Regulations

ICRAS 2014 1845-NEW2 – Affected Public – State, Local or Tribal Governments 2/24/2014

The Secretary proposes to amend the Student Assistance General Provisions by adding Subpart Q to 34 CFR Part 668, to establish measures for determining whether certain postsecondary educational programs lead to gainful employment in recognized occupations, and the conditions under which these educational programs remain eligible for student financial assistance programs authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended (HEA). This will be a new collection and includes proposed §668.406 – Alternative earnings appeals for debt to earnings (D/E) rates.

Section 668.406(b) – Survey requirements.

The proposed regulations would provide an institution the opportunity to make an alternate earnings appeal under §668.406(b). The appeal would only be available to challenge final D/E rates that would put the program in jeopardy of a loss of eligibility in the succeeding award year.

We estimate that public institutions would have 7 gainful employment programs in the zone and that 55 programs would be failing for a total of 62 programs. We expect that most institutions would determine that SSA data reflect accurately the earnings of students and would therefore not elect to conduct the survey. Accordingly, we estimate that for-profit institutions would submit alternate earnings appeals under the survey appeal option for 10 percent of those programs, which would equal 6 appeals annually. We estimate that conducting the survey, providing the institutional certification, and obtaining the examination-level attestation engagement report would total, on average, 100 hours of increased burden, therefore burden would increase 600 hours under OMB Control Number 1845-NEW2.

Section 668.406(c) –State sponsored data system requirements.

We estimate that there would be 55 failing GE programs at public institutions and 7 programs in the zone, for a total of 62 programs. We expect that most institutions would determine that SSA data reflect accurately the earnings of students who completed a program and would therefore not elect to submit earnings data from a State-sponsored system. Accordingly, we estimate that in 10 percent of those cases institutions would obtain earnings data from a State-sponsored system, resulting in approximately 6 appeals. We estimate that, on average each appeal would take 20 hours, including execution of an agreement for data sharing and privacy protection under FERPA between the institution and the State agency, preparing the list(s), submitting the list(s) to the appropriate State agency, reviewing the results, calculating the proposed revised D/E rates, and submitting those results to the Secretary. Therefore, burden would increase by 120 hours under OMB Control Number 1845-NEW2.

Section 668.406(d) – Low borrowing rate requirements:

We estimate that 50 percent of the total 62 programs at public institutions (7 zone programs plus 55 failing programs) or 31 programs at public institutions would submit a low borrowing rate appeal and that generally this would be an automated process, however, there would be some situations, probably at a small institution where the process could be a manual process and therefore we estimate the average amount of time to collect the data, compile and submit the low borrower rate appeal would on average be 5 hours per appeal. The estimated burden would be 155 hours (45 appeals times 5 hours per appeal) under OMB Control Number 1845-NEW2.

Section 668.406(e) – Alternate appeal procedures.

We estimated above that public institutions would have 6 alternative survey appeals annually plus 6 State-sponsored data system appeals, plus 31 low borrower rate appeals for a total of 43 appeals. We estimate that completing and submitting a notice of intent to use survey alternate earnings data, State data, or make a low borrowing rate appeal increases burden, on average, by 0.25 hours per submission or 11 hours under OMB Control 1845-NEW2.

TOTALS

Responses 86

Respondents 86

Burden Hours 886