Students Are Gone for the Summer. Don’t Waste It.
For many institutions, summer brings a welcome change of pace. Student activity slows, academic calendars ease, and attention turns to planning for the year ahead.
For licensure compliance professionals, summer is one of the most valuable times of the year.
Instead of reacting to legislation, field placement questions, and day-to-day compliance demands, summer creates an opportunity to step back and take a strategic look at your institution’s licensure compliance program before the next academic year begins.
If your institution has been putting off a compliance review, now is the time.
Start with Your Licensure Program List
The first priority should be a review of your institution’s licensure program inventory.
This has become even more important following the implementation of SARA Policy 5.2 updates in July 2025. Those changes extended professional licensure responsibilities beyond traditional Title IV programs and now include non-credit offerings, workforce training programs, and even individual courses that lead to state-issued professional credentials. Read more about this change here.
Many institutions built their original compliance processes around degree programs and have not fully revisited whether newer offerings have been incorporated into their licensure review process.
Summer is the perfect time to ask:
- Have any new programs been launched during the past year?
- Are non-credit or workforce programs being offered to out-of-state students?
- Are any programs placing students in clinical, practicum, internship, or student teaching experiences outside the institution’s home state?
- Does the institution’s current licensure program list accurately reflect everything that should be evaluated?
Finding gaps now is far easier than discovering them during an audit or compliance review.
Refresh Your Curriculum Comparisons
To comply with federal regulations and SARA policy, institutions must determine whether a licensure program meets educational requirements within any state where students are located at initial enrollment, where students are being recruited for the licensure program, or where it is being advertised.
Those determinations often require detailed curriculum comparisons that can be time-consuming and complex.
Summer offers a unique advantage because the academic partners who typically assist with this work – program directors, department chairs, and faculty experts – may have greater availability than they do during the academic year.
This makes it an ideal time to:
- Review licensure determinations made during previous years
- Evaluate regulatory changes that may affect existing determinations
- Update curriculum comparisons where requirements have changed
- Establish a process for ongoing review and maintenance
A fresh review now can prevent last-minute scrambling later when disclosures need to be updated or new students are preparing to enroll.
Audit Your Documentation
Compliance is not only about doing the work. It is also about proving the work was done.
Documentation is often one of the first areas to suffer when teams are busy managing day-to-day responsibilities.
Summer is a good opportunity to review:
- Professional licensure disclosure processes
- Individual direct disclosure records
- Written attestations are used when programs do not meet state requirements
- Documentation retention procedures
- Internal policies and workflows
If your institution were asked tomorrow to demonstrate compliance activities for a particular student or program, would the documentation be easy to locate?
If the answer is “maybe,” a summer audit could save significant stress later.
A Simple Summer Action Plan
If you’re looking for a place to start, consider this five-step approach:
Step 1: Review Your Licensure Program Inventory
Conduct a comprehensive audit of all programs and offerings that may lead to state-issued credentials required for employment, including non-Title IV and non-credit offerings.
Step 2: Update Curriculum Comparisons
Work with academic partners to review educational requirements, verify determinations, and address any regulatory changes that have occurred during the past year.
Step 3: Strengthen Documentation Practices
Review disclosures, attestations, policies, and recordkeeping processes to ensure everything is documented and easily accessible.
Step 4: Build the Business Case for Better Compliance Tools
If your institution is not currently using The Bookmark, summer is an excellent time to evaluate whether your current process is sustainable. Consider how much staff time is spent researching state requirements, tracking regulatory changes, and maintaining curriculum comparisons. Gather examples of challenges, inefficiencies, or risks that could be reduced with access to a centralized compliance research platform.
How The Bookmark Can Help
Summer reviews often uncover the most challenging part of licensure compliance: keeping up with changing state requirements.
Researching educational requirements across all states and territories can require hundreds of hours of staff time and careful monitoring of licensing board updates.
That’s where The Bookmark comes in.
The Bookmark provides institutions with centralized licensure research covering nearly 90 license types across all U.S. states and territories. Members receive regularly updated information on educational requirements, state-specific nuances, and indicators when curriculum comparisons are required.
The platform also allows users to generate custom reports by license type, state, and date range, making it easier to identify changes and focus reviews where they matter most.
More than 250 colleges and universities use The Bookmark as part of their licensure compliance strategy because it reduces research burdens and provides access to the information institutions need to make informed compliance decisions.
One More Reason to Act Now
For many institutions, summer also marks the end of the fiscal year.
If your department has remaining budget, this is an excellent time to invest in tools and resources to support compliance efforts throughout the coming academic year.
The good news is that onboarding to The Bookmark is quick, and our team can work with you to navigate procurement processes, user agreements, and invoicing so you can begin using the platform as soon as possible. Contact us today to get started.
The students may be gone for the summer, but licensure compliance doesn’t stop.
A few focused weeks now can help your institution enter the next academic year with greater confidence, stronger processes, and fewer compliance surprises.