Participation and Disclosures

1845-0156 – Affected Public – State, Local or Tribal Governments 10/1/2019

The Department of Education (the Department) amends the Student Assistance General Provisions regulations to implement changes to §668.26 – End of an institution’s participations in the Title IV,HEA programs and §668.43 – Financial assistance information . These final regulations are a result of negotiated rulemaking in early 2019 and will add new requirements to the current regulations.

The final regulations in §668.26 will allow the Secretary to permit an institution that has ended its participation in title IV programs to continue to originate, award, or disburse title IV funds for up to 120 days under specific circumstances.

For §668.26 we estimate that, on average, an institution will need 5 hours to draft, and finalize for the appropriate institutional management signature, the written request for extension of the eligibility from the Secretary.

Affected entity # of Respondents # of Responses Hrs/Response Total Burden

For Profit Institutions 1 1 X 5 hours 5 hours

The final regulations in §668.43 will put in place new institutional disclosures or revise current institutional disclosure requirements.

The final regulations in §668.43(a)(5) will require an institution to disclose whether the program would fulfill educational requirements for licensure or certification if the program is designed to or advertised as meeting such requirements. Institutions will be required to disclose, for each State, whether the program did or did not meet such requirements, or whether the institution had not made such a determination. We anticipate that most institutions will provide this disclosure information electronically on either the general institution website or individual program websites as required. Using data from the National Center for Educational Statistics, there were approximately 226,733 certificate and degree granting programs in 2017 identified for the public, private and proprietary sectors.

For § 668.43(a)(5)(v), we estimate that five percent or 11,337 of all programs will be designed for specific professional licenses or certifications required for employment in an occupation or is advertised as meeting such State requirements. We further estimate that it will take an institution an estimated 50 hours per program to research individual State requirements, determine program compatibility and provide a listing of the States where the program curriculum meets the State requirements, where it does not meet the State requirements, or list the States where no such determination has been made. We base this estimate on institutions electing not to research and report licensing requirements for States in which they had no enrollment or expressed interest. Additionally, we believe that some larger institutions and associations have gathered such data and have shared it with other institutions so there is less burden as the research has been done.

Affected entity # of Respondents # of Responses Hrs/Response Total Burden

For Profit Institutions 1,860 6,719 X 50 hours 335,950 hours

For § 668.43(a)(11) through (20), we estimate that it will take institutions an average of 2 hours to research, develop and post on institutional or programmatic web sites the required information.

Affected entity # of Respondents # of Responses Hrs/Response Total Burden

For Profit Institutions * 1,860 X 2 hours 3,720 hours

For § 668.43(c), we anticipate that institutions will provide this information electronically to prospective students regarding the determination of a program’s curriculum to meet State requirements for students located in that State or if no such determination has been made. Likewise, we anticipate that institutions will provide this information electronically to enrolled students when a determination has been made that the program’s curriculum no longer meets State requirements. We estimate that institutions will take an average of 2 hours to develop the language for the individualized disclosures. We estimate that it will take an additional average of 4 hours for the institutions to disclose this information to prospective and enrolled students for a total of 6 hour of burden. We estimate that five percent of the institutions will meet the criteria to require these disclosures (1,860 x5% = 93).

Affected entity # of Respondents # of Responses Hrs/Response Total Burden

For Profit Institutions * 93 X 6 hours 558 hours

TOTALS

Responses 8,673

Respondents 1,860

Burden Hours 340,233

*The universe of respondents count is not summed to avoid a duplicate count of respondents.