PEER Center Comments: College Costs and Value Transparency

College affordability and value are issues on the minds of policymakers on both sides of the aisle, as well as prospective students and their families. Additionally, recent legislation from Congress, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), will substantially reshape the higher education landscape. Parent borrowers, as well as graduate student borrowers, will have their loan eligibility capped, forcing many to look to the private market. New standards for federal loan eligibility will hold many programs to a minimum standard for post-college earnings – though the riskiest programs, undergraduate certificates, will be held to a separate regulatory standard currently under deliberation by the Department of Education. Changes to the loan repayment system may shift how borrowers think about the costs of college, and the amount of debt they are – or should be – willing to take on for their programs of study. The extension of Pell Grants to very-short-term programs may help some students fi nance their workforce training programs, but could lead others to forego higher-value, longer programs that would set them up for longer-term success.

We submitted comments to the Senate HELP Committee, indicating that the issues in the Committee’s Request for Information are critical ones with significant bipartisan opportunity for reform – and that they may only be made more urgent by the upheaval in higher education policy that will take effect over the next several years. In particular, we urged Congress to:

• Codify Financial Value Transparency requirements

• Establish a universal net price calculator

• Pass legislation to fill gaps in the national data infrastructure

• Adopt strong accountability metrics for undergraduate certificate programs, such as those in Gainful Employment regulation, or – at a minimum – the OBBBA "do no harm" standard