Two of the country’s largest community college advocacy organizations are throwing their support behind a Senate bill they say could reshape how the nation tracks student outcomes.
The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) and the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT) are backing the College Transparency Act (S. 2511/H.R. 4806), bipartisan legislation that would create a federal system for tracking student-level data across higher education. The Senate Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions (HELP) Committee is scheduled to mark up the bill on July 30.
The legislation would lift a long-standing federal ban on collecting student-level data and establish a secure, privacy-protected student-level data network housed within the National Center for Education Statistics. According to ACCT, the bill has already drawn support from more than 150 organizations representing colleges, employers, workforce groups, student advocates, veterans and civil rights organizations.
AACC joined three other higher education associations — the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, the Association of American Universities and the Association of Public Land-Grant Universities — in a July 27 letter to HELP Committee Chair Bill Cassidy and Ranking Member Bernie Sanders. The letter’s authors called the bill one of the most significant opportunities in decades to overhaul the country’s postsecondary data systems.
A central argument in the letter is that current federal data collection leaves major gaps. Much of the information reported through tools like the College Scorecard, along with the upcoming Student Tuition and Transparency System and Earnings Accountability framework, only captures students who receive Title IV federal financial aid. That excludes close to 40% of postsecondary students nationwide, according to the letter.
The problem is especially acute at community colleges. Close to sixty percent of all students finance their education without federal aid, according to the letter, leaving “policymakers, institutions, and prospective students with an incomplete and sometimes misleading picture of institutional and program performance.”
ACCT echoes that concern, noting that existing data systems exclude more than half of all community college students because they only count those receiving Title IV aid. The organization argues the bill would provide a more complete picture of enrollment, transfer rates and program success — areas where current federal reporting largely falls short. ACCT also points to transfer as a key example, saying today’s data systems fail to adequately capture how many community college students move on to four-year institutions, a common goal for that population.
Both organizations tie the bill’s urgency to newer federal accountability initiatives, including the Workforce Pell program, which ties aid eligibility to program-level outcomes. Because there’s currently no federal mechanism for reporting outcomes of students who don’t receive Title IV aid, institutions have had to rely on workarounds. The AACC-backed letter states that colleges must work with states and outside vendors to retrofit systems or use proxy measures just to assess eligibility for the program.
The associations also say the bill would close data gaps affecting specific student populations, particularly military veterans, who are frequently left out of federal tracking because they often use Department of Veterans Affairs benefits rather than traditional student aid.
Supporters argue the legislation would ultimately reduce paperwork burdens on colleges by consolidating overlapping state, federal and institutional reporting requirements, while giving schools better data to align academic programs with workforce needs.
The bill is sponsored in the Senate by Cassidy and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and in the House by Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) and Mike Kelly (R-PA).
