The Education Department released final regulations Wednesday establishing a new set of safeguards against unaffordable debt or insufficient earnings for postsecondary students, including a new Financial Value Transparency Framework (FVT) and the long awaited new Gainful Employment rules.
 
The Education Department claims the new FVT framework is expected to “give students in all programs the most detailed information ever available about the net costs of postsecondary programs, and the financial outcomes they can expect.”  At the same time, the long delayed Gainful Employment rules are expected to “protect approximately 700,000 students a year from career training programs that leave graduates with unaffordable loan payments or earnings no better than what someone who did not pursue postsecondary education earns in their state.” 
 
The FVT framework will require students to acknowledge reviewing the financial risks involved in pursuing certificate programs or graduate degrees whose graduates have been determined to face unaffordable debt levels.
 
Colleges and universities face new reporting requirements related to costs (including tuition and fees, books, and supplies), non-federal grant aid, and typical borrowing amounts (for both private and federal loans). The Education Department will also calculate typical earnings for program graduates. This information will be made publicly available to students on an Education Department website.
 
The Department focused the FVT acknowledgements on certificate and graduate programs in the final rule because they are the programs where unaffordable debt is most common, and students tend to enroll directly into particular programs. By contrast, many students seeking undergraduate degrees do not select a program when they enter the institution.
 
The Department issued these final rules after careful consideration of more than 7,500 public comments received over the summer. The GE accountability and FVT reporting provisions will go into effect on July 1, 2024. The first official financial outcome rates will be published in early 2025. Programs that fail the same GE metric in the first two years the rates are issued will become ineligible in 2026.
 
The final regulations is available in the Federal Register and will be published on October 10, 2023.
 
Financial Value Transparency and Gainful Employment (Unofficial copy)
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