Posted Date:February 11, 2015
| Author: | Pamela Eliadis, Service Director, System Operations & Aid Delivery Management, Federal Student Aid |
Subject: Gainful Employment Electronic Announcement #52 - NSLDS Functionality Now Available for Voluntary Gainful Employment Reporting
We are pleased to announce that gainful employment (GE) reporting functionality is now available on the National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS), including on the NSLDS Professional Access Web site. While the GE final regulations, published on October 31, 2014 with an effective date of July 1, 2015, provide that the deadline for institutions to report GE Program information is July 31, 2015, institutions may begin submitting GE data now on a voluntary basis, using an online reporting option or using the batch file process through the Student Aid Internet Gateway (SAIG). The NSLDS Gainful Employment Spreadsheet Submittal Format will be available within the next several days as another way that institutions can submit GE data to NSLDS, on a purely voluntary basis.
Note: The final regulations provided that the July 31, 2015 reporting deadline includes GE data for the 2008-2009 Award Year through the 2013-2014 Award Year. For certain medical and dental programs the reporting must include data from the 2007-2008 Award Year through the 2013-2014 Award Year. The GE reporting deadline for the current 2014-2015 Award Year is October 1, 2015.
NSLDS Gainful Employment User Guide
To assist institutions with the GE reporting process, the new NSLDS Gainful Employment User Guide has been posted to the NSLDS User Documentation section of the Information for Financial Aid Professionals (IFAP) Web site. The guide may also be downloaded from the "Resources" section of the Gainful Employment Information Page. Institutions should use the information in this guide to prepare their systems to submit the required GE information.
As a reminder, the NSLDS Gainful Employment Submittal File Record Layouts were posted on January 9, 2015 to the NSLDS Record Layouts section on the IFAP Web site. The layouts are also available in Appendix A of the NSLDS Gainful Employment User Guide. The layouts are available in both fixed-width and comma separated values (CSV) format.
NSLDS Gainful Employment Spreadsheet Submittal Format
In the next several days, we will post the updated NSLDS Gainful Employment Spreadsheet Submittal Format to the Federal Student Aid Download (FSAdownload) Web site. The NSLDS Gainful Employment Spreadsheet Submittal Format is an additional online reporting method institutions can use to supply GE data. After the institution adds GE information to the spreadsheet, it can upload and transfer the data to the NSLDS Professional Access Web site. The NSLDS Gainful Employment Spreadsheet Submittal Format is designed to be used with the Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet application and allows for a file up to 1,000 KB in size (approximately 1 MB) to be uploaded at a time.
An Instruction Guide for the NSLDS Gainful Employment Spreadsheet Submittal Format provides step-by-step instructions for the upload process. Please monitor the FSAdownload Web site for the forthcoming availability of the NSLDS Gainful Employment Spreadsheet Submittal he NSLDS Gainful Employment Spreadsheet Submittal ditional Resources
In Dear Colleague Letter ANN-15-01 we announced the availability of the recorded version of our January 2015 webinar that discussed the required GE reporting process using NSLDS. For information about how to view the recorded session, as well as obtain the presentation slides and transcript, refer to ANN-15-01.
The Gainful Employment Information Page on the IFAP Web site contains publications and resources on GE as well as Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). We recently updated the FAQs with additional information and operational guidance on GE requirements and encourage institutions to review the new information.
Contact Information
If you have questions about NSLDS, contact the NSLDS Customer Support Center at 800/999-8219. You can also contact Customer Support by e-mail at nslds@ed.gov.
If you have a question about the GE regulations that has not already been addressed in the FAQ section of the Gainful Employment Information Page, please submit the question to ge-questions@ed.gov.