Requires colleges to publish responses to the survey created by the Common Data Set Initiative, relating to admissions and financial aid process, annual expenses, academic offerings, graduation rate, student demographics, instructional faculty and class sizes, and degrees conferred, on an annual basis.
This bill would require every college in New York to complete, publish, and prominently display its annual responses to the Common Data Set survey on its own website. The Common Data Set is a standardized reporting tool that includes information about admissions and financial aid, annual expenses, academic programs, graduation rates, student demographics, faculty, class sizes, and degrees conferred. The bill also directs the State Education Department commissioner to collect these responses and publish them on the department’s website in a clear and prominent format.
The commissioner would have to make the information easy to access through multiple tools, including a drop-down menu for individual colleges, a statewide digital map, and a search function. The bill further authorizes the commissioner to impose civil penalties on colleges that willfully fail to comply. If enacted, the measure would create a statewide transparency and disclosure requirement for colleges and would add a new section to the Education Law governing institutional reporting.
The bill would amend the Education Law by adding a new section 609-a, creating mandatory annual disclosure obligations for colleges in New York. It would require institutions to publish standardized admissions, financial aid, academic, and student outcome data, while also requiring the State Education Department to aggregate and present that information in user-friendly formats. Colleges that do not comply could face civil penalties at the commissioner’s discretion, making the bill both a reporting mandate and an enforcement mechanism for higher education transparency.
No committee transcript or vote record is provided, so there is no direct evidence of support or opposition from debate or floor action. Based on the bill text and caption, the measure appears to be framed as a transparency and consumer-information bill for prospective students and families, which typically draws favorable attention from advocates of higher-education accountability. Because no recorded discussion is available, the overall sentiment cannot be measured beyond the bill’s apparent policy purpose.
The main potential points of contention are the compliance burden on colleges, the scope of the required disclosures, and the commissioner’s authority to impose civil penalties. Institutions may object to the administrative costs of annual reporting and the requirement to present data in multiple state-managed formats. There may also be debate over whether the Common Data Set is sufficiently standardized and whether state-level publication could create redundancy with existing institutional reporting. No specific opponents or supporters are identified in the available record.