Supporting_Statement_Part_A_ACTS_change_package_102925

Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) 2024-25 2025-26 through 2026-27

Supporting Statement Part A

OMB No. 1850-0582 v. 33

Submitted by:

National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)

Institute of Education Sciences

U.S. Department of Education

February 2024

Revised May 2025

Revised October 2025

Table of Contents

Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) 2024-25 2025-26 through 2026-27 1

Summary 4

Proposed Changes to the IPEDS Data Collection: 2024-25, 2025-26, and 2026-27 5

Burden Calculations 9

Section A. Justification 9

A.1. Purpose of this Submission 9

A.1.a. The Design of IPEDS 9

A.1.b. Proposed Modifications 10

A.1.c. Need for Clearance at This Time 15

A.1.d. Statutory Requirements for IPEDS Data 15

A.1.e. Executive Orders for IPEDS Data 16

A.2. Purpose and Use of IPEDS Information 16

A.2.a. Institutional Characteristics 16

A.2.b. Completions and Compliance Report 17

A.2.c. Enrollment 18

A.2.d Cost 19

A.2.e. Student Financial Aid 19

A.2.f. Graduation Rates 19

A.2.g. Finance 19

A.2.h. Human Resources 20

A.2.i. Admissions 21

A.2.j. Academic Libraries (through 2024-25) 21

A.2.k. Outcome Measures 21

A.2.l Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS)

(beginning in 2025-26) 21

A.3. Use of Technology and Other Technological Collection Techniques 21

A.4. Efforts to Identify and Avoid Duplication 22

A.5. Methods Used to Minimize Burden on Small Businesses/Entities 22

A.6. Frequency of Data Collection 23

A.7. Special Circumstances 23

A.8. Consultations outside the Agency 23

A.9. Paying Respondents 24

A.10. Assurance of Confidentiality 24

A.11. Justification for Sensitive Questions 25

A.12. Estimate of Burden 25

A.12.1 Fall Collection 27

A.12.2 Winter Collection 28

A.12.3 Fall/Winter Collection 30

A.12.4 Spring Collection 31

A.12.4 All Collections 32

A.13. Estimate of Cost Burden 33

A.14. Cost to the Federal Government 33

A.15. Reasons for Change in Burden 34

A.16. Publication Plans/Project Schedule 34

A.16.a. Schedule of Activities 34

A.16.b. Distribution Methods 36

A.17. Request to Not Display Expiration Date 37

A.18. Exceptions to the Certification 37

Tables

Table 1. Summary of Proposed Changes and Sources of Changes, by Survey Component 6

(2024-25 Changes are struck-through as they are no longer applicable) 6

Table 2. Response rates for IPEDS preparation time item, 2022-23 26

Table 3. Average 2022-23 self-reported preparation hours by experienced and new IPEDS keyholders, by IPEDS component 26

Table 4. Burden hours, Institutional Characteristics 27

Table 5. Burden hours, Completions 27

Table 6. Burden hours, 12-month Enrollment 28

Table 7. Burden hours, Student Financial Aid 28

Table 8. Burden hours, Outcome Measures 28

Table 9. Burden hours, Graduation Rates 29

Table 10. Burden hours, 200% Graduation Rates 29

Table 11. Burden hours, Admissions 29

Table 12. Burden hours, ACTS 30

Table 13. Burden hours, Cost 30

Table 14. Burden hours, Fall Enrollment 31

Table 15. Burden hours, Finance 31

Table 16. Burden hours, Human Resources 31

Table 17. Burden hours, Academic Libraries 32

Table 18. Summary of estimated response burden by survey component: 2024-25, 2025-26, and 2026-27 33

Table 19. Estimates of burden hours and costs to institutions: 2024-25, 2025-26, and 2026-27 33

Table 20. IPEDS 2024-25 planned data collection schedule 34

Table 21. IPEDS 2024-25 data collections communications/follow-up schedule 35

Appendices (separate documents)

Appendix A – Detailed Proposed Changes to Forms by IPEDS Survey Component

Appendix B – IPEDS 2024-25 Communications Package

Appendix C – IPEDS 2024-25 2025-26 New Keyholder Handbook

Appendix D – Directed Questions: SFA 2026-27 Changes

Appendix E – Response to 60-day Public Comments

Summary

The collection, use, and reporting of education data is an integral component of the mission of the U.S. Department of Education (ED). The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) is a web-based data collection system designed to collect basic data from all postsecondary institutions in the United States and the other jurisdictions. The IPEDS data collection enables the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to report on key dimensions of postsecondary education such as enrollments, degrees and other awards earned, tuition and fees, average net price, student financial aid, graduation rates, student outcomes, revenues and expenditures, faculty salaries, and staff employed.

The IPEDS web-based data collection system was implemented in 2000-01. In 2022-23, IPEDS collected data from 5,958 postsecondary institutions in the United States and the other jurisdictions that are eligible to participate in Title IV Federal financial aid programs. All Title IV institutions are required to respond to IPEDS (Section 490 of the Higher Education Amendments of 1992 [P.L. 102-325]). IPEDS allows other (non-Title IV) institutions to participate on a voluntary basis; approximately 200 non-Title IV institutions elect to respond each year. Institution closures and mergers have led to a decrease in the number of institutions in the IPEDS universe over the past few years. Due to these fluctuations, combined with the addition of new institutions, NCES uses rounded estimates for the number of institutions in the respondent burden calculations for the upcoming years (estimated 6,000 Title IV institutions plus 200 non-title IV institutions for a total of 6,200 institutions estimated to submit IPEDS data during the 2024-25 2025-26 through 2026-27 IPEDS data collections). IPEDS data are available to the public through the College Navigator and IPEDS Use the Data websites.

NCES seeks OMB approval under the Paperwork Reduction Act to continue to collect data on postsecondary institutions and make changes and clarifications to IPEDS for the 2024-25, 2025-26, and 2026-27 data collections. Current approval expires August 31, 2027 (OMB# 1850-0582 v.33). NCES encourages the public to review, at a minimum, all proposed changes, as well as to respond to the directed questions included in Attachment D.

Proposed Changes to the IPEDS Data Collection: 2024-25, 2025-26, and 2026-27

Background

Proposed changes to existing instruments were suggested by the IPEDS Technical Review Panel (TRP) and feedback from the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative (NPEC), along with NCES review of data quality reports, changes in other parts of the government requiring alignment, database improvement needs, and feedback from data reporters at institutions and other customers. Meetings of the IPEDS TRP are convened by RTI International, the current contractor for the IPEDS web-based data collection system. In general, the subject areas for the meetings are determined by legislation, emerging areas of concern in postsecondary education, and an ongoing goal of decreasing reporting burden while retaining the federal data necessary for use by policy makers and education analysts. Detailed summaries of each meeting are posted online (https://ipedstrp.rti.org/)and comments on panel suggestions are solicited. Cumulatively, two meetings of the TRP have impacted the changes included in this clearance package, as summarized in table 1.

On August 7, 2025, President Trump signed the Ensuring Transparency in Higher Education Admissions Executive Action. This memorandum requires “the Secretary of Education, in coordination with NCES” to “expand the scope of required reporting to provide adequate transparency into admissions.” In response to this Executive Action, Secretary McMahon issued a directive to NCES to initiate changes to IPEDS for the 2025-26 data collection. Then, ED developed data elements for a new IPEDS survey: the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS). The ACTS will be a new survey, not a revision to an existing survey component.

A summary of proposed changes to IPEDS in 2024-25, 2025-26, and 2026-27, including the addition of the ACTS, are outlined in table 1 on the following page, along with information about the sources of the changes. More detailed information is available in Appendix A and in the survey forms.

A Note about the Timing and Implementation of the Changes

NCES implemented some proposed changes in 2024-25, but other changes are proposed for the 2025-26 data collection with a “preview” year starting in 2024-25 to allow institutions more time to prepare to submit the required data. With the exception of the ACTS, new items and associated reporting instructions will be available for preview through the Survey Materials webpage at https://surveys.nces.ed.gov/ipeds/public/survey-materials/index.

The Executive Action mandates that the ACTS be implemented in the 2025-26 school year, within 120 days of the August 7 Executive Action date. Because of the requirements of the Executive Action and Directive, a preview year will not apply to the ACTS. Additionally, ACTS items and associated reporting instructions will not be available for preview through the Survey Materials webpage.

Table 1. Summary of Proposed Changes and Sources of Changes, by Survey Component (2024-25 Changes are struck-through as they are no longer applicable)
Part of IPEDS affected		Implementation Year	Overview of Changes		Source(s) of Changes
Institutional Characteristics (IC)/Registration/Identification (ID)		2024-25	Removed the Cost of Attendance and Tuition Elements to the new Cost survey component.		Alignment and quality control.
			Combined remaining IC elements with IC Header elements.		Alignment and quality control.
			Moved Dual Enrollment screening question to the impacted survey component.		Alignment and quality control.
		2025-26	Moved Admissions screening question to the impacted survey component.		Alignment and quality control.
			Removed Academic Libraries Expenses screening question.		Cease of the Academic Libraries survey component.
Completions (C)		2024-25	Revised the Sex Unknown or Another Gender than Provided Categories screen and instructions.		Alignment and quality control.
12-month Enrollment (E12)		2024-25	Added dual enrollment screening question to E12 (formerly on IC Header).		Alignment and quality control.
			Added a new FAQ to better clarify the relationship between “transfer-in” enrollment status on the Fall Enrollment (EF) and 12-month Enrollment (E12) components and the “non-first-time” cohort on the Outcome Measures (OM) component.		Technical Review Panel #69.
			Removed references to ‘Non-first-time.’		Technical Review Panel #69.
			Revised the Sex Unknown or Another Gender than Provided Categories screen and instructions.		Alignment and quality control.
Student Financial Aid (SFA)		2024-25	Removed the cost of attendance and net price calculation elements to the new Cost (CST) survey component.		Alignment and quality control; feedback from NPEC research.
		2025-26	Changed Section 1 of the SFA survey component to collect the same student counts and aid amounts for categories and sub-categories of undergraduate students.		Alignment and quality control; feedback from NPEC research; Technical Review Panel #61.
		2026-27	No changes currently proposed, please see Appendix D to respond to questions about potential future changes.
Cost (CST)		2024-25	New survey component encompassing the elements needed to calculate net price (moved from IC and SFA) as well as other tuition and fee questions from IC and SFA.		Alignment and quality control; feedback from NPEC research.
			Added questions to determine and make publicly available the information on whether postsecondary institutions ask for other financial information not on the FAFSA form and whether they collect asset data even when students qualify for having their assets exempted from the federal need analysis as this information required by the FAFSA Simplification Act.		The FAFSA Simplification Act.
Outcome Measures (OM)		2024-25	Clarified instructions about including students who change from non-degree/non-certificate-seeking to degree/certificate-seeking at the IPEDS reporting institution.		Technical Review Panel #69.
			Changed the term “Attendance level” to “Cohort status” in the instructions to improve clarity.		Alignment and quality control.
			Revised FAQ about “non-first-time” degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate students.		Technical Review Panel #69.
			Added a new example to FAQ about students who change from non-degree/non-certificate-seeking to degree/certificate-seeking at the IPEDS reporting institution.		Technical Review Panel #69.
			Added additional information to FAQ about resources for tracking subsequent enrollment.		IPEDS Help Desk recommendations for OM.
			Revised definition for “Non-first-time student (undergraduate)” Glossary term to improve clarity.		Technical Review Panel #69.
Graduation Rates (GR)	2024-25			Removed the Sex Unknown or Another Gender than Provided Categories question.	Privacy concerns; ability of institutions to change data submitted numerous years prior
200% Graduation Rates (GR200)	2024-25			No changes	N/A
Admissions (ADM)	2024-25			Revised the Sex Unknown or Another Gender than Provided Categories screen and instructions.	Alignment and quality control.
				Added clarification about meaning of “considered”.	Feedback received during the 60—day public comment period.
				Revised FAQ #12 on reporting “legacy status” for clarity.	Feedback received during the 60—day public comment period.
				Added instructions to the Admissions Considerations screen to describe the options and clarify meaning of “considered”.	Feedback received during the 60—day public comment period.
	2025-26			Added race/ethnicity for admits and accepts.	TRP on Modernizing the Admissions Component (June 2021).
				Added collection of data for non-first-time students.
				Added collection of data for institutions that are open admission.
				Added collection of data on early admission and early decision policies.
Human Resources (HR)	2024-25			Human Resources Instructions for Degree-granting Institutions with Less than 15 Full-Time Staff and Non-degree-granting institutions: removed references to New Hires in the instructions.	Alignment and quality control.
				Added to Part G4 of instructions: Please report full year salaries, even if the employee did not work a full year (regardless of when hired).	Alignment and quality control.
Academic Libraries (AL)	2025-26			Academic Libraries (AL) survey component is being removed for 2025-26.	Decreasing burden for institutions. NCES budgetary and staffing limitations.
Fall Enrollment (EF)	2024-25			Added a new FAQ to better clarify the relationship between “transfer-in” enrollment status on the Fall Enrollment (EF) and 12-month Enrollment (E12) components and the “non-first-time” cohort on the Outcome Measures (OM) component.	Technical Review Panel #69.
				Removed references to ‘Non-first-time.’	Technical Review Panel #69.
				Clarified in Part E – First-time Bachelor’s Cohort Retention Rates (Line E4) that students from Fall 2023 cohort who completed their bachelor’s degree as of Fall 2024 are to be reported as retained.	Alignment and quality control.
				Added a note to the instructions in Part D to indicate that high school students enrolled in college courses for credit should not be included in any calculations to determine an institution’s entering class.	Alignment and quality control.
				Revised the Sex Unknown or Another Gender than Provided Categories screen and instructions.	Alignment and quality control.
Finance (F)	2024-25			Clarified for GASB reporting institutions (Part C-2, Line 10) the exclusion of the private awards to students where the selection of the student recipient is not made by institutions.	Alignment and quality control.
				Replaced references to the State Student Incentive Grants (SSIG) with ‘Leveraging Education Assistance Partnerships or LEAP (formerly State Student Incentive Grant or SSIG)’.	Alignment and quality control.
Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS)	2025-26			New survey	Ensuring Transparency in Higher Education Admissions Executive Action Secretary of Education's Directive to NCES
Cross-cutting changes	2024-25			Additions to IPEDS Glossary: Cost (CST), Student aid assets, attendance status, student level.	Quality control, TRP #69 (October 2023).
				Edits to IPEDS Glossary: Transfer-in student, transfer-out student, non-first-time student (undergraduate), continuing/returning student (undergraduate), entering students (undergraduate), undergraduate student.	Quality control, TRP #69 (October 2023).

Detailed descriptions of the proposed changes are provided in Appendix A.

Burden Calculations

The collection of voluntary information on the time it took institutions to submit their IPEDS data was implemented in the 2012-13 data collection. In 2017, NCES contracted with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to conduct cognitive interviews with IPEDS administrators to develop better questions about how long it takes to complete IPEDS data reporting process. Based on findings from that study, NCES updated the questions it asks of institutions regarding IPEDS reporting burden. More information about this study, updated findings on reported burden, and full burden calculations based on the information collected in 2022-23 can be found in section A.12 of this document.

Historical voluntary information regarding the time it took institutions to submit their IPEDS data and the cognitive interviews conducted for the burden reporting questions are not available for the ACTS because the ACTS is a new survey component being developed for the 2025-26 data collection. More information about the burden calculations for the ACTS can be found in section A.12 of this document.

Section A. Justification

A.1. Purpose of this Submission

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is seeking clearance for the 2024-25, 2025-26, and 2026-27 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data collections. Current clearance covers the 2024-25 through 2026-27 collections and is due to expire on August 31, 2027. We are requesting to make changes to multiple survey components and other updates. We are also requesting to add the new ACTS survey component.

A.1.a. The Design of IPEDS

Related Background Information. IPEDS was developed to address technical problems with previous postsecondary education statistical programs, including the Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS) and the Vocational Education Data System (VEDS). IPEDS was designed to collect accurate, reliable, and timely data from the entire postsecondary universe. Although it was based on the HEGIS model, which provides institution-level data submitted either directly to NCES by the institution or through a central or state coordinating office, the IPEDS design allows for varying institution types. The institution-level data collection allows for aggregation of results at various levels and permits significant controls on data quality to be exercised by NCES.

IPEDS Survey Components. The IPEDS system consists of several survey components that obtain and disseminate information on who provides postsecondary education (institutions), who participates in it and completes it (students), what programs are offered and what programs are completed, and the resources involved in the provision of institutionally based postsecondary education, both human and financial. The components include:

Through 2024-25	2024-25	2025-26 and beyond
Institutional Characteristics (IC)	Institutional Characteristics (IC)	Institutional Characteristics (IC)
Completions (C)	Completions (C)	Completions (C)
Fall Enrollment (EF)	Fall Enrollment (EF)	Fall Enrollment (EF)
12-month Enrollment (E12)	12-month Enrollment (E12)	12-month Enrollment (E12)
Admissions (ADM)	Admissions (ADM)	Admissions (ADM)
Student Financial Aid (SFA)	Student Financial Aid (SFA)	Student Financial Aid (SFA)
Graduation Rates (GR)	Graduation Rates (GR)	Graduation Rates (GR)
Graduation Rates 200 (GR200)	Graduation Rates 200 (GR200)	Graduation Rates 200 (GR200)
Outcome Measures (OM)	Outcome Measures (OM)	Outcome Measures (OM)
Human Resources (HR)	Human Resources (HR)	Human Resources (HR)
Finance (F)	Finance (F)	Finance (F)
Academic Libraries (AL)	Cost (CST)	Cost (CST)
	Academic Libraries (AL)	Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS)

A.1.b. Proposed Modifications

1. Data Collection Method. We are proposing to continue using the IPEDS web-based data collection for all components except the new ACTS survey component, for which we propose a different data collection method described later in this section.

Data collection for all survey components is organized into three phases based on data availability at the institutions: Fall, Winter, and Spring.

The Fall collection survey components:

• Institutional Characteristics

• Completions

• 12-month Enrollment

• Cost Section 1 (Cost of attendance and other tuition and fees)

The Winter and Spring survey components open simultaneously to allow respondents to submit Spring data early if they wish to do so.

The Winter collection survey components:

• Student Financial Aid

• Cost Sections 2-3 (Financial aid numbers and net price calculation)

• Graduation Rates

• Graduation Rates 200

• Outcome Measures

• Admissions

• Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS)

The Spring collection survey components:

• Fall Enrollment

• Finance

• Human Resources

• Academic Libraries (through 2024-25; removed starting 2025-26)

Institutions can enter data manually on a web-based form or upload a file containing the data. In many instances, prior-year data are provided for comparison purposes. The data are edited as they are entered into the system, and respondents must either correct any errors identified or enter an explanation to submit their response to NCES. This process shortens data processing time, increases data quality, and reduces burden on institutions by precluding the need for repeated callbacks from NCES contractors. The IPEDS data collection is accessible to persons with disabilities.

For the ACTS survey component, institutions will be asked to prepare student-level data files that are free of direct student identifiers. They will be provided with a file template containing the required data elements along with a detailed data dictionary defining each variable, the allowable values for each variable, and instructions for how to use the file template. (See the ACTS package for the data dictionary.)

Institutions will have two options for submitting their ACTS data:

1) Securely transmit the completed file template containing the student-level data to RTI, or

2) Run provided Python programming scripts locally to produce an aggregate file from their prepared student-level file. The resulting aggregate data file will then be uploaded to the IPEDS Data Collection System.

All institutions, regardless of which option they choose, will begin by downloading the file templates described above and completing them by filling in their student-level data, free of direct student identifiers, offline.

Institutions who choose option 1 will return to the ACTS web application and upload their completed student record files. The application will perform the calculations needed to produce the values required by the Secretary’s Directive. The files will be programmatically checked for errors such as invalid values or missing data, among other quality checks. If errors arise, institutions will be provided with an error report informing them of problems with their file. They will then update their student-level file and re-upload it to the ACTS web application. After a successful upload and run of the calculation program, institutions will have the opportunity to review the calculations and aggregations resulting from their submission and identify if any corrections need to be made (See ACTS package for a sample data review report.) If an institution sees an error in the calculated file, they will need to correct the error in the student-level file and repeat the upload process. Once a successful aggregate file has been produced, institutions will download the file from the ACTS web application to upload into the IPEDS Data Collection System.

Institutions who choose option 2 will be provided with the necessary scripts that will run the quality checks and the calculation program and produce the aggregate file and data review report on the institution’s local machine. The scripts will perform the same error checks and calculations to produce the same aggregate file containing all the values required by the Secretary’s Directive as the program in option 1. Institutions will check for errors and make any corrections in their student-level file before rerunning the scripts. Once a successful aggregate file has been produced, institutions will upload the resulting aggregate data file into the IPEDS Data Collection System.

After uploading the aggregate data to the IPEDS Data Collection System, additional quality control checks will be completed and if any errors or discrepancies are found, an error report will be generated, and the institution will be notified. The institution may fix the errors by updating the student-level data and re-processing the file via options 1 or 2 above, or they will have the opportunity to provide an explanation as to why there is a discrepancy in the aggregate data file.

RTI will store the student level files until all data quality checking and processing is complete, after which the student level files will be destroyed. Student level files will not be transmitted to the Department. Data collection for ACTS will be completed during the IPEDS Winter data collection.

2. Data Content. We are proposing considerable additions in data content over the next 3 years. The formats for reporting IPEDS data are very similar to those used for the 2001-02 through 2024-25 data collection cycles.

Changes to data content may be informed by IPEDS Technical Review Panels (TRPs). The IPEDS TRP was formed to assist NCES contractors in a variety of ways including: making suggestions for updating the survey components with items that are more relevant to current postsecondary issues; discussing universe definitions; suggesting ways IPEDS can better serve the institutions and respondents; discussing outcomes and products; and discussing current issues. Historically, the IPEDS TRP generally meets two to three times a year to discuss various topics of interest to the community of IPEDS data providers and data users. How the panels work:

• issue/topic is identified;

• panelists with expertise on the topic are invited to attend the meeting;

• a background paper is prepared by a consultant and distributed to panel members for review prior to the meeting;

• meetings are held and the topics are discussed at length;

• discussion and any suggestions are summarized and posted to the IPEDS website;

• the contractor accepts comments from the public on the topic;

• when comments are received, they are summarized and sent to NCES; and

• a document is posted to the website that includes a summary of comments and NCES/IPEDS’ intent to respond and/or implement actions because of the comments.

No items suggested by the IPEDS TRP will be added to the collection without public comment and review and subsequent approval by OMB.

There will not be a TRP held to discuss the data content of the ACTS. The data content of the ACTS is determined by the Secretary of Education’s directive to NCES that was issued after the signing of the Executive Memo entitled “Ensuring Transparency in Higher Education Admissions.” The data elements are as follows:

Undergraduate:

1. Counts of applicants, admitted students, and enrolled students overall and for each race-sex pair.

2. Counts of applicants, admitted students, and enrolled students, overall and for each race-sex pair, who fall into each of the following income groups: $0-$30,000; $30,001-$58,000; $58,001-$94,000; $94,001-$153,000; $153,001 or more; and unknown.

3. For all undergraduate applicants regardless of race and sex, the following quintile thresholds:

   1. Secondary school unweighted GPA

   2. SAT math

   3. SAT reading

   4. SAT overall

   5. ACT math

   6. ACT English

   7. ACT composite score

4. Counts of applicants, admitted students, and enrolled students that fall into each secondary school unweighted GPA and each entrance test score quintile established in C.

5. Counts of admitted students that were offered admissions during early action, early decision, or regular admissions, overall and for each race-sex pair.

6. For all applicants, admitted students, and enrolled students in each race-sex pair, the following quintile thresholds:

   1. Secondary school unweighted GPA

   2. SAT math score

   3. SAT reading score

   4. SAT overall score

   5. ACT math score

   6. ACT English score

   7. ACT composite score

   8. Household income

7. Counts of enrolled students, overall and for each race-sex pair, disaggregated by:

   1. Pell Grant eligibility (eligible, not eligible, or unknown)

   2. Parent education level (parent has or has not completed college, or unknown)

8. Counts of enrolled students, overall and for each race-sex pair, who took at least one remedial course, disaggregated by:

   1. SAT and/or ACT score quintile

   2. Secondary school unweighted GPA quintile

   3. National household income quintile

9. Counts of enrolled students, overall and for each race-sex pair, who took at least one continuing education course, disaggregated by:

   1. SAT and/or ACT score quintile

   2. Secondary school unweighted GPA quintile

   3. National household income quintile

10. The average cumulative GPA of all enrolled students at the end of their first year, overall and for each race-sex pair, disaggregated by:

    1. SAT and/or ACT score quintile

    2. Secondary school unweighted GPA quintile

    3. National household income quintile

11. Counts of enrolled students, overall and for each race-sex pair, who were awarded any institutional grant aid or who received any institutional grant aid, disaggregated by:

    1. SAT and/or ACT score quintile

    2. Secondary school unweighted GPA quintile

    3. National household income quintile

    4. Whether the student was admitted during early action, early decision, or the regular admissions process

12. Among students who were awarded or who received any institutional grant aid, the average amount of institutional grant aid awarded and received, overall and for each race-sex pair and disaggregated by:

    1. SAT and/or ACT score quintile

    2. Secondary school unweighted GPA quintile

    3. National household income quintile

    4. Whether the student was admitted during early action, early decision, or the regular admissions process

13. Counts of enrolled students, overall and for each race-sex pair, who were awarded merit-based institutional grant aid or who received merit-based institutional grant aid, disaggregated by:

    1. SAT and/or ACT score quintile

    2. Secondary school unweighted GPA quintile

    3. National household income quintile

    4. Whether the student was admitted during early action, early decision, or the regular admissions process.

14. Counts of enrolled students, overall and for each race-sex pair, who were awarded need-based institutional grant aid or who received need-based institutional grant aid, disaggregated by:

    1. SAT and/or ACT score quintile

    2. Secondary school unweighted GPA quintile

    3. National household income quintile

    4. Whether the student was admitted during early action, early decision, or the regular admissions process.

15. Among students who were awarded or who received need-based institutional grant aid, the average amount of need-based institutional grant aid awarded and received, overall and for each race-sex pair and disaggregated by:

    1. SAT and/or ACT score quintile

    2. Secondary school unweighted GPA quintile

    3. National household income quintile

    4. Whether the student was admitted during early action, early decision, or the regular admissions process

16. Among students who were awarded or who received merit-based institutional grant aid, the average amount of merit-based institutional grant aid awarded and received, overall and for each race-sex pair and disaggregated by:

    1. SAT and/or ACT score quintile

    2. Secondary school unweighted GPA quintile

    3. National household income quintile

    4. Whether the student was admitted during early action, early decision, or the regular admissions process

17. Counts of enrolled students, overall and for each race-sex pair, who were awarded any local, state, or federal government grant aid or who received any local, state, or federal government grant aid, disaggregated by:

    1. SAT and/or ACT score quintile

    2. Secondary school unweighted GPA quintile

    3. National household income quintile

    4. Whether the student was admitted during early action, early decision, or the regular admissions process

18. Among students who were awarded or who received any local, state, or federal government grant aid, the average amount of local, state, or federal government grant aid awarded and received, overall and for each race-sex pair and disaggregated by:

    1. SAT and/or ACT score quintile

    2. Secondary school unweighted GPA quintile

    3. National household income quintile

    4. Whether the student was admitted during early action, early decision, or the regular admissions process

19. The “price before aid” for all full-time, first-time degree seeking aided and unaided undergraduate students where “price before aid” is the listed amount of tuition and fees.

20. Among the bachelor’s degree or equivalent seeking cohort, the graduation rates at 100% of normal time and at 150% of normal time for each race-sex pair and disaggregated by:

    1. SAT and/or ACT score quintile

    2. Secondary school unweighted GPA quintile

21. The average final cumulative GPA of completers, overall and for each race-sex pair.

Graduate:

22. In each credential level (master’s, doctor’s degree research/scholarship, doctor’s degree professional practice, postbaccalaureate and post-master’s certificates) - field of study pair (defined for ACTS by the Secretary of Education as: Arts & Humanities (CIP codes: 4, 5, 16, 23, 24, 30, 38, 39, 50, 54); Education (CIP code: 13); Public Service (CIP codes: 25, 42, 43, 44); Agriculture, Consumer Services, and Trades (CIP codes: 1, 3, 9, 10, 12, 19, 31, 46, 47, 48, 49); Business (CIP code: 52); Other Social Sciences (CIP codes: 45.01, 45.02, 45.03, 45.04, 45.05, 45.07, 45.09, 45.11, 45.12, 45.13, 45.14, 45.99); Economics/Political Science (CIP codes: 45.06, 45.10); STEM (CIP codes: 11, 14, 15, 26, 27, 28, 29, 40, 41); Health (CIP code: 51); and Law (CIP code: 22) counts of applicants, admitted students, and enrolled students for each race-sex pair.

23. In each credential level (master’s, doctor’s degree research/scholarship, doctor’s degree professional practice, postbaccalaureate and post-master’s certificates) - field of study pair (arts and humanities; education; public service; agriculture; consumer services and trades; business; economics and political science; other social sciences; health; and law) counts of applicants, admitted students, and enrolled students for each race-sex pair who fall into each of the following income groups: $0-$30,000; $30,001-$58,000; $58,001-$94,000; $94,001-$153,000; $153,001 or more; and unknown.

24. For all graduate applicants regardless of race and sex, the following quintile thresholds for each credential-field of study pair:

    1. GRE score

    2. LSAT score

    3. MCAT score

25. Counts of applicants, admitted students, and enrolled students that fall into each entrance test score quintile established in X for each credential level-field of study pair.

    1. GRE score

    2. LSAT score

    3. MCAT score

26. For all applicants, admitted students, and enrolled students in each race-sex pair in each credential-field of study pair, the following quintile thresholds:

    1. GRE score

    2. LSAT score

    3. MCAT score

    4. Household income

27. Counts of enrolled students, overall and for each race-sex pair within each credential-field of study pair, who were awarded any institutional grant aid or who received any institutional grant aid, disaggregated by:

    1. National household income quintile

28. Among students who were awarded or who received any institutional grant aid, the average amount of institutional grant aid awarded and received, overall and for each race-sex pair within each credential-field of study pair disaggregated by:

    1. National household income quintile

29. Counts of enrolled students, overall and for each race-sex pair within each credential-field of study pair, who were awarded any local, state, or federal government grant aid or who received any local, state, or federal government grant aid, disaggregated by:

    1. National household income quintile

30. Among students who were awarded or who received any local, state, or federal government grant aid, the average amount of local, state, or federal government grant aid awarded and received, overall and for each race-sex pair within each credential-field of study pair disaggregated by:

    1. National household income quintile

31. The “price before aid” for all first-year, full-time aided and unaided graduate students, where “price before aid” is the listed amount of tuition and fees for each credential-field of study pair.

32. The average cumulative GPA of all enrolled students at the end of their first year, overall and for each race-sex pair.

33. The average final cumulative GPA of completers, overall and for each race-sex pair.

A.1.c. Need for Clearance at This Time

Clearance helps ensure that IPEDS maintains a consistent set of data items to collect data from the various institutions at the needed time and with the needed detail. This is important because the utility and quality of data collected in one survey component in some cases are dependent upon, and in all cases are enhanced by, data collected in other survey components. Internal consistency and the inherent relationships among IPEDS survey components also permit reliability indicators to be established for many of the IPEDS data elements. Having the capability for assessing reliability on an ongoing basis and, in turn, being able to address individual and systemic problems as they occur will result in significantly better postsecondary education data. Moreover, the concept of a data system rather than a series of standalone, independent survey components, enables elimination of duplication of effort, thereby reducing response burden. The web-based data collection system will continue to allow NCES to comply with the Higher Education Act (HEA), which required the redesign of the data collection system to improve the timeliness and quality of IPEDS data by increasing the efficiency of data collection.

Additionally, clearance will update the IPEDS burden estimates, reflecting revisions resulting from institutional estimates that were submitted voluntarily during the 2022-23 data collection, and reflecting the addition of the ACTS Survey Component.

A.1.d. Statutory Requirements for IPEDS Data

General Mandate. IPEDS, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, plays a major role in responding to the Center's Congressional mandate under the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (20 U.S.C. §9573).

Mandatory Reporting for Institutions with Program Participation Agreements. The completion of all IPEDS surveys, in a timely and accurate manner, is mandatory for all institutions that participate in or are applicants for participation in any federal financial assistance program authorized by Title IV of the HEA of 1965, as amended. The completion of the surveys is mandated by 20 USC 1094, Section 487(a)(17) and 34 CFR 668.14(b)(19).

Vocational Education Data. IPEDS responds to certain of the requirements pursuant to Section 421(a)(1) of the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act. The data related to vocational program completions are collected from those postsecondary institutions known to provide occupationally specific vocational education.

Data on Race/Ethnicity and Sex of Students. The collection and reporting of racial/ethnic data on students and completers are mandatory for all institutions that receive, are applicants for, or expect to be applicants for federal financial assistance as defined in the Department of Education (ED) regulations implementing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (34 CFR 100.13), or defined in any ED regulation implementing Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972. NCES has implemented the new reporting requirements for race/ethnicity, and use of the new race/ethnicity aggregate reporting categories was mandatory as of the collection of 2010-11 data.

Data on Race/Ethnicity and Sex of Staff. The collection and reporting of racial/ethnic data on the Human Resources (HR) component are mandatory for all institutions that receive, are applicants for, or expect to be applicants for federal financial assistance as defined in the ED regulations implementing Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (34 CFR 100.12). The collection of data are also mandated by Public Law 88-352, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended by the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 (29 CFR 1602, subparts O, P, and Q).

Student Right-to-Know. Sections 668.41, 668.45, and 668.48 of the Student Assistance General Provision were amended to implement the Student Right-to-Know Act, as amended by the Higher Education Amendments of 1991 and further by the Higher Education Technical Amendments of 1993 and 1999. These final regulations require an institution that participates in any student financial assistance program under Title IV of the HEA of 1965, as amended, to disclose information about graduation or completion rates to current and prospective students. Data must also be reported to the Secretary of Education; this is accomplished through the IPEDS Graduation Rates (GR) survey component.

Consumer Information. Section 101 of the HEA amendments of 1965 (P.L. 105-244) requires that NCES collect the following information from institutions of higher education: tuition and fees; cost of attendance; average amount of financial assistance received by type of aid, and the number of students receiving each type.

Section 132 of the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-315) requires that ED “make publicly available on the College Navigator website, in simple and understandable terms,” information regarding enrollments, degree completions, admissions, net price, college costs, students with disabilities, graduation rates, and many additional consumer information items.

A.1.e. Executive Orders for IPEDS Data

Ensuring Transparency in Higher Education Admissions Executive Memoranda. This executive action, signed on August 7, 2025, requires “the Secretary of Education, in coordination with NCES” to “expand the scope of required reporting to provide adequate transparency into admissions.” This executive memoranda was followed by a directive from Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to NCES that specified the data elements that must be collected in the new survey. This directive includes the following specifications:

• “the Department will collect data disaggregated by race and sex relating to the applicant pool, admitted cohort, and enrolled cohort at the undergraduate level, and for specific graduate and professional programs”

• “Institutions will also be required to report quantitative measures of applicants and admitted students’ academic achievement such as standardized test scores, GPAs, first-generation-college student status, and other applicant characteristics, for each race-and-sex pair;” and

• “include data for each race-and-sex pair’s graduation rates, final GPAs, financial aid offered, financial aid provided, and other relevant measures.”

This data collection will be accomplished through the new Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS), which is being submitted for clearance in this package.

A.2. Purpose and Use of IPEDS Information

IPEDS provides NCES with the basic data needed to describe the size of the postsecondary enterprise in terms of students enrolled, staff employed, dollars expended, and degrees earned. The IPEDS universe also provides the institutional sampling frame used in most other postsecondary surveys such as the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS). Each of these surveys uses the IPEDS institutional universe for its first stage sample and relies on IPEDS data on enrollment, completions, or staff to weight its second stage sample.

In addition to use within NCES and other areas of ED, IPEDS data are heavily relied on by Congress, other federal agencies, state governments, education providers, professional associations, private businesses, media, military, and interested individuals. Finally, IPEDS data are used in the IPEDS Data Feedback Reports, annual reports that are sent to all postsecondary institutions. They contain data and figures comparing each institution to a group of “comparison” institutions, using a variety of IPEDS data variables and derived variables, and are electronically mailed to the Chief Executive Officer of each institution. The reports serve as a means of highlighting the utility of IPEDS data, as well as providing comparative data for institutions to use in meeting their institutional goals relative to their postsecondary “peers.”

Additional uses of IPEDS data, specific to individual survey components, include those listed below.

A.2.a. Institutional Characteristics

Institutional Characteristics (IC) data are the foundation of the entire IPEDS system. These data elements constitute the primary information that is necessary to interrelate and understand other descriptive kinds of statistical data about education, such as enrollments, staff, graduates, and finance. The information is essential to: (1) establishing the universe control file for IPEDS and (2) developing data collection sampling frames. The IPEDS universe is used as the sampling frame for many other NCES studies, including the NPSAS.

In addition to the need for these data within NCES and ED (Title III and HEA programs and the Office for Civil Rights use data from IPEDS), other federal agencies rely on the database and the resulting list of postsecondary institutions. NCES has utilized IPEDS data in fulfilling past information requests from the Air Force; the Immigration and Naturalization Service; the Department of Defense (including recruiting offices of all Armed Services); the Departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture, and Labor; the National Science Foundation; the Veterans Administration; the Social Security Administration; EEOC; and members of Congress. NCES continues to fulfill information requests as they are received, and has also significantly increased the volume of IPEDS data available on its public websites, allowing end users increased access to current and historic IPEDS data.

Additionally, NCES makes available on College Navigator data provided by the Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE) and the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) for the purpose of disseminating relevant information to consumers. These enhancements include information on accreditation, varsity athletics, cohort default rates, 90/10 data, and campus security data.

A.2.b. Completions and Compliance Report

IPEDS information on the number of students who complete a postsecondary education program by type of program and level of award constitutes the only national source of information on the availability and location of highly trained manpower. Types of programs are categorized according to the Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP). The CIP is a taxonomic coding scheme that contains titles and descriptions of instructional programs, primarily at the postsecondary level. Business and industry, the military, and other groups that need to recruit individuals with particular skills use these data extensively. The data also help satisfy the mandate in the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act for information on completions in postsecondary vocational education programs.

Information on completions in postsecondary education programs has been used extensively, as in the following examples.

• ED and OPE use these data to respond to public inquiries regarding degrees awarded by different types of institutions, and for reference guides in preparation for budget justifications.

• The Department of Labor and Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) use these data in preparing the Occupational Outlook Handbook and in matching projections of labor supply and demand.

• State Occupational Information Coordinating Committees also use these data on an annual basis for assisting citizens in career planning and in making state and local area estimates of trained manpower.

• The Congressional Research Service and Library of Congress use these data to supply information to members of Congress to assist them in assessing the changing and developing needs of the nation with respect to manpower and postsecondary education.

• The Department of Agriculture and Office of Higher Education Programs use these data to include program data on agriculture and home economics in various reports.

• The National Science Foundation and Division of Science Resource Studies rely heavily on IPEDS Completions survey data, in conjunction with their own surveys, to study degree production, particularly in science, mathematics, and engineering.

• The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) uses these data to provide guidance to other federal agencies in its recruiting efforts.

• The Office for Civil Rights (Department of Education) uses these data in reviewing institutional compliance with antidiscrimination statutes.

• The Department of Justice uses these data when court suits are brought in civil rights cases.

• The Department of Defense uses these data to identify institutions training significant numbers of individuals in occupational programs, particularly those with military-related skills.

• Private firms use these data for recruiting trained manpower and large corporations use the racial/ethnic completions data to identify the potential pool of new employees for equal opportunity employment (EEO) requirements.

• States also use data by program to compare changes in degree patterns among states and for manpower planning and projections.

• The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has used these data in developing its institutional classification schemes.

A.2.c. Enrollment

Enrollment is probably the most basic parameter in postsecondary education because it indicates access to an educational experience that is potentially both economically and socially advantageous. Because enrollment patterns differ greatly among the various types of postsecondary institutions, there is a need for both different measures of enrollment and several indicators of access. Aspects of enrollment data collection are described below.

1. Fall Enrollment and Compliance Report. Fall enrollment is the traditional measure of student access to higher education, and IPEDS continues this important statistical series. ED uses fall enrollment data in program planning and for setting funding allocation standards for such legislatively controlled programs as the College Work-Study Program and others. NCES collects fall enrollment data through this component of IPEDS to update its annual college projections, its mandated annual Condition of Education report, and the Digest of Education Statistics. The Bureau of the Census, the National Science Foundation, and most state education agencies depend heavily on annual fall enrollment data for such uses as economic and financial planning, manpower forecasting, and policy formulation. Educational and professional associations also use IPEDS enrollment data for a wide variety of purposes. The race/ethnicity and sex data by level are necessary for the Office for Civil Rights (ED) to perform functions mandated by Title VI and Title IX.

2. Residence of First-Time Students (required in even-numbered years). IPEDS collects data on the counts of first-time freshmen by state of residence, including data on the number who graduated from high school the previous year. These data are used to monitor the flow of students across state lines and calculate college-going rates by state. The primary purpose of these data is to provide states with more complete information about the attendance of their residents in college than states can collect in their own surveys. States can then use resulting data to estimate the college-going rates of their high school graduates, examine problems caused by excessive student out-migration or in-migration, and determine the types of institutions that attract their citizens to other states. Such data are critical for postsecondary education planning at the state level.

States and various associations have made it clear that only a national agency can collect the data needed to examine residence and migration patterns. There are a number of national- and state-level issues that can be addressed by collecting and disseminating residence data. These needs include the following:

• planning/budgeting for institutional support (public and private);

• planning for shifting institutional demand by region, state, and institution;

• monitoring or establishing out-of-state quotas; and

• reassessing state support to private institutions serving large numbers of in-state students.

3. Age Data (required in odd-numbered years). In 1987, NCES began collecting fall enrollment by age of student on a biennial basis. These data offer insight into the relationship between the changing demographics of college-going cohorts and enrollment in different types of postsecondary institutions; they permit detailed projections of enrollment by institutional type and by age. Because a student's dependency status is strongly related to age, the data can also be used to provide estimates of the number of independent/dependent students attending a postsecondary institution, which should be useful in financial aid modeling and projections. In addition, the Department of Defense U.S. Military Entrance Processing Command has indicated a strong need for these data to identify institutions with a sufficient number of recruitment-age students to make recruiting efforts cost effective.

4. Total Entering Class. NCES began collecting total entering class data in the 2002-03 data collection, based on a recommendation from the TRP. These data are collected to address concerns that the cohort used by the GR component is not representative of an institution’s entering class because the GR cohort is composed only of full-time, first-time students. The collection of a total entering class allows for a more accurate picture of incoming students, and permits the calculation of the fall GR cohort as a proportion of the total entering student body.

5. Retention Rates. NCES began collecting retention rates data in the 2003-04 data collection, based on a need identified by the TRP. Retention rates data provide an indicator of postsecondary performance that is broader in scope than completions data or graduation rates data, and is a critical measure of success as viewed by many 2-year and 4-year institutions.

6. Unduplicated 12-month Head Count. The collection of unduplicated head count data for students enrolled over a 12-month period provides a way of looking at enrollment that is especially valuable for institutions that utilize nontraditional calendar systems and institutions that offer short programs. An enrollment figure that encompasses an entire year provides a more complete picture of the services being provided by these schools.

7. Instructional Activity. The collection of instructional activity data, as measured in total credit and/or clock hours delivered by institutions during a 12-month period, provides an overall indicator of the scope of educational activity provided by the institutions. NCES uses the total instructional activity measure as a basis for computing a total student full-time equivalency (FTE). FTE is commonly used by postsecondary institutions as a measure of size and performance, and is one of the best available indicators for the measurement of educational endeavors.

A.2.d Cost

The Cost survey component, which pulls elements from the Institutional Characteristics and Student Financial Aid survey components, is being added for 2024-25 in order to simplify the reporting for institutions. This component collects data on cost of attendance, other tuition and fees, and net price of attendance and the data are made available through College Navigator, a web-based college search tool (see https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/) and the College Scorecard (https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/). The calculation of institutional net prices is required by the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) of 2008.

1. In Phase 1 (during the fall collection), institutions will be able to report any data, but must complete the screening questions and Section 1 (cost and tuition questions). This will allow NCES to update cost data on the College Navigator on the same schedule as currently updated.

2. In Phase 2, institutions must complete Sections 2 – 3 (data for net price calculations). This is the same collection period that these data have historically been collected in.

A.2.e. Student Financial Aid

The Student Financial Aid component was added to IPEDS to respond to the request for information on the cost and price of higher education in the Higher Education Amendments of 1998. Data collected through this survey component allow prospective students to compare average amounts of financial aid received for particular student types that is received across institutions.

A.2.f. Graduation Rates

The Graduation Rates (GR) survey component provides a structure for calculating comparable graduation rate statistics across institutions. The data also provide much needed information to researchers as an outcome measure of institutional productivity, and offer insight into the relationship between the changing demographics of college-going cohorts within different types of institutions. The information collected in this component is used by institutions to help satisfy regulations regarding the Student Right-to-Know Act to disclose 150 percent of normal time graduation rates. The GR200 component collects consumer information on 200 percent graduation rates to meet requirements in the HEOA.

A.2.g. Finance

Finance data are needed for reporting and projecting the revenues and expenditures of a national activity representing a significant component of the gross national product (GNP). To enhance the comparability and utility of the finance data, IPEDS redesigned the data collection instruments to conform to the accounting standards governing both public and private institutions.

ED’s Title III (Institutional Aid) grant program relies on the finance data to help determine whether an applicant college or university is eligible to receive a grant. These data are needed annually. The GAO published a report, Postsecondary Education Financial Trends in Public and Private Nonprofit Institutions for the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, that used IPEDS finance data. The National Science Foundation is a regular user of IPEDS finance data. The Bureau of the Census relies on this form to collect data required in its census of governments. NCES and the Census Bureau worked closely to ensure that one instrument satisfied the needs of both agencies. The Bureau of Economic Analysis also contributed significantly to this endeavor. OMB asked NCES to collect these data because the Bureau's survey universe was a subset of the IPEDS universe. The Bureau of the Census also uses the data from other parts of the survey to:

• develop estimates of state and local governments' finances to provide to the Bureau of Economic Analysis for calculation of the GNP; and

• collect supplemental data that their census of governments does not collect.

The BLS and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service are secondary users of NCES/Census finance data. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has used finance data to determine states' or institutions' compliance with antidiscrimination laws. From these data, OCR was able to determine whether predominantly black, publicly controlled institutions were being discriminated against through funding decisions made by state boards of higher education. The Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce uses financial statistics to prepare totals and forecasts on total nonfarm expenditures for structures and equipment, and to develop GNP accounts. Increasing numbers of state agencies use the NCES Finance report to assemble data to plan and evaluate their higher education policies.

Among associations, the American Council on Education (ACE), the Association for Institutional Research, the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and The Delta Cost Project are frequent users of Finance data. Researchers from these and other organizations use the data to assess the economic future of the nation's colleges and universities.

A.2.h. Human Resources

HR data provide another basic measure of postsecondary education because they indicate the extent of the human infrastructure and knowledge base represented at institutions of higher learning. Because the size and type of staffing patterns vary greatly across postsecondary education, there is a need to measure different aspects of the human capital in postsecondary institutions.

The HR section that collects race, ethnicity, and sex data (previously referred to as the fall staff section) replaces the former EEO-6 survey and is used by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in place of its data collection efforts. Under Public Law 88-352, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended by the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972, all institutions of higher education that have 15 or more (full-time) employees are required to keep records and to make such reports biennially to EEOC. NCES now collects the data and provides them to EEOC as required in its regulations. The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) of the Department of Labor also use these data. The filing of race, ethnicity, and sex data on staff is mandated under Section 709(c) of Title VII.

The data provide information on staffing levels at the institutions for various occupational categories, and are used extensively in peer institution analysis, manpower utilization studies, and in examining the health of the institutions. Good-quality data on racial/ethnic composition of postsecondary employees are useful to EEOC and OCR for monitoring compliance with Title VII.

On an annual basis, institutions also classify all of their employees by full- or part-time status, faculty status, and occupational category; in addition, medical school staff are reported separately.

Salary outlays for full-time instructional staff and other full-time employees are also collected annually. These data are used by:

• the ED Grants and Contracts Service, which makes frequent use of the salary data collected by NCES to set standards for expected salary outlays during grants and contracts negotiations processes; and

• the BLS, Department of Labor, which includes salary data when developing its Occupational Outlook Handbook.

The House Labor and Human Resources Committee, the OCR, and the Bureau of the Census have requested trend data. State agencies rely on salary data to determine budgets for their state-supported institutions and to make comparative studies with other states.

Institutions use salary data to establish their own compensation packages, and institution officials study the compensation packages offered by their peers and/or competitors prior to developing their salary schedules.

A.2.i. Admissions

The Admissions survey component was broken out from the Institutional Characteristics survey component starting with the 2014-15 data collection. This change was proposed by the TRP so that all institutions would report data for the most recent Fall period. As a result, admissions data are less confusing for IPEDS data users, given that only one reporting period is represented in each data file. Additionally, the change enabled admissions data to be used for the Trend Generator, and data on College Navigator will represent the same Fall period.

Starting in 2025-26, the Admissions survey component will be updated to collect more information on the admissions process.

A.2.j. Academic Libraries (through 2024-25)

The Academic Libraries (AL) survey component collects data on academic libraries at postsecondary institutions. Due to staffing and cost requirements, the AL survey component is being retired after the 2024-25 data collection.

A.2.k. Outcome Measures

The Outcome Measures (OM) survey component was added as the result of two TRPs (e.g., #37 and #40) and based on recommendations provided by the ED Committee on Student Success, which concluded its work in 2011. The first collection of this survey component was during the 2015-16 data collection year. This component improved the quality and availability of student success data for consumers, institutions, policymakers, and researchers. It does so by making data available for student outcomes going beyond the historical limitation of the cohort of traditional full-time, first-time students.

Since its introduction into IPEDS, NCES has added the collection of data for students receiving Pell awards and changed from a fall cohort to a 12-month cohort to collect outcomes on more students.

A.2.l Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS) (beginning in 2025-26)

The Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS) was added in response to the Ensuring Transparency in Higher Education Admissions Executive Memoranda of August 7, 2025, and the ensuing directive from the Secretary of Education.

A.3. Use of Technology and Other Technological Collection Techniques

The IPEDS web-based data collection uses advanced technology to reduce respondent burden and to improve the timeliness and quality of the reported data. NCES has taken several actions to facilitate the cooperation of postsecondary institutions responding to IPEDS. These actions include the following:

• Developing a fully automated web-based data collection for all survey components of IPEDS data. The data collection is organized into three modules, taking full advantage of data availability schedules.

• Customizing survey components based on screening information so that institutions are prompted to respond only to those items relevant to their institution. For example, if a private institution does not have a differential tuition charge for out-of-state students, they will be prompted for one tuition charge. Additionally, many data items (answered previously) will be available to the respondent on the collection instrument, so that only those items that have actually changed since the previous report need to be completed or updated.

• Allowing for direct data entry as well as file upload and batch import. Edit checks and data verification procedures are built into the system, thus improving the efficiency of data collection by resolving errors at the time of data submission. Processing time and cost are thus reduced. All administrative functions are provided through the Web, including nonresponse follow up, distribution of passwords, and other activities and correspondence. IPEDS also provides a Help Desk, which is available to respondents during and after data collection to respond to questions, assist with data entry and error resolution, and provide general assistance with many other types of requests. NCES will continue to encourage respondents to prepare IPEDS data in a format for uploading to the web-based collection instrument by providing detailed file specifications and instructions as well as "do's" and "don'ts" for data submission. Two upload formats are available for institutions to use: fixed length and key value pair.

• Improving timeliness of data release. The system is designed to migrate reported/edited data to an SQL server as soon as the administrative functions have been performed and NCES has cleared the data. Institutions whose data have been migrated to the SQL server have immediate access to data for other institutions that have also completed the process through the IPEDS Data Center. This means that data may be available before survey closeout for peer analysis. National data will become available within a matter of months after closeout.

• Enabling institutions to provide data to their state and to NCES simultaneously. NCES works closely with state coordinators, many of whom submit IPEDS reports for institutions in their state. Increasingly, states obtain data from institutions electronically on a student unit record basis (data per student). Other states collect institutional data using either IPEDS forms or their own state forms, which are compatible with IPEDS. Data are then extracted from the state database in the IPEDS format and file uploaded to the collection system. Thus, institutions can provide data to their state and to NCES simultaneously.

• For ACTS only, enabling institutions to transmit student-level data, on which code will be run to produce the aggregated and calculated values. This option is designed to reduce burden on institutions by not requiring them to perform the aggregations and calculations themselves. This will reduce the time needed for institutions to gather the data.

• For ACTS only, enabling institutions to run Python code locally to produce aggregated tables. This option is designed to reduce burden on institutions by not requiring them to perform the aggregations and calculations themselves and provide an option for those institutions who do not want to submit student-level data over the internet.

• For ACTS only, providing aggregated data outputs to the institutions for review before final submission. This will improve the quality of the data by allowing the institutions to confirm that the aggregations and calculations resulting from the program are correct.

A.4. Efforts to Identify and Avoid Duplication

NCES devotes considerable effort to ensure that IPEDS does not duplicate other data collection activities involving postsecondary education providers. In developing IPEDS, NCES continues to assess the data collection efforts of other federal agencies (e.g., National Science Foundation, Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense, Census Bureau, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Veterans Administration) through an examination of their forms. In addition, NCES has in-depth discussions with the Department of Labor, as well as other Education Department offices (e.g., OCR, FSA, OPE, OVAE) to ascertain their needs for data and the role IPEDS can play in meeting those needs. Through meetings, workshops, and TRPs, NCES works closely with other stakeholders including the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO), the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO), the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO), the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), the American Council on Education (ACE), the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), regional education organizations such as the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) and the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), and others. Duplication is avoided as various federal agencies, groups within ED, and other agency representatives share access to IPEDS data.

A.5. Methods Used to Minimize Burden on Small Businesses/Entities

Certain providers of postsecondary education included in the IPEDS universe of Title IV eligible institutions—operators of proprietary (private for-profit) schools—are small businesses. NCES has taken several actions to reduce reporting burden for these entities. These actions include: requesting a reduced set of data items from schools offering only certificates below the baccalaureate level, maintaining an open position on the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative for proprietary institutions and the national proprietary representative, and ensuring inclusion of proprietary school representatives at Technical Review Panels to ensure the appropriateness of data being requested and the feasibility of collecting it. In addition, IPEDS has focused outreach and training efforts for small institutions.

A.6. Frequency of Data Collection

The statutory requirements as described in A.1.d. require that IPEDS data are reported on an annual basis. If the IPEDS collection is not conducted, a number of legal requirements will not be met as a majority of the items collected by IPEDS are required by law (general information presented in A.1.d., for more detailed information see the IPEDS publication The History and Origins of Survey Items for the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (2023 Update) available at https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/pdf/NPEC/data/The-History-and-Origins-of-Survey-Items.pdf.

The survey components proposed for this request are those that will be collected beginning with the Fall 2024 2025 collection and extending through the Spring 2027 collection, which will cover three full survey cycles.

A.7. Special Circumstances

In March 2024, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) announced revisions to Statistical Policy Directive No. 15: Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity (SPD 15) and published the revised SPD15 standard in the Federal Register (89 FR 22182). The present IPEDS 2024-25 through 2026-27 package currently uses race and ethnicity categories as described in the 1997 SPD 15 standards; see p. 5 of the 12-month Enrollment Package for an example of how this data has historically been collected. The Department aims to implement the revised SPD 15 standards in the future in accordance with the Department’s yet-to-be-published Action Plan under development.

Because IPEDS data is reported in aggregate by institutions, IPEDS and NCES are reliant on the ability of those third-party recordkeepers to report their data in compliance with SPD 15. In Appendix B of this package (pp. B-82-83) is a draft letter that can potentially be sent to institutions, if/when desired, advising them of this change and the timeline for implementation and recommending that institutions begin their own planning for approaches that will allow them to report this data by the timeframe outlined above.

A.8. Consultations outside the Agency

With the exception of the new ACTS component, which was developed based on an executive directive from the Secretary of Education, IPEDS was developed in conjunction with providers and users of postsecondary education data. Continuing a pattern that began with the initial development of the project in 1983, opportunities are taken throughout the year to discuss the project with data respondents, Federal agencies, data users, and any other interested parties.

NCES has a strong relationship with many stakeholder groups that provide feedback on proposals for IPEDS. Identified below are organizations that have played a major consultative role:

• An IPEDS Technical Review Panel (TRP) was formed to assist in survey revisions and to discuss universe definitions. Representatives include state coordinators, federal representatives, educational association members, and institutional researchers and registrars from all postsecondary education sectors.

• The National Postsecondary Education Cooperative (NPEC) is responsible for IPEDS research and development activities. NPEC's mission is to promote the quality, comparability, and utility of postsecondary data and information that support policy development at the federal, state, and institution levels. The NPEC IPEDS R&D Panel achieves this goal by developing an R&D agenda for IPEDS, identifying topics that will help improve the quality, comparability, and utility of IPEDS data for the postsecondary education community, consumers, and policymakers, as well as providing expertise to NCES on related IPEDS R&D projects.

• IPEDS workshops and presentations are made at various conferences and annual or regional meetings of educational and professional associations. IPEDS staff discuss proposed modifications or problem areas and receive input from the data providers as part of the data collection training.

• The Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), the American Library Association (ALA), and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) have a joint advisory task force that reaches out to IPEDS regularly with suggestions. NCES will work with this task force through the 2024-25 collection as needed.

• In November 2023, IPEDS formed the IPEDS Finance Working Group with the mission to enhance the quality, comparability, and use of data collected in the IPEDS Finance survey component. The group brings together the experts who represent the higher education community, stakeholders, and other interested parties with the purpose to develop guidance and recommendations on ways to improve the Finance survey component.

A.9. Paying Respondents

There are no payments or gifts offered to respondents.

A.10. Assurance of Confidentiality

IPEDS data are not collected under any pledge of confidentiality.

The PRA language for IPEDS is made available on the institutional burden page for the data collection. The statement for the 2022-23 collection appears as follows (it is updated annually to reflect approval by OMB of the new respondent burden hour estimates):

According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless it displays a valid OMB control number. The valid OMB control number for this information collection is 1850-0582.

The following security procedures will be in place to safeguard the student-level information uploaded into the ACTS application:

• The data collected in the student-level file does not contain any Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Institutions will assign their own ID numbers, distinct from the student’s Social Security Number or institutional identification number, to be used in the Student ID field.

• The ACTS application will be hosted in an environment that complies with the basic requirements for a FIPS 199 Moderate data network.

  • Access Control: The system will implement role-based access control (RBAC), enforce the principle of least privilege, and manage information flows within the network. Elevated accounts for administrators will be required, and these accounts will be requested individually and logged. Quarterly reviews will be conducted to ensure that only authorized personnel have access to the system.

  • Identification and Authentication: Strong passwords with multi-factor authentication will be mandated for application users. Additional security measures for administrators will include access from known IP addresses or networks and stricter password policies.

  • Encryption: Data will be encrypted at rest using AES-256 encryption algorithms and encrypted in transit using TLS 1.2.

  • Configuration Management: Automated tools will be utilized to establish and maintain a secure baseline configuration for all hardware and software.

  • Contingency Planning: A contingency plan will be developed to address backup operations and system recovery. This plan will be tested at least annually and updated as needed.

  • Incident Response: An incident response plan will be established to manage and report security incidents, encompassing detection, analysis, and containment capabilities. Incidents will be documented in a ticket tracking system that allows for auditing.

  • Awareness and Training: All personnel will undergo regular security awareness training, with additional specific requirements for individuals with significant security responsibilities.

  • Continuous Monitoring: Regular vulnerability scans will be conducted to identify potential weaknesses, and system components will be patched promptly as updates become available.

A.11. Justification for Sensitive Questions

These collections contain no questions of a sensitive nature.

A.12. Estimate of Burden

In 2017, NCES contracted with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to interview administrators from postsecondary institutions to better understand the time use and burden for institutions participating in IPEDS data collection. To better understand an institution’s time and burden, AIR conducted two rounds of cognitive interviews with administrators from 48 postsecondary institutions. The first round of interviews was designed to gain a better understanding of respondents’ time use and burden for completing the 12 IPEDS survey components. Questions in the Round 1 interviews were intended to explore respondents’ understanding of the current IPEDS time use and burden question—particularly, what respondents include and exclude from their calculation when answering the question—to determine whether they are providing the information that the question was designed to extract.

Results from the Round 1 interviews and observations suggested that respondents were not consistent in how they report time use and burden related to completing IPEDS survey components. Based on these findings, a new series of time use and burden questions were drafted and tested during a second round of cognitive interviews. Round 2 interviews included questions regarding the initial collection of the data that are reported to IPEDS, the number of people involved in the data collection and reporting process, the steps making up the data collection and reporting process, and the initial purpose of the data collection.

Based on recommendations from the AIR report, NCES revised the way in which it enquires about burden to provide more clarity to respondents on what time should be included.

Burden reporting screen:

This survey component was prepared by:
RB	Keyholder		RB	SFA Contact			RB	HR Contact
RB	Finance Contact		RB	Academic Library Contact			RB	Other
Name:	RV
Email:	RV
How many staff from your institutions were involved in the data collection and reporting process of this survey component?
Number of Staff (including yourself)		RB
How many hours did you and others from your institution only spend on each of the steps below when responding to this survey component? Exclude the hours spent collecting data for state and other reporting purposes.
Staff member		Collecting Data Needed			Revising Data to Match IPEDS Requirements	Entering Data			Revising and Locking Data
Your office		RV (in hours)			RV (in hours)	RV (in hours)			RV (in hours)
Other offices		RV (in hours)			RV (in hours)	RV (in hours)			RV (in hours)

With the exception of the new ACTS component, which was not fielded during the 2022-23 data collection, the new burden estimates for the IPEDS data collection take into consideration the information on reporting burden that was collected during the 2022-23 IPEDS using the burden questions above.

Table 2. Response rates for IPEDS preparation time item, 2022-23
	Experienced keyholders	New keyholders
Degree-granting institutions	84.5%	15.5%
Non-degree-granting institutions	88.2%	77.39%
All institutions	85.6%	14.4%

NCES uses the keyholder reported times to develop burden estimates. The preparation times reported by keyholders support the observation that it takes new keyholders longer to prepare and submit their IPEDS survey components. Table 3 shows, for each IPEDS survey component and for experienced vs. new keyholders, the average 2022-23 self-reported preparation hours per institution.

Table 3. Average 2022-23 self-reported preparation hours by experienced and new IPEDS keyholders, by IPEDS component
		Experienced keyholders			New keyholders
IPEDS component	Total number of respondents	Average 2022-23 self-reported preparation hours per respondent	Estimated number of respondents	Estimated total preparation hours*	Average 2022-23 self-reported preparation hours per respondent	Estimated number of respondents	Estimated total preparation hours*
IC	6020	3.26	4,515	25067	4.03	1505	2496
C	6020	6.47	4,515	21040	7.35	1505	3956
E12	6009	7.16	4,507	25931	8.11	1502	4649
SFA	5888	8.95	4,416	32917	9.19	1472	5411
OM	3656	8.91	2,742	17671	10.11	914	3599
GR	5358	3.13	4,019	19800	7.40	1339	3535
GR200	5016	3.48	3,762	10222	3.77	1254	1631
ADM	1995	3.56	1,496	4253	4.09	499	891
EF	5982	7.19	4,487	25157	10.26	1495	5818
F	5833	9.40	4,375	37534	10.95	1458	6539
HR	5978	8.21	4,484	31255	11.39	1494	6791
AL	3748	5.45	2,811	14303	5.93	937	2823

* Note: Due to rounding in the calculations, the estimated total presentation hours shown here cannot be exactly calculated from the average preparation hours per respondent, nor will adding the preparation hours in Table 3 equal exactly the total preparation hours presented in Table 16.

For all survey components except for the ACTS, which was not fielded in 2022-23, NCES bases total estimated data preparation hours for 2024-25 through 2026-27 IPEDS collections on these averages. Detailed estimates of response burden for each IPEDS survey component for the 2024-25 through 2026-27 data collections are provided below. In each of Tables 4-11 and tables 13-17, NCES provides the average 2022-23 self-reported burden time per institution adjusted, where noted, for each of the upcoming three data collection years 2024-25, 2025-26, and 2026-27 based on the proposed changes to data collection in that survey component. For table 12, NCES provides the estimated burden for the ACTS, which does not have any previous self-report data.

Tables are broken down by returning vs. new keyholders and by institution type. For the purposes of the new ACTS component, all keyholders will be treated as new keyholders because this is a new data collection with data elements not previously asked for on other IPEDS survey components. The last row of each table provides the average 2022-23 self-reported burden time per institution, aggregated for all institution types, and adjusted, where noted, for 2024-25, 2025-26, and/or 2026-27 based on the proposed changes to data collection in that component.

A.12.1 Fall Collection

Institutional Characteristics (IC). Detailed estimates for the IC survey component are presented in table 4 and include the Institutional Identification and Institutional Characteristics. The estimates account for both institution type and keyholder experience. The burden estimates for 2023-24 were based on self-reported preparation time for this component. NCES expects the burden to decrease in 2024-25 through 2026-27 due to the streamlining of questions and removal of cost of attendance and tuition collections to the new Cost (CST) survey component.

Table 4. Burden hours, Institutional Characteristics
Institution Type	Number of institutions (Title IV and non-Title IV)	2024-25		2025-26		2026-27
		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution
		Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder
4-year schools	2,795	1.0	1.5	1.0	1.5	1.0	1.5
2-year schools	1,576	1.1	1.3	1.1	1.3	1.1	1.3
<2-year schools	1,744	1.4	2.0	1.4	2.0	1.4	2.0
Total	6,115	1.1	1.6	1.1	1.6	1.1	1.6

Completions (C): Detailed estimates for the C survey component are presented in table 5. These estimates account for institution type and keyholder experience and were adjusted to take into consideration respondent self-reported preparation time for this component. There are minor changes to terminology, FAQs, and wording that should not impact burden.

Table 5. Burden hours, Completions
Institution Type	Number of institutions (Title IV and non-Title IV)	2023-24		2024-25		2025-26		2026-27
		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution
		Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder
4-year schools	2,724	6.1	7.8	6.1	7.8	6.1	7.8	6.1	7.8
2-year schools	1,590	5.3	8.0	5.3	8.0	5.3	8.0	5.3	8.0
<2-year schools	1,706	4.7	5.5	4.7	5.5	4.7	5.5	4.7	5.5
Total	6,020	5.4	7.1	5.4	7.1	5.4	7.1	5.4	7.1

12-month Enrollment (E12): Detailed estimates for the E12 survey component are presented in table 6. These estimates account for institution type and keyholder experience and were adjusted to take into consideration respondent self-reported preparation time for this component. There are minor changes to terminology, FAQs, and wording that should not impact burden.

Table 6. Burden hours, 12-month Enrollment
Institution Type	Number of institutions (Title IV and non-Title IV)	2022-23		2023-24		2024-25		2026-27
		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution
		Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder
4-year schools	2,719	6.7	9.4	6.7	9.4	6.7	9.4	6.7	9.4
2-year schools	1,586	5.6	7.7	5.6	7.7	5.6	7.7	5.6	7.7
<2-year schools	1,704	5.1	5.5	5.1	5.5	5.1	5.5	5.1	5.5
Total	6,009	5.8	7.5	5.8	7.5	5.8	7.5	5.8	7.5

A.12.2 Winter Collection

Student Financial Aid (SFA): Detailed estimates for the SFA survey component are presented in table 7. Estimates account for institution type and keyholder experience and were adjusted to take into consideration respondent self-reported preparation time for this component. Starting with 2024-25, the Cost of Attendance and Net price of attendance have been removed from SFA, reducing the burden of this instrument. Changes will be made in 2025-26 that will collect more data for each student category, however, it will make the survey collect the same data from each category instead of different aid types for each category. This should not increase burden as it will make it more clear by simplifying for institutions while increasing the availability of data. NCES expects only minor burden increase, at most, with these changes.

Table 7. Burden hours, Student Financial Aid
Institution Type	Number of institutions (Title IV and non-Title IV)	2023-24		2024-25		2025-26		2026-27
		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution
		Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder
4-year schools	2,645	8.5	8	4.5	4	4.9	4.4	4.9	4.4
2-year schools	1,566	9.3	11.4	5.3	7.4	5.7	7.8	5.7	7.8
<2-year schools	1,677	7.7	9.5	3.7	5.5	4.1	5.9	4.1	5.9
Total	5,888	8.5	9.3	4.5	5.3	4.9	5.7	4.9	5.7

Outcome Measures (OM): Detailed estimates for the OM survey component are presented in table 8. Estimates account for institution type and keyholder experience and were adjusted to take into consideration respondent self-reported preparation time for this component. There are only minor wording/terminology changes and changes to FAQs which do not affect burden.

Table 8. Burden hours, Outcome Measures
Institution Type	Number of institutions (Title IV and non-Title IV)	2023-24		2024-25		2025-26		2026-27
		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution
		Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder
4-year schools	2,392	9	9.1	9	9.1	9	9.1	9	9.1
2-year schools	1,264	8.8	12.3	8.8	12.3	8.8	12.3	8.8	12.3
Total	3,656	8.9	10.7	8.9	10.7	8.9	10.7	8.9	10.7

Graduation Rates (GR): Detailed estimates for the GR survey component are presented in table 9. Estimates account for institution type and keyholder experience and were adjusted to take into consideration respondent self-reported preparation time for this component. There is one major change, removal of another gender; other changes are minor wording/terminology changes and changes to FAQs which do not affect burden.

Table 9. Burden hours, Graduation Rates
Institution Type	Number of institutions (Title IV and non-Title IV)	2023-24		2024-25		2025-26		2026-27
		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution
		Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder
4-year schools	2,265	7	7.5	7	7.5	7	7.5	7	7.5
2-year schools	1,506	6.3	8.4	6.3	8.4	6.3	8.4	6.3	8.4
<2-year schools	1,587	4.3	5.8	4.3	5.8	4.3	5.8	4.3	5.8
Total	5,358	6.0	7.3	6.0	7.3	6.0	7.3	6.0	7.3

200% Graduation Rates (GR200): Detailed estimates for the GR200 survey component are presented in table 10. Estimates account for institution type and keyholder experience and were adjusted to take into consideration respondent self-reported preparation time for this component. There are no changes to this survey component.

Table 10. Burden hours, 200% Graduation Rates
Institution Type	Number of institutions (Title IV and non-Title IV)	2023-24		2024-25		2025-26		2026-27
		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution
		Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder
4-year schools	1,970	3.4	3	3.4	3	3.4	3	3.4	3
2-year schools	1,495	3.5	4.5	3.5	4.5	3.5	4.5	3.5	4.5
<2-year schools	1,551	3.2	4.3	3.2	4.3	3.2	4.3	3.2	4.3
Total	5,016	3.4	3.9	3.4	3.9	3.4	3.9	3.4	3.9

Admissions (ADM): Detailed estimates for the ADM survey component are presented in table 11. Estimates account for both institution type and keyholder experience and were adjusted to take into consideration respondent self-reported preparation time for this component. There are several changes to the Admissions survey component, including collection by race and ethnicity for applicants, admits, and enrollees and data collected on early admits and waitlists. In addition, NCES will now collect data on non-first-time students and open admission institutions that have programs with admissions requirements will need to report. NCES expects and increase in burden as well as an increase in the number of institutions reporting. Starting with 2025-26, NCES expects a slight decrease in burden as it will be the 2^nd year of collection.

Table 11. Burden hours, Admissions
Institution Type	Number of institutions (Title IV and non-Title IV)*	2024-25		2025-26			2026-27
		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution			Estimated average burden hours per institution
		Experienced keyholder	New keyholder		Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder
4-year schools	1,900	3.6	3.9		6.1	6.6	6.1	6.6
2-year schools	900	3.6	5.3		6.1	6.6	6.1	6.6
<2-year schools	300	2.7	5.7		5.2	5.7	5.2	5.7
Total	3,100	3.3	5		5.8	7.5	5.8	7.5

* estimated

Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS): Detailed estimates for the ACTS survey component are presented in Table 12. For this survey component, all keyholders will be treated as new keyholders because this is a new data collection with data elements not previously asked for on other IPEDS survey components. Respondents to the ACTS will only comprise 4-year institutions. Among them, institutions that (1) do not award non-need-based aid and (2) admit 100 percent of applicants in a given year are exempted from completing the survey. This is estimated to be approximately 1660 institutions. Responding institutions will need to report data for the 2025-26 academic year plus each academic year going back to 2019-20. Starting with 2026-27, NCES expects a decrease in burden because institutions will only need to report data for the most recent academic year, with entries for the previous five carried forward.

Table 12. Burden hours, ACTS
Institution Type	Estimated Number of institutions (Title IV and non-Title IV)	2025-26			2026-27
		Estimated average burden hours per institution			Estimated average burden hours per institution
		Experienced keyholder	New keyholder		Experienced keyholder	New keyholder
4-year schools	1660	200	200		40	40
2-year schools	0	0	0		0	0
<2-year schools	0	0	0		0	0
Total	1660	200	200	40		40

A.12.3 Fall/Winter Collection

Cost (CST): Detailed estimates for the CST survey component are presented in table 12. Estimates account for both institution type and keyholder experience and were adjusted to take into consideration respondent self-reported preparation time that was removed from the SFA and IC components to account for the move of certain elements to the new Cost survey component.

Table 13. Burden hours, Cost
Institution Type	Number of institutions (Title IV and non-Title IV)	2024-25		2025-26		2026-27
		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution
		Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder
4-year schools	2,645	4.5	4	4.5	4	4.5	4
2-year schools	1,566	5.3	7.4	5.3	7.4	5.3	7.4
<2-year schools	1,677	3.7	5.5	3.7	5.5	3.7	5.5
Total	5,888	4.5	5.3	4.5	5.3	4.5	5.3

A.12.4 Spring Collection

Fall Enrollment (EF): Detailed estimates for the EF survey component are presented in table 12. Estimates account for both institution type and keyholder experience and were adjusted to take into consideration respondent self-reported preparation time for this component. There are only minor changes to terminology, FAQs, and wording that should not impact burden.

Table 14. Burden hours, Fall Enrollment
Institution Type	Number of institutions (Title IV and non-Title IV)	2023-24		2024-25		2025-26		2026-27
		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution
		Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder
4-year schools	2,722	8.7	12.4	8.7	12.4	8.7	12.4	8.7	12.4
2-year schools	1,577	7.5	9.9	7.5	9.9	7.5	9.9	7.5	9.9
<2-year schools	1,683	4.6	5.6	4.6	5.6	4.6	5.6	4.6	5.6
Total	5,982	7.0	9.3	7.0	9.3	7.0	9.3	7.0	9.3

Finance (F): Detailed estimates for the F survey component are presented in table 13. These estimates account for institution type, accounting standards, and keyholder experience. There are minor changes to Finance to improve clarity. This should not add burden and may decrease burden; NCES is maintaining the current estimates at this time.

Table 15. Burden hours, Finance
Institution Type	Number of institutions (Title IV and non-Title IV)	2023-24		2024-25		2025-26		2026-27
		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution
		Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder
4-year schools	2,615	10.7	11.4	10.7	11.4	10.7	11.4	10.7	11.4
2-year schools	1,552	9.8	13.6	9.8	13.6	9.8	13.6	9.8	13.6
<2-year schools	1,666	5.2	6.6	5.2	6.6	5.2	6.6	5.2	6.6
Total	5,833	8.6	10.5	8.6	10.5	8.6	10.5	8.6	10.5

Human Resources (HR): Detailed estimates for the HR survey component are presented in table 14. These estimates account for institution type and keyholder experience and were adjusted to take into consideration respondent self-reported preparation time for this component. There are minor changes to Human Resources to improve clarity. This should not add burden and may decrease burden; NCES is maintaining the current estimates at this time.

Table 16. Burden hours, Human Resources
Institution Type	Number of institutions (Title IV and non-Title IV)	2024-25		2025-26		2026-27
		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution
		Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder
4-year schools	2,668	11.7	14	11.7	14	11.7	14
2-year schools	1,571	7.4	13.1	7.4	13.1	7.4	13.1
<2-year schools	1,669	3.6	3.2	3.6	3.2	3.6	3.2
Total	5,908	7.6	10.1	7.6	10.1	7.6	10.1

Academic Libraries (AL): Detailed estimates for the AL survey component are presented in table 15. These estimates account for institution type and keyholder experience and were adjusted to take into consideration respondent self-reported preparation time for this component. There are no changes to this component in 2024-25, and it will be retired after the 2024-25 data collection. More information about the retirement of the AL survey component can be found in the Appendix E – IPEDS 2024-25 through 2026-27 Response to 60-day Public Comments.

Table 17. Burden hours, Academic Libraries
Institution Type	Number of institutions (Title IV and non-Title IV)	2024-25		2025-26		2026-27
		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution		Estimated average burden hours per institution
		Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder	Experienced keyholder	New keyholder
4-year schools	2,517	5.7	5.9	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
2-year schools	1,173	5	5.8	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Total	3,690	5.5	5.9	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

A.12.4 All Collections

All Survey Components. To provide better estimates of burden on an ongoing basis, NCES will continue to ask IPEDS keyholders to voluntarily report the time required to complete each survey component. NCES estimates a burden of 0.2 hour to track, record, and report this time for the following components: Institutional Characteristics, Admissions, Completions, 12-month Enrollment, Graduation Rates, Graduation Rates 200, Outcome Measures, and Fall Enrollment. NCES estimates it will take 0.4 hour for Student Financial Aid, Finance, Human Resources, Academic Libraries, and the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement because these five components typically involve additional offices at the institution and require keyholders to get time estimates from others at the institution.

Based on the tables provided in this section, table 18 provides a summary of the estimated number of respondents, responses, and response burden hours by survey component for each of the 2024-25, 2025-26, and 2026-27 IPEDS data collections. These estimates are based on the self-reported burden times provided by institutions that responded to the burden reporting questions listed for each component during the 2022-23 IPEDS data collection.

Because the percentage of keyholders that are new is relatively stable over time for each IPEDS component, ranging between 20 and 25% across the components, to calculate the estimated average hours per institution provided in table 16, we used the 2022-23 observed percentages of new keyholders together with the totals shown in tables 4-15 that reflect for each component the average 2022-23 self-reported burden time per institution, aggregated for all institution types, and adjusted, where noted, for 2024-25, 2025-26, and 2026-27 based on the proposed changes to data collection in that component.

Table 18. Summary of estimated response burden by survey component: 2024-25, 2025-26, and 2026-27
		2024-25		2025-26		2026-27
Survey component	Number of institutions (respondents)	Average hours per institution	Total burden hours	Average hours per institution	Total burden hours	Average hours per institution	Total burden hours
IC	6,020	1.3	7,826	1.3	7,826	1.3	7,826
C	6,016	6.0	36,096	6.0	36,096	6.0	36,096
E12	6,009	6.4	38,458	6.4	38,458	6.4	38,458
SFA	5,888	4.8	28,262	8.9	52,403	5.2	30,618
OM	3,656	9.5	34,732	9.5	34,732	9.5	34,732
GR	5,358	6.3	33,755	6.3	33,755	6.3	33,755
GR200	5,016	3.6	18,058	3.6	18,058	3.6	18,058
ADM (24-25)	1,995	3.9	7,781	NA	NA	NA	NA
ADM (25-26 & beyond)	3,100	N/A	N/A	6.4	19,840	5.4	16,740
CST	5,888	4.7	27,674	4.7	27,674	4.7	27,674
EF	5,982	7.8	46,660	7.8	46,660	7.8	46,660
F	5,833	9.2	53,664	9.2	53,664	9.2	53,664
HR	5,978	8.4	50,215	8.4	49,627	8.4	49,627
AL	3,748	5.6	20,989	NA	NA	NA	NA
ACTS (25-26 & beyond)	1,660	NA	NA	200	332,000	40	66,400
Total (2024-25)	67,387 responses from 6,300 respondents	—	404,170	—	—	—	—
Total (2025-26 and 2026-27)	70,152 responses from 6,300 respondents	—	—	—	750,793	—	460,308

The average estimated annual total burden hours for all IPEDS survey components for all participating institutions are 404,170 for 2024-25; 750,793 hours for 2025-26; and 460,308 hours for 2026-27.

The 2024-25 estimated total burden time cost to respondents is based on the estimated response burden-hours multiplied by the estimated hourly wage $43.86 (based on a 4% increase from $41.21 in 2022 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Operations Research Analysts, on the Internet at https://www.bls.gov/ooh/math/operations-research-analysts.htm [visited January 18, 2024])) divided by the total number of responding institutions. The hourly wage is increased by an estimated 2.0 percent cost-of-living adjustment for each subsequent year. Total estimated costs per respondent for the 2024-25 through 2026-27 data collections are shown in table 19.

Table 19. Estimates of burden hours and costs to institutions: 2024-25, 2025-26, and 2026-27
	Estimated total burden hours for all institutions	Estimated respondent hourly wage	Estimated total burden time cost per institution
2024-25	404,170	$43.98	$2,821.49
2025-26	750,793	$44.86	$5,346.12
2026-27	460,308	$45.76	$3,343.33

A.13. Estimate of Cost Burden

There are no capital or startup costs associated with this data collection.

A.14. Cost to the Federal Government

Prior to the 2024-25 collection year, the total cost to the government for the IPEDS 2024-25 through 2026-27 survey years was estimated at approximately $33,000,000. On an annual basis, over the 3 survey years, the contract costs were expected to average about $9.5 million per year. Federal S&E was expected to be approximately $1,500,000 per year. More than 95 percent of this amount was to be spent in direct support of the institutional training, and the collection, analysis, and reporting of the IPEDS data described herein. The contract amount includes all activities related to program support; data collection system maintenance; help desk support activities; programming and software modifications and documentation; training of contractor staff, institutional respondents, and data users; data collection, data review, and analysis; survey administration; imputations; file preparation, reporting, and data dissemination; TRP meetings; and other related activities. The costs included personnel, fringe benefits, travel, supplies, computer-related activities, consultants, other direct and indirect costs, plus overhead and G&A.

Subsequent to the 2024-25 collection year, costs were reduced due to the de-scoping of contracted work and the reduction of NCES staff. As such, the new estimated total cost to the government for collecting the IPEDS 2025-26 through 2026-27 survey years is approximately $22,650,000. The total annual cost for this collection will be approximately $11.3 million with the inclusion of the ACTS beginning in 2025-26. Federal S&E will be nominal. More than 95 percent of this amount will be spent in direct support of the collection, analysis, and reporting of the IPEDS data described herein. The contract amount includes all activities related to program support; data collection system maintenance; help desk support activities; programming and software modifications and documentation; training of contractor staff; data collection, data review, and analysis; survey administration; imputations; file preparation, reporting, and data dissemination; and other related activities. The costs include personnel, fringe benefits, supplies, computer-related activities, consultants, other direct and indirect costs, plus overhead and G&A.

The time estimates and costs associated with the activities described above are based on recent experience with the contractors that currently support the IPEDS operations (RTI, Activate, and others).

A.15. Reasons for Change in Burden

For institutions that are not required to respond to the ACTS component, changes proposed in this submission result in a modest burden-time increase per institution over 2023-24. Efforts at streamlining, including in the Cost component and via the retirement of the Academic Libraries component, offset some of that burden for many institutions.

For four-year institutions that are required to complete the ACTS component, burden increases notably in 2025-26. That burden declines in subsequent years. This additional burden is due to the mandated data collection outlined in the Executive Memoranda and the ensuing Secretary’s directive to NCES.

A.16. Publication Plans/Project Schedule

A.16.a. Schedule of Activities

Table 20. IPEDS 2024-25 planned data collection schedule
Date	Activity
Early-August 2024	Open Registration and Institutional Characteristics (2024-25 data)
Early September 2024	Fall Data Collection opens Institutional Characteristics (stays open; 2024-25 data) Completions (2023-24 data) 12-month enrollment (2023-24 data) Cost Phase 1 (Section 1; 2024-25 data)
Mid-October 2024	Fall Data Collection closes
Early December 2024	Winter and Spring Data Collection opens Student Financial Aid (2023-24 data) Cost Phase 2 (Sections 2-3; 2023-24, 2022-23, and 2021-22 data) Graduation Rates (2023-24 data) Graduation Rates 200 (2023-24 data) Outcome Measures (2023-24 data) Admissions (Fall 2024 data) Fall Enrollment (Fall 2024 data) Finance (Fiscal Year 2023) Human Resources (Fall 2024 data) Academic Libraries (Fiscal Year 2023)
Mid-February 2025	Winter Data Collection closes
Mid-April 2025	Spring Data Collection closes
August/September 2025	Noncompliance Report due to Office of Federal Student Aid
Fall 2025	Public release of data in IPEDS Data Center of data collected in Fall 2024
Winter 2025	Public release of data in IPEDS Data Center of data collected in Winter 2024-25
Winter 2025-26	Public release of data in IPEDS Data Center of data collected in Spring 2025

The schedule shown above is also representative of the 2025-26 and 2026-27 collection years. A final determination about the methods of release of the new ACTS component have not been made, and their availability may vary from the schedule above.

Survey activity will include the registration period followed by a collection cycle that varies in length depending on the collection. Registration must take place (only once) before data can be entered into the system. Data can be entered directly or through file or batch upload. However, respondents must resolve all errors/flags before data can be locked. This lock must take place before the collection period closes if data are to be considered as submitted in a timely fashion. Once the collection closes for institutions, coordinators have a two-week period for review. Once complete, the survey administrators (Help Desk) review the data, additional error resolution is performed, and a preliminary file is created for review by NCES. Following NCES approval of this file, imputations are run. Following NCES approval of the imputed file, the provisional data and associated web tables are released to the public.

Frequent communications occur with the institution over the course of the data collection to ensure compliance with this statutorily mandated collection. The planned 2024-25 communications and follow-up schedule are detailed in table 19 and detailed communications are included in Appendix B. Keyholders can opt out of receiving reminders.

Table 21. IPEDS 2024-25 data collections communications/follow-up schedule
Collection	Correspondence type	When	Why
Registration	Email to keyholder	Early August - registration open	UserID + password
	Letter to CEO	Early August - registration open	UserID + password; importance of keyholder selection; thank you
	Email, Mailed packet	At registration	Welcome to new keyholders
	Letter to CEO	Late August	No registered keyholder
	Letter & phone call to CEO	Mid-September	No registered keyholder
Each collection: Fall Winter Spring	Email to keyholder	Open	Collection open
	Email to keyholder	Close – 4 wks	No data entered
	Email to new keyholder	Close – 4 wks	All surveys not locked
	Thank you email to CEO	Close – 3 wks	All surveys locked
	Phone call to CEO/keyholder	Close – 2 wks	No data entered
	Phone call to new keyholder	Close – 2 wks	All surveys not locked
	Email to keyholder	Close – 2 wks	All surveys not locked
	Email to keyholder	Close – 1 wk	All surveys not locked
Additional for Spring	Email to keyholder	Late March	No data entered since Winter
	Email – This week in IPEDS	Twice in February	Reminder that Spring surveys are open

The communications/follow-up schedule shown above is also representative of the 2025-26 and 2026-27 collection years. Additional communication related to the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS) will follow a similar schedule and are included in Appendix B.

A.16.b. Distribution Methods

NCES distributes IPEDS data to users in a timely fashion and in a format that is easy to use. Specifically, IPEDS will be distributed in the following ways.

1. Data Dissemination Tools.

Use the Data: The Use the Data portal (https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/use-the-data) is the primary method of disseminating IPEDS data to the postsecondary education, policy, and research communities. This portal allows data users to create different reports and datasets, depending on their individual needs. Users can create reports that highlight a particular institution and compare it with other institutions, or they can simply create a report about a group of institutions.

Data Explorer: Search for tables, charts, publications, or other products related to postsecondary education by keywords and filters.

Data Trends: View trends on most frequently asked subject areas including Enrollment, Completions, Graduation Rates, Employees and Staff, Institutional Revenues, and Financial Aid.

Look Up an Institution: Look up information for one institution at a time. Data can be viewed in two forms: institution profile (similar to College Navigator) and reported data (institution's response to each survey question).

Data Feedback Report: Download, print, or customize an institution's Data Feedback Report, a report that graphically summarizes selected institutional data and compares the data with those of peer institutions.

Statistical Tables: Create simple descriptive statistics (e.g., total, count, average, median, standard deviation, percentiles) on selected IPEDS institutions and variables.

Summary Tables: Customize a summary table for a select subgroup of institutions on the following popular topics: tuition and fees, room and board, student financial aid, admissions, test scores, student enrollment, degree/certificate awarded, and graduation rates.

Compare Institutions: Download IPEDS data files for more than 6,000 institutions and up to 250 variables. Step-by-step process guides users through the process of selecting institutions and variables. Data files are provided in comma separated value (*.csv) format.

Survey Data: Download the Access database or complete data file for each survey; or create a custom data file across multiple surveys. IPEDS data files and data dictionaries are zipped *csv format, including read programs for easily importing data into a statistical software package (SPSS, STATA, and SAS).

College Navigator: In response to the Higher Education Amendments of 1998, NCES developed a searchable website to provide up-to-date statistics on a broad range of postsecondary institutions for easy access by consumers. The site presents general information about each institution and its mission, as well as data on institution prices and average net price, admissions, financial aid, enrollment, program offerings, degrees and awards conferred, graduation and retention rates, accreditation, varsity athletic teams, campus security, and cohort default rates. College Navigator is designed to help college students, future students, and their parents understand the differences among colleges and how much it costs to attend college. The site also provides direct links to each institution's home page and net price calculator, the College Affordability and Transparency Center; Federal Student Aid’s Prepare for College website and the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA); and the Occupational Outlook Handbook. Visit https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/ for more information.

2. Survey Reports. NCES releases data in a wide variety of formats, including basic tables, descriptive reports, and more detailed analyses. A few of these types of reports are detailed below.

• Analytic Reports: Comprehensive reports are produced periodically to analyze major policy issues, such as trends in minority enrollment and degrees, trends in faculty salaries, and trends in degrees by field of study.

• Other NCES Reports: The Digest of Education Statistics, Projections of Education Statistics, and the Condition of Education contain major sections based on IPEDS data. These publications have large distributions to a broad spectrum of users of postsecondary education statistics.

A.17. Request to Not Display Expiration Date

ED is not seeking approval to forego displaying the OMB approval expiration date.

A.18. Exceptions to the Certification

There are no exceptions to the certification statement.