Cassidy, Warren Reintroduce College Transparency Act

A bipartisan group of lawmakers last week reintroduced the College Transparency Act, legislation that would produce new data on program-level college student outcomes like graduate earnings and loan repayment.

In place of Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican who retired this year, the bill will be carried by Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican. Other chief co-sponsors of the bill include Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren, South Carolina Republican Tim Scott, and Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse.

A federal ban on student-level data has been in place since 2008, and private colleges in particular continue to hold reservations about a federal data system. But bipartisan momentum has gathered behind the legislation. The bill has 17 co-sponsors, two more than the total in the previous Congress.

Senator Lamar Alexander, the GOP chairman of the Senate education committee, suggested in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute last month that the College Transparency Act was one of several bipartisan bills that could be included in a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.