Student Right to Know Before You Go Act

Higher education is often the ticket to success, offering opportunities to those with college degrees that those who do not have degrees are often denied. It is also, often times, an extremely expensive investment that many students and families must scrimp, save and borrow in order to afford. However, when it comes to the return on that investment, there is a lack of reliable information available to students and families regarding what the likelihood and cost of student success including their post graduation employment opportunities will be and what they can expect to earn. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced legislation to give students and families the information they need to make better decisions about their higher education.

The Student Right to Know Before You Go Act enjoys the support of education organizations from across the political spectrum including the United States Students Association and is part of a legislative approach to federal education policy that focuses on increasing access as well as improving value.

Press Release | Frequently Asked Questions | Bill Text | One Page Summary

Frequently Asked Questions

What would the Student Right to Know Before You Go Act Do?

The Know Before You Go Act would help students access key indicators of college value before they invest precious time and money.  Existing information on post-secondary student success leaves potential students and their families with very little comparable and understandable data on the economic value of specific degrees from specific colleges. The federal government has invested nearly a half billion dollars in states to build up data systems to collect and report this valuable information. However, these systems are isolated and involve numerous and redundant reporting requirements.  Federal data, for example, focus reporting on graduation rates for first-time, full-time undergraduates—but these students represent an ever decreasing percentage of the college population given the growing numbers of transfer students and those who begin their education as part-time students (particularly in community colleges). Furthermore, potential students have no reliable data about their prospective post-graduation employment outcomes. Also, the bulk of consumer information in higher education has addressed only undergraduate education; given the growing cost of graduate and professional programs, cost and graduation rate data should be made available for those programs as well.

This proposal would modernize existing reporting requirements by creating interoperable, state-based, privacy-protected, individual-level data systems that include key indicators of college value such as retention, completion, earnings, and debt. Such a system would allow institutions to report many of the existing data collection requirements to their states, rather than report to both their states and the U.S. Department of Education. This would take advantage of the federal investment in the state longitudinal data systems while ensuring interoperability of the state-based systems. This would allow students, parents, taxpayers, policymakers, and researchers to gain critical information on the value of private and public investments in higher education.

How will prospective students and parents be able to use this data?

This proposal would increase the data available when potential students are making critical decisions, including which school to attend, which programs to choose, and how much debt to take on. This proposal would ensure states and institutions work together to provide prospective students and their families with accurate data on:

  1. Post–graduation average annual earnings (for example, one and five years later);
  2. Rates of remedial enrollment, credit accumulation, and graduation rates;
  3. Average cost to the student (both before and after financial aid) of the program and average debt accumulated;
  4. The effects of remedial education and financial aid on credential attainment and wages.

Importantly, under such a system, these data would be disaggregated and available based on educational program, educational institution, and employment sector. 

How is this data different than what is currently reported in college rankings or on websites such as the Department of Education’s College Navigator?

Existing ranking systems or informational tools such as the College Navigator report a significant amount of valuable information, but are limited by the existing IPEDS reporting requirements which are based primarily on aggregate data collections about first-time, full-time undergraduate students . Accordingly, available data on the cost of tuition and room & board (both before and after financial aid); rates of remedial enrollment, credit accumulation, and graduation rates; and average debt upon graduation are not currently available based on specific program of study. Existing data reporting includes very limited data regarding part-time students, transfer students, graduate and professional students.

Moreover, there is little reliable information on the average earnings associated with specific degree programs separated out by institution. Some institutions choose to complete graduate surveys to provide prospective students and the public at large with this information, however because there is no uniformity in questionnaires and the information is self-reported, there are wide information gaps and earnings data can be misreported. These surveys are not only very expensive to conduct, but the response rates are often very low. Graduates often do not wish to share earnings information with institutions which will likely soon be asking them for donations.

Does this bill imply that higher education is all about getting a job and making money? If so, doesn’t this overlook the basic function of higher education which is to educate the student and make them a more well-rounded and engaged member of society?

No. This legislation does not suggest that decisions about higher education should be made solely based on employment and earnings outcomes; it simply recognizes the fact that those outcomes should be one of the many factors that students and families should be able to take into account before they invest thousands of dollars and years of their lives in higher education. The information should be used alongside countless other factors, both tangible and intangible, that guide this important decision-making process.

Will reporting this data impose additional requirements on institutions?

This bill does not place additional burdens on institutions—in fact, by eliminating reporting requirements to the federal government, this proposal would decrease the burden placed on institutions that report to both the federal government and their states (which is most). Under existing reporting requirements, institutions report extensive data to the U.S. Department of Education through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). This bill would instead allow institutions to report IPEDS data to an approved state data system. This bill also ensures all institutions are treated fairly in reporting, since all sectors will have the same reporting requirements.

Will collecting information on graduate earnings be expensive and burdensome to institutions? How can you ensure that students respond and respond with accurate information?

Under the system proposed in this bill, the requirement to collect earnings data would not be placed on the institution. States already collect and store data on individual earnings for the purpose of determining potential unemployment insurance benefits. This bill would simply ensure states or other approved entities match student-level records with those earnings records, while protecting student privacy. In fact, many states already match student-level data to earnings data, and this bill would simply ensure that those existing systems and future systems are interoperable.

Will this bill ensure student privacy?

Yes. States have been successfully implementing such systems for a number a years and have proven that modern technology means that consumers no longer must choose between protecting individual privacy and ensuring institutional transparency. Specifically, Section 5 part (a)(2)(C) of the legislation mandates the use of a unique privacy-protected student identifier.

UNIQUE IDENTIFIER. The system shall use a unique individual identifier system that—

(i) does not permit an individual to be individually identified by users of the data system; and

(ii) is created through a process that creates a one-way secure identifier that can be used in data systems in other States and cannot be reverse-engineered.

Unlike previous proposals, this bill takes the position that the U.S. Department of Education does NOT need to know who students are in order to have an effective data system for producing policy relevant data. States would then be able to report this de-identified information to the Department of Education in a way that enables the dissemination of the real, nuts and bolts data that students, parents, taxpayers, and policy makers need without sacrificing student privacy.

How Much Would this Proposal Cost?

Implementation of this bill would not require any additional federal spending. States are already building and improving upon their data systems. The Department of Education and Congress already fund Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) grants. This proposal would simply ensure that any existing federal spending on SLDS grants would help build states’ capacity to enact interoperable systems as laid out in the Know Before You Go Act.

It will take time for all states to build their state-level data systems, but forty-six states already have some sort of student unit record collection, so most are well on their way. Accordingly, institutions in those states that do not yet have secure systems would be able to report to an approved entity in a different state, or a collaboration of states. Since the systems are required to be interoperable, such reporting will jeopardize neither the reliability of the data nor the privacy of the student.

How will this proposal benefit taxpayers?

A college education is one of the largest investments and most important decisions in many families’ lives. It is also a significant and important investment by those who pay state and federal taxes that support college education. Yet individuals and policy makers are choosing to invest precious dollars without critical pieces of information.  Our capital markets work best when individuals can accurately measure the value of their investments. One needs to look no further than the recent housing bubble and subsequent burst to see what can happen when this is not the case. Our economy is still struggling to recover from the mortgage meltdown; during which misinformed consumers bought a product based on misleading information and, often times, fell victim to predatory lenders looking to profit off of a growing bubble. Consumers must know what they can expect from their investments and students are entitled to know the value of their education before they borrow tens of thousands of dollars from the banks and from the government to finance their choices. This is particularly important because student loan debt cannot be discharged through bankruptcy. Everyone should know the risks and rewards.

For the first time in our history, student loan debt has surpassed credit card debt, nearing $100 billion and causing speculation that student loan debt may be the next bubble to burst as graduates struggle to find employment and default rates rise. This legislation would provide a critical tool in preventing another such bubble by ensuring greater transparency in the higher education marketplace.

Furthermore, the government spends billions of dollars annually to improve the American higher education system and expand access for millions of individuals who might otherwise be unable to afford college.  But institutions that are eligible to receive these funds vary widely in terms of how well they serve their students in generating positive student outcomes. Though there is no question that ensuring access to and completion in higher education is an economic imperative, it is also imperative that policymakers be careful stewards of taxpayer money and ensure federal investments drive positive outcomes. This proposal makes no determination of what constitutes a positive or negative outcome, but would enable a more detailed picture of student and institutional success and allow policymakers to make more informed decisions, resulting in a better return on investment. 

Latest