The College Transparency Act: Two Truths and a Myth

The College Transparency Act (CTA) passed the US House of Representatives this month in a bipartisan amendment to the America COMPETES Act of 2022, which now heads to a conference with the Senate. CTA will lift the current ban on the collection of student-level data and unlock critical information to help students and their families make one of the biggest and often most expensive decisions of their lives: where to go to college. The bill has broad bipartisan and bicameral support and has been endorsed by a diverse coalition of over 160 organizations representing students, colleges and universities, civil rights advocates, workforce development groups, businesses and employers, and military veterans. As CTA moves toward being signed into law, let’s look at two key things the bill will do—and one it won’t.

Truth: The College Transparency Act will provide better information to help students make decisions about where to go to college.

Current postsecondary data collection is incomplete and burdensome, and reported data on post-college outcomes reflect only students who receive federal grants and loans—excluding nearly a third of all college enrollees. This is largely due to a ban on student-level data collection in the Higher Education Act that prevents the full and accurate reporting on student outcomes from enrollment to completion to post-college earnings. CTA will reverse this ban, allowing for the creation of a secure, privacy-protected student-level data network that can provide students and families with clear answers about their potential job prospects and return on investment from attending a specific educational program at a specific school. For higher education to provide real value, students need access to the level of high-quality, accurate, and actionable information CTA will make available as they navigate the postsecondary marketplace.

Truth: The College Transparency Act will spotlight inequities in higher education to guide evidence-based reforms.

Another glaring blind spot in higher education data is the lack of disaggregation by race and ethnicity and other student demographic characteristics. As a result, current data cannot provide the answers to even such simple questions as how student loan borrowing and college completion vary by race or how many students who stop out of a given college ultimately transfer and complete a degree. Breaking out the data by different student characteristics will provide unprecedented transparency into how well individual colleges or universities—and the postsecondary system at large—serve students, and how equitably they serve different student populations. Through CTA, metrics like enrollment, retention, completion, and earnings will be disaggregated by race and ethnicity, gender, age, veteran status, and Pell Grant receipt. The bill will also allow for a deeper understanding of how students move through their educational pathways by better accounting for transfer students, part-time students, and distance education students. As a result, CTA can empower students with information to identify schools and programs that will set them up for success in college and beyond. It will also equip colleges and universities, policymakers, and states with the critical information needed to implement data-informed approaches to closing attainment gaps and improving student outcomes.

Myth: The College Transparency Act will put student privacy at risk.

Any policymaking related to data must be paired with robust discussion about the privacy and security of those data. Recognizing that data should only be used to help students, never to harm them, CTA is designed to ensure that student data are safeguarded through clear limitations on what data are collected and how they are allowed to be used. The bill includes a multilayered approach to privacy, confidentiality, and security by leveraging a network of federal laws and data standards to protect student data—all housed within the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), one of the federal government’s 13 statistical agencies that is located in the Department of Education and charged with collecting, analyzing, and publishing data on all aspects and levels of education. CTA mandates disclosures to students about the data collection and its purpose and expressly prohibits the sale of data and the access of data by law enforcement officials. It also prohibits the collection of data that isn’t relevant to the goals of the data system—meaning that highly sensitive information like personal health data, citizenship and national origin, religious affiliation, and academic performance will not be included. As a further layer of protection, information that is reported back to states and schools to promote institutional improvement will be returned only in aggregate form to protect personally identifiable data while supporting data-informed student success practices.