"As colleges and universities scramble to process student financial aid applications and send out award letters, institutions want more time to comply with reporting requirements in the Education Department's new gainful employment and financial value transparency rule," Inside Higher Ed reports.

... "Karen McCarthy, vice president of public policy and federal relations at the National Association for Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), said complying with the reporting requirements will be 'a significant institutional undertaking.' Furthermore, she said, a delay wouldn’t affect the rule’s timeline for implementation."

"NASFAA first asked for a later deadline in December, along with other steps aimed at reducing the administrative burden on institutions. The request followed the Education Department’s announcement that it wouldn’t send students’ financial aid application information, or Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs), to colleges until late January. (As it turned out, the department started sending ISIRs earlier this month.)"

"McCarthy said pushing back the gainful deadline and relaxing other requirements would allow the colleges to 'clear the decks' and focus their energy on processing ISIRs to get aid offers to students as quickly as possible. The delays in the new FAFSA have further compressed the timeline for institutions in an already challenging admissions cycle."

"'Schools are stressed and occupied by the FAFSA,' she said."

... "Colleges and universities also don’t know exactly what they need to report. The final rule and a notice posted on the Federal Register in February outline what data institutions should collect, but neither is sufficient, McCarthy said."

... "McCarthy said that institutions need more specifics about how the department is defining the different reporting elements in order to build systems to gather and send the data to the department. When an earlier version of gainful took effect in July 2015, she noted, the department released a user guide in February of that year along with resources such as how to submit the data."

"'We haven’t received any of that,' she said."

NASFAA's "Notable Headlines" section highlights media coverage of financial aid to help members stay up to date with the latest news. Articles included under the notable headlines section are not written by NASFAA, but rather by external sources. Inclusion in Today's News does not imply endorsement of the material or guarantee the accuracy of information presented.

Publication Date: 3/27/2024