Student Tuition and Transparency System (STATS) and Earnings Accountability Final Rule
Submitted to the White House for Last Looks and Comments Before Publication
Overview
Notice of submission by the U.S. Department of Education (Department) of the draft Final Rule implementing the statutory provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill (a.k.a. The Working Families Tax Credit Act) have been posted on the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs’ (OIRA) website (us.list-manage.com/88k1EkSpeQ1?e=05bce952ad&c2id=828e2f13ae2569477ba2b7da4ef30812) as of this morning.
This delivery by the Department to OIRA indicate Department has completed the development of a comprehensive document for the Administration to review prior to its official publication.
The White House is now responsible for the completion of its final review of the comprehensive draft which includes any updates to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), any potential revisions, additions, or modifications to the NPRM based upon comments and recommendations received in response to the “Directed Questions” and other proposals included in the over 10,000 public comments, and the all-important analysis of public comments.
As part of the White House review, interested and effected parties have one last opportunity to request a meeting with OIRA and Department officials on the regulations under consideration. These meetings are sometimes called “E.O. 12866 meetings,” named after the Executive Order that structures OIRA’s centralized regulatory review.
The ability to request and schedule the E.O. 12866 meetings is now open and CSPEN anticipates a considerable number of requests from across the higher education community and other interested parties to be submitted.
Once the meetings are completed, which can be cut off at the discretion of the Administration, the White House shares final comments with the Department – which the Department can either adopt or choose not to accept with justification.
The Department then goes through its final development, editing and authorization process before then sending the Final Rule to the Federal Register for official publication.
Under Secretary Nicholas Kent has stated that the Department hopes to complete this entire process by July 1. This is much faster than the timeline that the Department had previously shared, and candidly much sooner than CSPEN and many others in Washington had anticipated.
Bottom line, it is truly the final countdown, and the final rules will be forthcoming soon. Note: The Department’s training series on OBBB had previously left the date for a webinar entitled, “OBBBA: STATS and Earnings Accountability—Reporting, Metric Calculation, and Appeals” blank. Yesterday the website was updated with a posting stating that the webinar will be held on Wednesday, July 8. The description states, “This session will offer an opportunity to ask questions and receive updates on STATS and Earnings Accountability focused on Reporting, Metric Calculation, and Appeals as part of implementation of the OBBBA.”
We will share more information in the days ahead, but wanted to provide this important update to the community as soon as possible.
