2023-24 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:24) Full-Scale Study - Student Data Collection and Student Records

This request is to conduct the 2023-24 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:24) Full-Scale Student Data and Student Records Collections. This study is being conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), within the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), part of the U.S. Department of Education. This submission covers materials and procedures related to institution sampling, enrollment list collection, and matching to administrative data files as part of the NPSAS:24 data collection. The materials and procedures are based on those developed for previous institution-based data collections, including the 2019-20 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:20) [OMB #1850-0666 v.23], and the 2017-18 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study Administrative Collection (NPSAS:18-AC) [1850-0666 v.21]. The first NPSAS was implemented by NCES during the 1986-87 academic year to meet the need for national data about significant financial aid issues. Since 1987, NPSAS has been fielded every 2 to 4 years, most recently during the 2019-20 academic year (NPSAS:20). NPSAS:24 will be nationally-representative. The NPSAS:24 sample size will include about 2,000 institutions from which will be sampled 137,000 nationally representative undergraduate and 25,000 nationally representative graduate students who will be asked to complete a survey and for whom we will collect student records and administrative data. Also, NPSAS:24 is scheduled to serve as the base year for the 2024 cohort of the Baccalaureate and Beyond (B&B) Longitudinal Study, but no funding is available to field follow-up surveys. In the event Congress appropriates additional funds, the NPSAS:24 sampling design will include a nationally representative sample of students who will complete requirements for the bachelor-s degree during the NPSAS year (i.e., completed at some point between July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024). Subsets of questions in the student survey will focus on describing aspects of the experience of students in their last year of postsecondary education, including student debt, education experiences, and preparation activities for those planning to teach at the preK through 12th grade level. Previous submissions were designed to adequately justify the need for and overall practical utility of the full study, presenting the overarching plan for all phases of the data collection and providing as much detail about the measures to be used as is available at the time of this submission. As part of the completed field test, NCES published a notice in the Federal Register allowing first a 60- and then a 30-day public comment period. Field test materials, procedures, and results have informed this request for clearance for the full-scale study. For this full-scale study, NCES first published a notice in the Federal Register allowing an additional 30-day public comment period on the final details of the NPSAS:24 full-scale study Institution Contacting and List Collection, which was approved in September 2023 (OMB# 1850-0666 v.35). NCES is now submitting a separate clearance package covering the student data collection, including the student record data abstraction and student surveys, for an additional 30-day public comment period.

The latest form for 2023-24 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:24) Full-Scale Study - Student Data Collection and Student Records expires 2026-12-31 and is listed under ICR 202410-1850-003.