Higher Education Watch – Big changes may be coming to the IPEDS report

The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) survey may soon be seeing some significant updates based on a chain of memos and proposals recently issued by President Trump and the Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon.  

What is the IPEDS Survey?

IPEDS is a series of surveys collected annually by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) from all colleges, universities, technical and vocational institutions in the United States that receive funds under the Higher Education Act. Each survey covers a specific area of data such as basics about the institution, admissions, enrollment, financial aid, graduation rates, school financials, human resources, and academic libraries.  The due dates of each survey vary throughout the year.  IPEDS has been collected since 1986 and the data is used in a variety of ways, including for prospective students to compare schools, for researchers to analyze trends and for benchmarking by the institutions themselves.  

President Trump and Secretary McMahon Messages

In a memo dated August 7, 2025 and entitled, “Ensuring Transparency in Higher Education Admissions”,  President Trump called for greater transparency in postsecondary admissions to ensure higher education institutions are not using race-based admissions practices that violate the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA) . The President’s memo directed Secretary McMahon to, among other items, enhance the reporting requirements of the IPEDS.  This includes an expanded scope of required reporting, increased accuracy checks of the submitted data, and additional remedial action if data isn’t submitted or found to be inaccurate or incomplete. The President’s memo directed that the enhanced reporting changes be completed within 120 days and in time for the 2025-2026 school year reporting period.  

On the same day as the Presidential memo, Secretary McMahon issued a directive to the Acting Commissioner of NCES to implement the President’s request for greater admissions transparency, stating that “American taxpayers and aspiring college students deserve to know if the institutions they fund and to which they apply are discriminating on the basis of race.”  This directive further spells out expectations for enhancements to the IPEDS system, including disaggregated data collection by race and sex of applicant pools, admitted cohorts and enrolled cohorts at the undergraduate level and specific graduate and professional programs for those institutions that receive Federal Financial Assistance as defined by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.   

Additionally, the directive requests that the IPEDS be revised to report quantitative measures of applicants and admitted students’ academic achievements. The scope of collection for enrolled cohorts is also to be expanded, with additional expectation for the NCES to determine if any additional information is needed to ensure transparency in admissions reporting.  

Finally, the directive includes provisions for the NCES to develop quality assurance processes to ensure that data submitted is accurate and consistently reported across institutions.  

Proposed Changes to the Survey

On August 15, 2025, the Education Department posted a notice in the Federal Register proposing  revisions to the current IPEDS information collection. The proposal includes many significant changes including updating certain terms, such as replacing the term “gender” with sex” and no longer collecting non-binary gender information.  

Most significant in the proposal is the addition of the “Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement” (ACTS) component. If included, this new section will be applicable to all four-year institutions who utilize selective admissions and will include both undergraduate and graduate admissions.  

For undergraduate applicant data, the submission would include disaggregated data for each race/sex pairing of a variety of data points: 

• the count of institutions’ applied, admitted, and enrolled cohorts, both overall and further disaggregated by admission test score quintiles, GPA quintiles, ranges of family income, Pell Grant eligibility, and parental education;  

• the average high school grade point average and admission test score quintiles for institutions’ applied, admitted, and enrolled cohorts; and  

• the count of students admitted via early action, early decision, or regular admissions. 

For enrolled undergraduate students (also by each race/sex pairing) information about  

• Financial aid received 

• Average Cumulative GPA  

• Average cost of attendance by admission test score quintiles, ranges of high school grade point averages, ranges of family income and enrollment type 

• Graduation rates by admission test score quintiles and high school grade point averages  

For graduate students, much of the same information would be requested but by an even further breakdown by specific fields of study.   

The proposal would require that all this information be submitted for the past five years in the first year of submission.  For admissions data, this means information dating back to the 2020-21 academic year. Graduation rates would be reported dating back to the 2019-20 academic year. According to the proposal, this broader data set will be used to establish a “baseline of admissions practices” before the SFFA decision.  

What this Means for Higher Education Institutions

Institutions with a requirement to submit the IPEDS surveys should be aware of the potential changes coming to the submissions and begin planning now. The messages by the President and the Secretary of Education make clear that this Administration will continue to prioritize the enforcement of civil rights laws in the higher education context.  These recent directives also emphasize the Administration’s focus on ensuring that unlawful race-based preferences are not being used in higher education admissions after the SFFA decision.  As a result, the proposed changes should be viewed holistically, and not just as changes to an annual reporting requirement. 

The proposed revisions will require most higher education institutions to collect and report a vast amount of new data as part of their annual IPEDS reporting, with the first reporting period being particularly burdensome because of the proposed five-year lookback period. As a result, if the proposed changes are approved, they would likely require significant updates to internal reporting and administration. It will also be important to validate data for consistency and errors, especially with respect to earlier academic years. Higher education institutions would be wise to conduct a gap analysis now to compare the proposed changes against current data availability and capabilities. 

Analyzing the admissions and undergraduate data before submission to understand what it says about an institution’s admissions practices is also recommended. Institutions will want to evaluate anomalies, trends and potential inconsistencies in the data. Conducting a legally-privileged audit with a statistical expert will help higher education institutions evaluate compliance with the SFFA decision and applicable civil rights laws.  

Berkshire Associates hosted a webinar to discuss the proposed changes and recommendations for how to analyze data. You can listen to the on-demand recording by registering here.  Continue following Berkshire blogs for updates on this important topic.