Sponsors (2)
The bill increases transparency about program- and borrower-level loan and earnings outcomes to help students, parents, and policymakers make better decisions, but it creates reporting costs and risks producing misleading or lagging signals—especially for small or recently changed programs.
Students and prospective students gain program- and institution-level data on earnings and loan burdens, letting them compare program value and make more informed enrollment choices.
Schools, policymakers, researchers, and taxpayers gain greater transparency on Graduate PLUS and other loan outcomes, increasing institutional accountability and helping target reforms to reduce defaults and improve repayment.
Parents (and families) get visibility into median Parent PLUS borrowing and repayment/default rates, which informs decisions about taking on parent loans.
Small programs and institutions may be harmed by volatile or misleading rates when limited sample sizes or differing data definitions produce unstable metrics, confusing students and damaging reputations.
Schools and the Department of Education will face ongoing administrative costs to collect, validate, and publish detailed program-level loan data annually, imposing financial and staffing burdens (with taxpayers ultimately bearing some cost).
Reporting median earnings with a roughly 10-year lag may misrepresent recent program improvements or current labor-market conditions, potentially leading students to make suboptimal enrollment choices.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires the Education Department to expand and annually update the College Scorecard with program- and institution-level federal loan, repayment, default, and earnings data.
Introduced September 3, 2025 by Jon Husted · Last progress September 3, 2025
Requires the Secretary of Education to expand and update the College Scorecard (or its successor) every year to show more detailed program-level and institution-level data about federal student loans, repayment, defaults, and earnings. The data fields include median earnings (with a 10‑year lag), median Stafford, Graduate PLUS, and Parent PLUS loan balances at repayment entry for completers, and default and repayment rates for programs and institutions. The bill defines a repayment-rate measure (share of borrowers who graduated with federal loans who fall into Secretary-specified repayment-status categories two years after entering repayment) and references the existing statutory cohort default rate. Private loans and federal loans originated at a different institution are excluded from the repayment-rate calculations.