Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Education is extending the reporting deadline for the gainful employment and financial value transparency regulations to Sept. 30, according to an agency announcement last week.
- The seven-month extension aims to give college officials more time to submit the required information and to allow institutions that have already sent in their data to make corrections.
- The Education Department has pushed back the reporting deadline several times amid concerns that colleges didn’t have enough time or guidance to provide the data required under the new regulations. This extension, the first one under the Trump administration, will be the last, the announcement said.
Dive Insight:
The Education Department originally asked colleges to submit the gainful employment and financial value transparency data by July 2024, but higher education institutions requested more time given last year’s bumpy rollout of the revamped Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
The Biden administration released final gainful employment and financial value transparency regulations in 2023.
Under the gainful employment rules, career education programs must prove that their graduates earn enough money to pay off their student loans and that at least half of them make more than workers in their state who only have high school diplomas. Programs that fail those tests risk losing their access to Title IV federal financial aid.
Although the financial value transparency regulations don’t threaten federal financial aid, they create new reporting requirements for all colleges. Under the rule, the Education Department will post data collected from institutions about their programs — such as costs and debt burdens — on a consumer-facing website to help students make informed decisions about their college attendance.
The Biden administration extended the deadline for reporting requirements three times. Despite the delays, Education Department officials said late last year that they still expected to produce data in the spring to help students select their colleges.
With its latest announcement, the Trump administration’s Education Department is delaying that timeline also.
“The Department does not plan to produce any FVT/GE metrics prior to the new deadline and will take no enforcement or other punitive actions against institutions who have been unable to complete reporting to date,” it said.
It’s so far unclear how the Trump administration will handle the gainful employment regulations. In President Donald Trump’s first term, then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded the Obama-era version of the rules, saying they unfairly targeted the for-profit college sector.
The Education Department is facing at least one lawsuit over the Biden administration’s version of the gainful employment rule. However, a federal judge earlier this month paused legal proceedings for 90 days after the new administration sought more time “to become familiar with and evaluate their position regarding the issues in the case,” according to court documents.
The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators — one of the organizations that pushed for a delay — applauded the move to extend the regulatory reporting deadline.
The change “is a sensible and welcome decision that will give financial aid offices much needed breathing room while they navigate unresolved issues in submitting their data and make necessary corrections to ensure the data they submit is accurate,” NASFAA Interim President and CEO Beth Maglione said in a statement last week.
