ED Offers Conditional Deadline Extension on ACTS Survey

The Education Department could give some institutional research offices a conditional three-week extension on its deadline to submit admissions data that the federal government plans to use to look for unlawful race-based admissions practices.

On Friday, the Association for Institutional Research posted a notice on its website that “institutions may be granted an extension to April 8, 2026, provided they meet two required conditions by the regular March 18 keyholder deadline.” Those include completing all the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement survey screening questions for all seven reporting years and uploading data for any three ACTS reporting years to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System Data Collection System.

Starting March 18, institutions that meet both of those requirements can contact the IPEDS help desk to request an extension, according to AIR’s website. An Education Department spokesperson confirmed the guidance in an email to Inside Higher Ed Friday, writing that the agency is “granting limited extensions to the reporting deadline where institutions have shown a good faith effort to comply and extraordinary circumstances warranting extension.”

The partial extension comes a week after AIR sent a letter to the National Center for Education Statistics asking for a three-month extension on the deadline for the ACTS survey, which the Trump administration added to IPEDS last year. While institutions typically have one year to complete and submit the IPEDS surveys, the government gave them just 90 days to complete the ACTS survey after it finalized the rule in December. 

Most selective four-year colleges and universities are on the hook to submit massive amounts of disaggregated admissions data—including the test scores, grade point averages, race, sex and income ranges of applied, admitted and enrolled students dating as far back as 2019.

But a survey completed by AIR showed that as of a month ago, 87 percent of institutional research officers said they needed more time to complete it. The biggest barriers to meeting the March 18 deadline for timely and accurate data submissions, they said, include staffing capacity, data availability or quality, interpretation of definitions or requirements, and timing or uncertainty related to evolving guidance.