aid directly to students.

An increasing number of students in the United States are involved in online education, according to research by the Sloan Foundation. By fall 2004, approximately 2.6 million students were estimated to be enrolled in at least one online course, an average growth rate of 24.8% from 2003–04; this figure represents a 5% increase over the 2002–03 growth rate [1]. The consequence of this continuing expansion of the e-learning population is that policies with respect to student learning/academic programs will need to be updated or developed; and policies and practices with respect to existing student services, which often provide different support for onsite and distance students or minimize online services, will need to fit the realities of online learning. Given the technological world of the 21st century, it would behoove institutions if such policies applied to all students and services were online.
What are the student areas which require policies for online learning to be effective? Issues in four areas seem to dominate: student learning, student services, 24/7 support and outsourcing, and multi-campus/system alignment. Each points to several policy issues, often inter-linked, that need discussion, decisions and implementation practices [2]. The discussion below does not make a distinction between fully online or blended courses, unless noted.

Globalization is enabling transnational provision of post-secondary education. The leadership of higher education needs to attend to issues of quality and accreditation.

The seeds for this JALN edition focusing on policy were planted more than four years ago. It evolved soon after Sloan-C began its annual survey and reflected concerns that policy—at the institutional, state, and federal levels—was lagging behind the growth curve in online learning. In short, the policy constructs at all levels, with some exceptions, targeted traditional on campus and classroom instruction and, to many in the ALN community, seemed at odds with the changing landscape of higher education.

At the intersection of online education and preparedness, Johns Hopkins University’s (JHU) Center for Public Health Preparedness provides all-hazards preparedness and response training for public health and public safety professionals. This report comes from Jonathan Links’ keynote address to the Sloan Summer Research Workshop in Baltimore, Maryland in August 2006.