Institutions Outline Challenges Collecting ACTS Data

Fewer than one in five institutions of higher education had all the necessary data to complete the federal government’s Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement, according to research conducted by the Urban Institute and the Association for Institutional Research.

Their report, published Wednesday, included responses from 596 institutions about the experience of compiling the data the Department of Education demanded in a summer 2025 directive, as well as feedback from several in-person and virtual focus groups and listening sessions. Overwhelmingly, institutions reported not only that it was burdensome to gather the data—especially due to the short time frame they were given—but also that they did not have access to all the historical data the government requested.

Bryan Cook, director of higher education policy at the Urban Institute, a think tank focused on social and economic issues, said they conducted the study in order to understand how ACTS’s truncated timeline impacted institutions. They also wanted to explore the impact of ED’s decision to bypass a technical review panel—a standard process in which a group of experts evaluate the ease and quality of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System’s data collections.

Just 17 percent of the institutions that responded said they had access to all seven years of undergraduate admissions data required by ACTS, while 15 percent said the same about graduate-level data. Some institutional researchers who participated in the focus groups said changes in staffing or software over that seven-year period made it hard to track down the necessary data; some said they hadn’t maintained certain data, particularly numbers related to applicants who ultimately didn’t enroll, due to institutional or state data-retention policies.

Another major challenge included data validation. IPEDS, through which the data was collected, checks possible inconsistencies or errors in the data institutions submit, and institutions are responsible for fixing those errors. Almost every institution (92 percent) said those edits compounded the burden of supplying the data, while 81 percent said they found it challenging to make the necessary changes; error messages were sometimes unclear, and they came through sequentially, meaning users had to resolve one before the next one came through.

According to the report, one focus group participant recounted crying on the phone with the IPEDS Help Desk because they couldn’t resolve an error related to student aid: “I was within like $3 on something, and this is why I said tears, because I literally was on the help desk phone crying because like—I don’t know how to fix this, you know.”

Other participants said they spent hours on the phone with the help desk. Some reported receiving advice from the help line that contradicted ED guidance or information they’d gotten from the help desk in the past.

Respondents also said they were sometimes unsure how the ACTS survey was defining certain data requests; 87 percent said ambiguous definitions made the process more difficult.

Over all, about two-thirds of respondents said that completing the ACTS survey took at least the 200 hours estimated by ED, but 28 percent said it took more than twice as long. Nearly every respondent—98 percent—said ACTS took longer than their regular IPEDS reporting. That was especially significant for small or one-person institutional research offices.

“I calculated that during those four months, from when they announced about it until it was due, I spent one-third of my working time on this,” said one focus group participant, who is the only institutional research employee at their institution.

Ultimately, many institutions surveyed said they were concerned about how the ACTS data would be used—and whether their difficulties compiling it would lead to erroneous conclusions.

Though most focus group participants said they understand the data will be used to determine if institutions are considering race in admissions, which the Supreme Court deemed illegal in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, they weren’t clear on how the data they provided would serve that purpose. Experts have previously raised concerns that the Trump administration will use the data to attack institutions that admit Black or Hispanic students with lower average test scores than white or Asian students, without considering the nuances of the admissions process, as the administration has already done with medical and law schools.

“We’re assuming that these data are ultimately going to be released to the public,” Cook said. “We wanted to make sure that there is caution used when using these data to interpret admissions at different institutions, given the fact that there is just a lot of inconsistency in how institutions interpreted some of the data that was being asked for and the availability of some of that data as well.”