Education Department gives colleges three months to submit new admissions data

The Education Department is moving forward with a new dataset initiative for its annual college admissions survey, giving postsecondary schools three months to complete the extensive task. 

The new data requirement is part of the Trump administration’s broader efforts to determine whether schools use race-based preferences in admissions, though experts in educational research have raised concerns about the methodology, the speed of the rollout, and whether the numbers will be trusted upon release. 

The Office of Management and Budget on Dec. 18 approved the proposal for the National Center for Education Statistics — the agency’s statistical branch — to roll out the ACTS (Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement) survey as a new component of the agency’s annual IPEDS survey, short for Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. 

The survey will require hundreds of colleges across the country to provide seven years of college application and admissions data, including race and ethnicity, sex, family income, grant aid amounts, and more. Unlike the traditional IPEDS survey, schools are expected to compile this data into a spreadsheet and include anonymized information for every single individual who completed an application to an undergraduate or graduate program. 

James Murphy, a senior fellow focused on higher education policy at the grassroots organization Class Action, described the potential high volume of data this could involve. 

“We’re talking about data on more than half a million people at some institutions, if they even have it, and then a little bit more data if you were accepted, and then a lot more data if you were enrolled,” Murphy told FedScoop in an interview Wednesday. 

The Education Department estimated institutions will need about 200 hours to report the ACTS survey to the agency. But Murphy predicted some schools, especially smaller or regional public institutions, will likely need much longer given their limited admissions resources. The submission deadline is March 18.

Some schools may not have the funds to back up the extensive reporting, Murphy added, noting that “none of this money was budgeted because nobody knew this was happening” last year, as budgets are typically set ahead of time. 

ACTS also differs from IPEDS in that it collects graduate data. Murphy suggested many schools do not have as robust a graduate admissions staff as they do for undergraduate programs, making the ACTS survey an even heavier lift. 

The new data requirement follows a White House executive order last August that called for “great transparency” for “exposing unlawful practices and ultimately ridding society of shameful, dangerous racial hierarchies.” The order states IPEDS “requires long-overdue technological upgrades” to expand its data collection, and directed the Education secretary to “revamp the online presentation” of the college admissions data. 

Approval for the ACTS survey came just three days after the second public-comment period for the proposal was closed. The first comment period, which lasted from August to October, received more than 3,400 comments, while the second received nearly 250. 

While it is not uncommon for OMB to quickly approve a proposal after the comment period closes, industry observers said the speed at which colleges are expected to respond to new prompts casts doubt on the accuracy of the final figures.

“While this is slightly more time than a typical IPEDS reporting window, it is important to underscore that ACTS represents an entirely new data collection,” Bryan Cook, director of higher education policy at the Urban Institute, wrote to FedScoop in a statement. “Historically, new collections are piloted or provisionally collected for at least a year before full implementation. That did not occur here.” 

Murphy further suggested the Trump administration “might be shooting itself in the foot” by the quick rollout. He suggested the White House is hoping to “target” elite institutions, but also “handed colleges this incredible legal gift by making this process so chaotic and so messy and doing this in a way that has never been done before.” 

“It’s going to be fairly easy for lawyers to say, ‘Who can trust this data?’” he said.

In a letter sent to agency leadership Dec. 15, a coalition of 34 organizations echoed concerns about the accelerated timeline and noted lingering questions about data definitions and discrepancies. For example, this year’s IPEDS data collection removed options for non-binary sex categories, but some institutions might have submissions of students in this category. 

“If ACTS data are to be trustworthy and useful to the Administration and IPEDS stakeholders, these and other technical questions should be answered — informed by field input — before requiring institutions to submit data,” the letter stated. 

The addition also comes amid the Trump administration’s push to reduce the size of government and ultimately close the Education Department. Nearly half of the agency’s employees were cut last March, leaving NCES with about three employees. 

While NCES relied on third-party contractors for much of the actual IPEDS collection, former employees previously said that agency staff and technical review panels played a central role before and after the data were received. 

RTI International, a longtime research contractor of the Education Department, confirmed it is the prime contractor for the ACTS project. 

The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment this week. However, when asked last September, Madi Biedermann, the agency’s deputy assistant secretary for communications, maintained that the Institute of Education Sciences, which houses the NCES, did “none of the research” related to IPEDS.