By Fred Satterwhite
BLOG OVERVIEW: The Department of Education's new Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS) requires four-year colleges and universities to report seven years of detailed student-level admissions data through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) by March 18, 2026. Approved in December 2025, the ACTS survey mandates reporting on race, sex, standardized test scores, family income, financial aid, and other metrics for undergraduate and graduate applicants, admitted students, enrolled students, and completers. Higher education institutions must quickly mobilize to collect and submit comprehensive historical data to meet federal compliance requirements.
Changes to IPEDS Reporting Approved
On December 16, 2025, many U.S. colleges and universities received an early holiday surprise—one that likely was not on their wish lists—when the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) approved the addition of the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS) survey to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) 2025-2026 data collection cycle.
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the Department of Education proposed the ACTS addition to IPEDS on August 15, 2025, after President Trump issued a memorandum to the Secretary of Education on August 7, 2025, which directed the expansion of data collection from institutions of higher education “to provide adequate transparency into admissions.” Simultaneously, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon directed NCES to make the changes to the IPEDS survey within 120 days to be included in the reporting for the 2025-2026 academic year.
As noted in a previous blog, commenters raised concerns during the ACTS proposal’s public comment period about the potential burden on institutions to gather and report the required data for multiple academic years in time for the 2025-2026 submission deadline. Nevertheless, covered institutions—defined by NCES as “those that are four-year degree-granting public, private for-profit, and private not-for-profit institutions that primarily award bachelor’s degrees or above (inclusive of institutions that award only graduate degrees)”—are required to submit detailed student-level data for undergraduate and graduate applicants, admitted students, enrolled students, and completers for the last seven academic years by March 18, 2026.
The March 18 deadline reflects the date Keyholders, the designated individual at a postsecondary institution responsible for overseeing the required data, must submit. IPEDS Coordinators, who are responsible for data from groups of institutions, such as a state system or a large university system, have until April 1, 2026, to review the data or resolve system wide issues.
Changes to the Required Data
In addition to academic-program and other related information, the student-level records must include the following information for each student/applicant/completer:
This data must be submitted to NCES in one file for each academic year (i.e., 2019-20 through 2025-26), meaning a total of seven data files will be uploaded to NCES’ new ACTS Aggregator Tool for each submission. Users will then download an aggregate data file created by the ACTS Aggregator Tool and upload it to the IPEDS Data Collection System (DCS).
IPEDS Keyholders and CEOs of institutions meeting the requirement criteria to report the ACTS data received a notification e-mail from NCES in late December 2025. After logging in to the IPEDS DCS, covered institutions will see the individual ACTS survey years shown in the list of required survey components. Instructions and detailed file specifications for the ACTS submission can be downloaded here.
Changes to Terminology
The ACTS addition is not the only change to the IPEDS data collection for the 2025-2026 academic year. On August 5, 2025, OIRA approved updates requested by NCES in response to President Trump’s Executive Order 14168 issued on January 20, 2025. As a result, NCES stated that “the term ‘gender’ has been replaced with ‘sex,’ the term ‘men’ has been replaced with ‘male,’ the term ‘women’ has been replaced with ‘female,’ and non-binary sex (i.e., Another Gender) will no longer be collected.”
As the landscape of admissions reporting continues to evolve, DCI remains committed to guiding institutions through these regulatory changes, ensuring they have the support and insight needed to navigate compliance with confidence. To receive future updates about developments, resources, and webinars on this topic, visit our Higher Education page.