Tag: reporting

  • Another reprieve for gainful employment, financial value transparency reporting deadline

    Another reprieve for gainful employment, financial value transparency reporting deadline

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    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.

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  • $50K threshold for college foreign gift reporting passes House panel

    $50K threshold for college foreign gift reporting passes House panel

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    Dive Brief: 

    • The House Committee on Education and Workforce voted Wednesday to advance a bill that would require colleges to report gifts and contracts valued at $50,000 or more from most foreign countries. 
    • That would lower the requirement from the current threshold of $250,000. Republicans argued that the bill, called the Deterrent Act, is needed to prevent foreign influence in higher education. 
    • The bill would also lower the reporting threshold to $0 for the “countries of concern” as determined by the U.S. Code or the secretary of education, which include China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. The proposal would bar colleges from entering into contracts with those countries unless the secretary of education issues them a waiver and renews it each year. 

    Dive Insight: 

    The Deterrent Act would amend Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, which oversees foreign gift and contract reporting requirements for colleges. Republicans on the education committee argued the measure is needed to provide more transparency. 

    A fact sheet on the bill included concerns about foreign adversaries stealing secrets from American universities and influencing student behavior. 

    The fact sheet also referenced a 2024 congressional report that accused two high-profile research institutions — University of California, Berkeley and Georgia Institute of Technology — of failing to meet the current reporting requirements through their partnerships with Chinese universities. 

    “Higher education is one of the jewels of American society,” said Rep. Michael Baumgartner, a Washington Republican who co-sponsored the bill, on Wednesday. “Unfortunately, it’s also an area that is often under attack and used by malign influences to subvert American interests.”

    Under the bill, colleges would face fines and the loss of their Title IV federal student aid funding if they didn’t comply with the reporting requirements. 

    Democrats largely voiced opposition to the measure. 

    However, they focused many of their complaints Wednesday on the Trump administration’s recent moves that have sparked outcry in the higher education sector, including cuts to the National Institutes of Health’s funding for indirect research costs. A judge temporarily blocked the cuts earlier this week. 

    “I understand and I do appreciate the intent behind the Deterrent Act, but if House Republicans and the president truly want to lead in America, and they want America to lead, they must permanently reverse the cuts to the National Institutes of Health,” said Rep. Lucy McBath, a Democrat from Georgia. “It’s not enough for us just to wait outside for the lawsuits to protect folks back home from damaging and possibly illegal orders like these.”

    Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott, the top-ranking Democrat on the committee, struck a similar tone, referencing the Trump administration’s goal of eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. 

    He noted that the authors of Project 2025 — a wide-ranging conservative policy blueprint for the Republican administration — aim to dismantle the Education Department with the stated goal of having the federal government be less involved in schools. 

    “The argument rests on the perception that the federal government is too involved in our schools, and here we are marking up bills that would give the Department of Education more responsibility to impose unfunded mandates and interfere with local schools,” Scott said. 

    The House committee advanced several other bills Wednesday, including those that would allow schools to serve whole milk and aim to end Chinese influence in K-12 education. 

    House lawmakers previously passed the Deterrent Act in 2023, though it was never put to a vote in the Senate. At the time, the American Council on Education and other higher ed groups opposed the bill, objecting in part to the large fines colleges could face for noncompliance. 

    The Republican-backed bill may face better odds in this congressional session, now that the GOP also controls the Senate and the White House.

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