ED Issues Proposed Regulations for New STATS Earnings Accountability Framework
By Jill Desjean, Director of Policy Analysis
On Monday, the Department of Education (ED) released its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) with proposed regulations on the new Student Tuition and Transparency System and Earnings Accountability (STATS) framework.
The STATS framework is the product of the Accountability in Higher Education and Access through Demand-driven Workforce Pell (AHEAD) negotiated rulemaking committee held in January of this year, which was held to draft the implementing regulations for new institutional accountability for low earning outcomes provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA).
In keeping with the protocols when consensus is reached during negotiated rulemaking, the proposed regulatory text contains no changes from the draft consensus text agreed to by negotiators.
As a reminder, the STATS regulations amend the Gainful Employment and Financial Value Transparency (GE/FVT) regulations, retaining the earnings premium but eliminating the debt-to-earnings metric. It applies the earnings premium to all programs at all institution types, and results in loss of Direct Loan eligibility for programs that fail the test in two of three years. The proposed regulations allow programs that fail in a single year to teach-out currently enrolled students if the institution agrees not to enroll any new students, and to close the program. Reporting requirements are largely unchanged from the previous GE/FVT reporting.
ED acknowledges the rocky history of the GE/FVT regulations over more than a decade and notes that despite four previous iterations of GE/FVT regulations, not a single program has lost eligibility under any of the previous frameworks. The department states that, with this latest round of regulations, it believes that “treating institutions and programs consistently would reduce the likelihood of ongoing regulatory fluctuation,” and that the framework was designed to “set forth a harmonized, reasonable, data-driven, minimally burdensome, and implementable accountability framework that ensures parity across all institutions and program types” that will “withstand the test of time.”
In the NPRM, ED poses several directed questions, including a solicitation for feedback on its proposal to use IRS data as its source for earnings data in the earnings premium calculation. The department acknowledges concerns raised during negotiated rulemaking about unreported tip income and nontaxable ministerial housing allowances potentially artificially deflating the earnings of certain programs’ completers. ED reiterates the position that individuals are required to report and pay taxes on tipped earnings, and that ministerial housing allowances, while untaxed, are reported on tax forms. However, ED seeks public feedback on “whether this earnings data may be subject to other limitations that the department is not aware of, such as if certain types of income are not captured in data held by the federal government or are potentially subject to distorting factors.”
ED also asks for public comment on calculating an earnings threshold against which to measure program completer earnings for graduate programs in “uncommon fields of study and in less populated states,” where sample sizes may be so small as to produce unreliable earnings thresholds.
The NPRM addresses concerns raised during negotiations that its proposed data source for high school graduates’ earnings, the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), may include individuals who have earned a postsecondary certificate. This could potentially artificially inflate the earnings threshold to which undergraduate programs are compared. ED indicates that it has asked the Census Bureau for clarification on how undergraduate certificate holders are instructed on the ACS to report their highest level of attainment and will include what they learn in the final regulations. ED invites commenters with insight into this data to share their feedback.
Comments are due May 20. A preview of NASFAA’s comments will be published in Today’s News the week prior to the deadline.
Publication Date: 4/21/2026
You must be logged in to comment on this page.