Notice2022-28606
Request for Information Regarding Public Transparency for Low-Financial-Value Postsecondary Programs
Primary source
Metadata and text below are from the Federal Register, a public-domain U.S. government work. Always verify the official published version before relying on it for any legal matter.
Published
January 11, 2023
Issuing agencies
Education Department
Abstract
The U.S. Department of Education (Department) is requesting information in the form of written comments that may include information, research, and suggestions regarding how best to identify low-value postsecondary programs. The Office of the Under Secretary solicits these comments to identify the best ways to calculate the metrics that may be used to identify low-financial-value programs and inform technical considerations.
Full Text
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<title>Federal Register, Volume 88 Issue 7 (Wednesday, January 11, 2023)</title>
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[Federal Register Volume 88, Number 7 (Wednesday, January 11, 2023)]
[Notices]
[Pages 1567-1569]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [<a href="http://www.gpo.gov">www.gpo.gov</a>]
[FR Doc No: 2022-28606]
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DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
[Docket ID ED-2022-OUS-0140]
Request for Information Regarding Public Transparency for Low-
Financial-Value Postsecondary Programs
AGENCY: Office of the Under Secretary, U.S. Department of Education.
ACTION: Request for information.
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SUMMARY: The U.S. Department of Education (Department) is requesting
information in the form of written comments that may include
information, research, and suggestions regarding how best to identify
low-value postsecondary programs. The Office of the Under Secretary
solicits these comments to identify the best ways to calculate the
metrics that may be used to identify low-financial-value programs and
inform technical considerations.
DATES: We must receive your comments on or before February 10, 2023.
ADDRESSES: Comments must be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking
Portal at <a href="http://regulations.gov">regulations.gov</a>. However, if you require an accommodation or
cannot otherwise submit your comments via <a href="http://regulations.gov">regulations.gov</a>, please
contact the program contact person listed under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
CONTACT. The Department will not accept comments by fax or by email, or
comments submitted after the comment period closes. To ensure that the
Department does not receive duplicate copies, please submit your
comments only once. Additionally, please include the Docket ID at the
top of your comments.
The Department strongly encourages you to submit any comments or
attachments in Microsoft Word format. If you must submit a comment in
Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), the Department strongly
encourages you to convert the PDF to ``print-to-PDF'' format, or to use
some other commonly used searchable text format. Please do not submit
the PDF in a scanned format. Using a print-to-PDF format allows the
Department to electronically search and copy certain portions of your
submissions to assist in the rulemaking process.
Federal eRulemaking Portal: Go to <a href="http://www.regulations.gov">www.regulations.gov</a> to submit
your comments electronically. Information on using Regulations.gov,
including instructions for accessing agency documents, submitting
comments, and viewing the docket, is available on the site under
``FAQ.''
Privacy Note: The Department's policy is to make all comments
received from members of the public available for public viewing in
their entirety on the Federal eRulemaking Portal at
<a href="http://www.regulations.gov">www.regulations.gov</a>. Therefore, commenters should be careful to include
in their comments only information that they wish to make publicly
available.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Mr. Jean-Didier Gaina, U.S. Department
of Education, 400 Maryland Ave. SW, Room 2C172, Washington, DC 20202.
Telephone: (202) 987-1333. Email: <a href="/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#4f252a2e21622b262b262a3d61282e26212e0f2a2b61282039"><span class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="640e01050a49000d000d01164a03050d0a052401004a030b12">[email protected]</span></a>.
If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability and
wish to access telecommunications relay services, please dial 7-1-1.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
I. Background
For most students, attending a postsecondary education program is a
path to upward economic mobility and financial security. On average,
completing a postsecondary education credential substantially increases
lifetime earnings and reduces the risk of unemployment. In many cases,
a college credential leads to a career, such as teaching, that benefits
society as a whole.
In an environment where the rise in tuition levels has outpaced the
availability of scholarships, student loans have been an integral tool
for delivering these benefits. Millions of students likely would not
have been able to cover the upfront price of postsecondary education
without Federal student loans.
However, there are many low-financial-value postsecondary
programs--those for which total costs exceed the financial benefits
provided to students. Some higher education programs promote goals
other than financial returns for students. However, a misalignment of
prices charged to financial benefits received may cause particularly
acute harm for student loan borrowers who may struggle to repay their
debts after discovering too late that their postsecondary programs did
not adequately prepare them for the workforce. Taxpayers also shoulder
the costs when a substantial number and share of borrowers are unable
to successfully repay their loans. The number of borrowers facing
challenges related to the repayment of their student loans is
significant. Prior to the pause on repayment, interest, and debt
collection as part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, more than
1 million borrowers defaulted on their student loans each year, and
millions more borrowers were behind on their
[[Page 1568]]
student loan payments. Low-income students, Black students, and other
students of color are more likely to borrow, borrow more, and are more
likely to struggle to repay their loans.
Income-driven repayment (IDR) plans have been an important option
in recent years to help borrowers manage their monthly payment
obligations. These repayment plans cap borrowers' payments at a set
share of their income and allow lower-income borrowers a $0 payment.
These plans forgive remaining balances after the equivalent of 20 or 25
years of payments.
Although the affordable monthly payments on IDR plans provide a
critical safety net to borrowers, they do not address the underlying
problems stemming from the high prices charged by some institutions and
low graduation rates across postsecondary education over the last few
decades. This includes the presence of too many postsecondary programs
that saddle students with levels of debt far out of proportion to the
income they earn after leaving their program. Data from the College
Scorecard show these problems are especially concentrated among
undergraduate certificate programs and graduate programs.
Programs that result in students taking on excessive amounts of
debt can make it challenging for students to reach significant life
milestones like purchasing a home, starting a family, or saving enough
for retirement, ultimately undermining their ability to climb the
economic mobility ladder. Especially for borrowers who attended
graduate programs, debt-to-income ratios often rise well above
sustainable levels. IDR plans also cannot fully protect borrowers from
the consequences of low financial-value programs. For instance, IDR
plans cannot give students back the time they invested in such
programs. For many programs, the cost of students' time may be at least
as significant as direct program costs such as tuition, fees, and
supplies. Loans will also still show up on borrowers' credit reports,
including any periods of delinquency or default prior to enrollment in
IDR.
Moreover, IDR plans can transfer some of the cost of financing a
low-financial-value postsecondary program to taxpayers through debt
forgiveness. The goal of the IDR program is to reduce the burden of
loans for low- and middle-income borrowers, not to subsidize programs
that fail to help many of their students graduate and achieve their
goals.
The Administration is taking significant steps to hold institutions
of higher education accountable. This fall, the Department finalized
regulations that close long-standing loopholes in requirements for
private for-profit institutions to derive at least 10 percent of their
revenue from private sources. We subsequently issued final rules that
provide a path to discharge student loans if institutions misled or
otherwise took advantage of students and for the Department to recoup
the costs of these discharges. The Department has also reestablished
the Office of Enforcement within Federal Student Aid to conduct in-
depth investigations into problematic institutions. In the future, we
intend to prepare and issue regulations to hold career training
programs accountable for providing sufficient value for students, among
other topics.
This is a request for information (RFI) only. This RFI is not a
request for proposals (RFP) or a promise to issue an RFP or a notice
inviting applications. This RFI does not commit the Department to
contract for any supply or service whatsoever. Further, we are not
seeking proposals and will not accept unsolicited proposals. The
Department will not pay for any information or administrative costs
that you may incur in responding to this RFI. The documents and
information submitted in response to this RFI become the property of
the U.S. Government and will not be returned.
II. Increasing Transparency Around Low-Financial-Value Programs
The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to improving
accountability for institutions of higher education. One component of
that work is to increase transparency and public accountability by
drawing attention to the postsecondary programs that are most likely to
leave students with unaffordable loans and provide the lowest financial
returns for students and taxpayers. The Department is referring to
these as ``low-financial-value'' programs for the purposes of this RFI,
while acknowledging some of these programs may provide non-economic
value. The Department believes annually publishing a list of the
programs with the lowest financial value will draw public attention to
these programs. The Department also is committed to sending letters to
institutions with the most concerning programs to ask for their plans
to improve the value of their programs. These steps should reduce the
extent to which students and taxpayers are exposed to the negative
consequences resulting from low-financial-value programs.
III. Solicitation of Comments: Constructing a List of Low-Financial-
Value Postsecondary Programs
To help inform the construction of the list of low-financial-value
programs, the Department is seeking input from the public on which
measures and metrics to use to determine ``financial-value'', what data
could be leveraged to assist this effort, and other technical
considerations. This effort is separate from any ongoing regulatory
work. The deadline for these submissions is February 10, 2023.
The Department encourages comments from researchers, academics,
policy experts, and other individuals familiar with postsecondary
education data; organizations that work directly with students to
counsel them in selecting institutions of higher education or
postsecondary programs; institutions of higher education; borrowers who
have been through the process of selecting a postsecondary education
program or institution; and other members of the public.
The Department seeks responses to the specific questions below, as
well as the general concepts and topics identified as they relate to
the construction of the list of low-value programs. When responding to
this RFI, please address one or more of the following questions:
Measures and Metrics
1. What program-level data and metrics would be most helpful to
students to understand the financial (and other) consequences of
attending a program?
2. What program-level data and metrics would be most helpful to
understand whether public investments in the program are worthwhile?
What data might be collected uniformly across all students who attend a
program that would help assess the nonfinancial value created by the
program?
3. In addition to the measures or metrics used to determine whether
a program is placed on the low-financial-value program list, what other
measures and metrics should be disclosed to improve the information
provided by the list?
List Structure
4. The Department intends to use the 6-digit Classification of
Instructional Program (CIP) code and the type of credential awarded to
define programs at an institution. Should the Department publish
information using the 4-digit CIP codes or some other type of
aggregation in cases where we would not otherwise be able to report
program data?
[[Page 1569]]
5. Should the Department produce only a single low-financial-value
program list, separate lists by credential level, or use some other
breakdown, such as one for graduate and another for undergraduate
programs?
Data Elements
6. What additional data could the Department collect that would
substantially improve our ability to provide accurate data for the
public to help understand the value being created by the program?
Please comment on the value of the new metrics relative to the burden
institutions would face in reporting information to the Department.
Public Dissemination
7. What are the best ways to make sure that institutions and
students are aware of this information?
Accessible Format: On request to the program contact person listed
under FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT, individuals with disabilities
can obtain this document in an accessible format. The Department will
provide the requestor with an accessible format that may include Rich
Text Format (RTF) or text format (txt), a thumb drive, an MP3 file,
braille, large print, audiotape, or compact disc, or other accessible
format.
Electronic Access to This Document: The official version of this
document is the document published in the Federal Register. You may
access the official edition of the Federal Register and the Code of
Federal Regulations at <a href="http://www.govinfo.gov">www.govinfo.gov</a>. At this site you can view this
document, as well as all other documents of this Department published
in the Federal Register, in text or Portable Document Format (PDF). To
use PDF you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available free at
the site.
You may also access documents of the Department published in the
Federal Register by using the article search feature at
<a href="http://www.federalregister.gov">www.federalregister.gov</a>. Specifically, through the advanced search
feature at this site, you can limit your search to documents published
by the Department.
James Kvaal,
Under Secretary, Office of the Under Secretary.
[FR Doc. 2022-28606 Filed 1-10-23; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4000-01-P
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