ED Defends ACTS Admissions Data Collection After Court Remand

The Department of Education published a Federal Register notice providing additional justification for the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement in response to a federal court’s remand of the data collection. The Department maintains its plans for ACTS while offering further explanation of the accelerated implementation timeline, required data elements, and disaggregation, inclusion of undergraduate and graduate data, decision to proceed directly to a mandatory full-scale collection rather than the customary optional first year, and data-quality procedures. The notice also clarifies that ACTS is intended both to provide greater admissions transparency for prospective students and to support research examining changes in admissions practices.