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The story was updated Sept. 2 based on additional information listed in the “Technical Adjustment” segment of the department’s report.
An updated report from the Department of Education shows that, as of Aug. 28, more than 130 additional colleges are now marked as having fully submitted their required data on student outcomes.
More than 1,790 of the roughly 4,600 institutions included in the database are still missing or have underreported some or all of the data they are required to submit under new federal accountability rules. But that’s down from roughly 1,930 with incomplete reports as of Aug. 11, when the department’s Office of Federal Student Aid first drew public attention to the issue.
It is unclear why the 130 institutions had their status changed, whether it was because they submitted previously missing data or because of an error in the database.
In the “Technical Adjustment” section of the latest report, the department notes that “a small number of institutions” had their status changed from “missing file(s)” to “no missing files” because they are no longer participating in federal student aid; most of those changes were due to college mergers, where one college closed its participation agreement and no longer has to report its data independently. (The other institution that participated in the merger, however, now has to report data for both.)
The department also marked colleges that had not yet opened or were no longer in operation at any point in the three-year time span when data was being collected as having no missing files for the respective years, though it does not say how many fall into those categories. Finally, it says that “several dozen institutions” were supposed to be exempt from submitting data for the 2022–23 award year, which had not been accounted for in the original report. So some of those institutions have also had their overall status changed, as long as all other necessary data was submitted.
In the initial notice, FSA warned that colleges could lose access to federal grants and loans if they fail to properly submit the required student outcomes data by Jan. 15. The department said it plans to “periodically” update the list of incomplete reports until then.
“We encourage institutions to complete their data reporting as soon as possible rather than waiting until the deadline,” Friday’s update said.
Inside Higher Ed completed a deeper analysis of the original report that reveals what types of institutions were represented among those marked as incomplete and how many of the seven necessary data files they had failed to submit.
Below is the most recent status of 4,600 colleges included in the database. The list was updated at 10:30 a.m. Sept. 1 to correct an error that inverted the data. Prior to the change, all responses that should have been marked “yes,” indicating that the colleges had fully submitted their data, were marked “no” and vice versa.
