NAICU Washington Update

Refining Gainful Employment

January 24, 2012

It's back!!

Since we last reported in the fall of 2011, the Department has issued several more electronic announcements (nos. 26 through 31) and a correction to the final regulations on "gainful employment."  Largely, the announcements have dealt with reporting data to the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS) and making corrections to that data.

The Department relaxed the deadline for correcting data errors, and has developed a special technical resources document on resolving inconsistencies in student social security numbers (SSN). In Announcement No. 30, the Department states that if an institution is unable to revolve SSN conflicts, the institution doesn't have to report the student, and will be considered as meeting the gainful employment reporting requirements if it saves documentation of its effort to resolve the conflict.

On January 23, the Department issued a detailed set of corrections to the preamble of final regulations published June 13, 2011.  The corrections address data used to calculate the percent of total variance in institutions' repayment rates that may be explained by race/ethnicity, and also correct the use of "acceptance rate" when "retention rate" was intended in describing an institutional variable.

Details are available on the Department website.  The main page on gainful employment includes the regulations, all electronic announcements (except for #27), frequently asked questions, and technical resources.  Electronic announcement #27 - a reminder of the November 15, 2011, report filing deadline - is on the Information for Financial Aid Professionals page.

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