Fifty higher education groups on Friday urged the U.S. Department of Education to further delay the reporting deadline for the new gainful employment and financial value transparency regulations.
Colleges have until Jan. 15 to meet the reporting deadline for the new regulations, a date the Education Department has already moved back twice after releasing rules last year.
The gainful employment rule requires career training programs to prove their graduates earn enough to pay off their federal loans and meet certain earnings thresholds — or else risk losing access to Title IV federal financial aid.
While the financial value transparency rule doesn’t threaten the loss of Title IV aid, it requires colleges to provide student and financial aid data about their programs that the Education Department will post to a consumer-facing website.
“Jan. 15, we hope, will allow us to produce the data this spring and inform college choices for next year,” U.S. Under Secretary for Education James Kvaal, the agency’s top higher education official, told Higher Ed Dive in September. At the time, the agency pushed back the deadline from Oct. 1.
However, over four dozen higher education groups, led by the American Council on Education, are now urging the Education Department to give colleges until July 2025 to meet the reporting requirements of the new regulations.
Nearly 9 in 10 respondents said they support delaying the deadline, according to a recent ACE survey of 355 college presidents.
Moreover, 70% said they weren’t sure their institutions would meet the current Jan. 15 deadline because of “unclear guidance, staffing shortages, competing priorities, and technical barriers.”
The Education Department did not immediately provide a statement Monday.
Ted Mitchell, president of ACE, shared the survey results in a Friday letter to the Education Department. “It is our hope that you will take institutional concerns seriously and delay the reporting requirements until July 2025,” Mitchell wrote.
