The U.S. Department of Education Should Improve Data Reporting and Systems while Advancing its Policy Agenda to Decrease Debt and Expand Public Disclosure

As the Department continues to take important actions on various important policy matters affecting higher education – including, for example, on loan forgiveness, extensions to repayment, and rulemakings regarding gainful employment and increased student disclosures – the Department should also improve its own access to good student and programmatic data.

The Department has made important strides to improve and expand disclosure of information relating to completion, retention, debt and employability of programs and students, particularly on the College Scorecard. However, it still needs to take steps to improve its IPEDs definitions and to better separate the data of completely online and on-ground programs. Without necessary updates to their current institutional reporting systems - particularly comparing online programs with their on-ground counterparts, any additional disclosure or eligibility requirements based on data could be portrayed inaccurately.

Robert Kelchen recently highlighted the difficulties of assessing student outcomes, debt, and earnings of online program graduates in an opinion piece he wrote in Inside Higher Education and in an accompanying recent report. Hopefully, the Department will review these findings and work with institutions and other interested parties to adjust their data systems so that students and the public can better depend on the accuracy of the data presented on the College Scorecard and elsewhere.