News

• Trump Administration announces six interagency agreements to dismantle the Department of Education
• Community colleges largely exempt from new ACTS survey, action needed for bachelor’s-granting colleges

Trump Administration announces six interagency agreements to dismantle the Department of Education

On Tuesday, the Trump Administration announced that it will be implementing six new interagency agreements (IAAs) to outsource key functions of the Department of Education (ED) to other federal agencies. As covered by AACC’s Matthew Dembicki in the Community College Daily, the IAAs have a stated goal to “streamline federal education activities on legally required programs, reduce administrative burdens, and refocus program and activities to better serve students and grantees.”

The administration of several programs of import to community colleges are expected to be impacted by the new IAAs. The Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE) will be moved to the Department of Labor (DOL), alongside the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE). OPE oversees the administration of key higher education programs, including TRIO, GEAR UP, and the institutional aid programs. The Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program will be moved to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA), Office of Civil Rights (OCR), Institute for Education Sciences (IES), and Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services are remaining at ED, for now.

Stakeholders do not yet have details about when and how programs will be transferred, how staff will be impacted or integrated into teams at new agencies, or what, if any, steps participating colleges will need to take during the transition period. The statutes underlying many of these programs specify a role for the Secretary of Education, meaning that ED must maintain some oversight or administrative function. It would take an act of Congress to fully remove many programs from ED, as well as to shutter ED altogether.

Earlier this year, the Trump Administration created a similar IAA to transfer Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act programs and adult education to DOL. Under this arrangement, ED retains oversight and continues to perform some back-office functions related to the programs, in part to comply with statutory requirements. ED staff working on CTE and adult education programs have been detailed to DOL offices, maintaining some continuity for grantees. However, grantees did have to switch over to the DOL payment management systems to access funds. It is likely that the new IAAs will utilize a similar structure.

Community colleges largely exempt from new ACTS survey, action needed for bachelor’s-granting colleges

Last week, the Department of Education (ED) released revised changes to the 2025-26 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) surveys, including the new Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS). As covered in the Community College Daily, there is good news and not-so-good news, and the latter requires action from the community college field.

The new ACTS survey will require eligible institutions to report a massive amount of student-level data on admissions and financial aid. These data will include applied, admitted and enrolled cohorts by race-sex pair, further disaggregated by test scores, GPA, family income, Pell Grant eligibility, parental education and other variables. It will also require colleges to report: the count and average amount of students receiving institutional grant aid; merit-based grant aid; need-based grant aid; and local, state or federal aid by race-sex pair.

Public comments from the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) asked for community colleges to be exempt from this reporting, emphasizing that they are open-enrollment institutions that do not engineer their classes to meet specific demographic goals. AACC also highlighted the high burden cost on institutions to produce data.

Reflecting AACC’s comments and those from many community colleges across the country, the ACTS survey currently included in the proposed 2025-26 IPEDS exempts two-year institutions from both the new admissions and financial aid reporting. Four-year institutions are also exempt if they are 100% open-enrollment and do not award non-need-based aid.

It is a tremendous relief that most community colleges will be exempt from this new reporting scheme. However, questions remain for the nearly 200 community colleges that award bachelor’s degrees. The 2025-26 IPEDS Glossary uses a classification system based on “highest degree offered,” rather than “predominate degree awarded.” This would categorize bachelor’s-granting community colleges as four-year institutions, thereby requiring them to report under the ACTS if they offer any non-need-based aid.

It is difficult to imagine that ED meant to include community colleges offering a small number of bachelor’s programs in the ACTS survey. AACC will ask ED to clarify whether and how the ACTS survey will apply to two-year colleges that offer a limited number of bachelor’s degree programs. We hope that there is an opportunity to further refine institution types to capture community colleges that confer bachelor’s degrees as distinct from bona fide four-year institutions.

Given the extraordinary burden associated with the proposed reporting requirements, AACC urges its member colleges that award bachelor’s degrees to respond to ED. They should emphasize:

• They are still open-enrollment institutions and do not engineer their classes to meet specific demographic goals.
• Community college aid awarding practices do not change based on whether the institution offers a select number of bachelor’s degree programs.
• The new ACTS survey would be extraordinarily burdensome and costly for them, and a tremendous waste of resources. Hundreds of hours would go toward producing data that would shed no meaningful light on institutional behavior.

Comments are due to ED by December 15. Submit comments electronically through the Federal eRulemaking Portal by searching Docket ID number ED-2025-SCC-0382.