In March 2025, the U.S. Department of Education laid off nearly all federal staff responsible for managing, analyzing and interpreting higher education data through the National Center for Education Statistics.
While the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, also known as IPEDS, continues uninterrupted for now, the broader budget cuts and contract cancellations at NCES signal future disruptions to data collection and reporting, sounding the alarm for higher education planning.
This shift has seismic implications for all higher education institutions but the disruption will likely be greatest on those below the ‘emerging research institution’ level. Community colleges and regional public universities often rely on federal data not only for compliance but also for peer benchmarking, state-directed accountability linked directly to their funding, evaluating return on investment, and evidence of graduate outcomes such as gainful employment.
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The loss of technical assistance, quality control and longitudinal analysis will likely quickly transition from an inconvenience to an explicit leadership challenge.
In an era already defined by increased scrutiny, enrollment pressures and resource constraints, institutional leaders must now reassess how they will generate insight, demonstrate value and participate in a shifting national conversation about higher education.
The federal data scaffolding may be crumbling but the need to tell the full story of higher education—clearly, credibly and comparably—remains intact.
Quiet unraveling of NCES
Few headlines covered the March 2025 layoffs at NCES. Much of the media was focused on challenges to DEI, the loss of research grants and immigration visits to campuses. Back in Washington, among the 1,200 or so employees released, were more than a hundred who handled the nation’s comprehensive educational datasets.
NCES was left with a “skeletal” team of just three people. Stephen Provasnik, the former NCES deputy commissioner who had just left in January, warned, “The idea of having three individuals manage the work that was done by a hundred federal employees supported by thousands of contractors is ludicrous and not humanly possible.”
For the moment, the IPEDS platform remains live. The forms are still being submitted. Catherine Finnegan, who leads a research and reporting team at Virginia’s Community College System says, “We’re still reporting—but there’s no help desk, for example.”
Nick Huntington-Klein, an economist who studies higher education, captured the moment succinctly: “The (static) databases will be useful for research, but not to colleges for tracking trends.” Ironically, the absence of usable data has an immediate impact on postsecondary infrastructure, e.g. workforce readiness policy.
Narrowing the usability of higher ed data
The layoffs weren’t just about IPEDS. They affected NCES staff responsible for all higher education datasets, including survey design, longitudinal tracking and reporting tools such as the National Student Clearinghouse, College Scorecard and College Navigator. These tools rely heavily on IPEDS as their foundational data source.
The National Student Clearinghouse is the most reliable way K12 and postsecondary institutions measure their matriculation rates. The College Scorecard, a 2015 tool created by the U.S. Department of Education, was intended to help students and families evaluate college options by providing outcomes-based data on costs, graduation rates, student debt and post-graduation earnings.
College Navigator provides detailed institutional profiles, including enrollment, financial aid, admissions and accreditation data.
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Community colleges and regional universities rely on NCES data for everything from setting strategic goals to writing grant applications. “It’s how we compare ourselves to similar schools,” Huntington-Klein notes. “What’s happening with enrollment? Completion rates? We use this data to know what’s normal.”
Large research universities may have internal analytics teams or external consultants to model enrollment trends, simulate cost structures or validate student outcomes. Smaller institutions typically do not.
Finnegan works for a state-level system, facilitating the collection of cross-campus data. Huntington-Klein’s Seattle University is a Jesuit institution that will continue to collect data across its peer group.
In states where public universities and community colleges operate more independently—and for smaller private colleges and universities—‘apples to apples’ data collection and benchmarking will present a bigger, more complex, challenge.
In Virginia, for example, Finnegan’s system spans 23 campuses and serves over 200,000 students. “Internally, we’ll still be able to compare across campuses,” she explained. “But state-to-state or system-level comparisons? Those are going to vanish.”
This change has immediate implications for initiatives like gainful employment reporting, Aspen Prize submissions or student success frameworks. Without timely, comparable and vetted data, institutions risk flying blind—or worse, telling incomplete or misleading stories.
Why it matters beyond compliance
Some may ask: if the reporting requirements remain and the tools are still accessible, what’s the big deal?
The big deal is trust. IPEDS data is the silent engine behind most of what higher education institutions use to make the case for their relevance and impact. It feeds not just federal dashboards but also state accountability systems, media rankings and policy narratives.
Do families log into the College Navigator every day? No. But as Finnegan observed, “It’s a second-order thing—used by journalists, policymakers and systems to make comparisons. If that goes away, people start relying on whatever’s loudest or shiniest instead.”
In the absence of federal data, self-reported institutional data becomes the norm. But those numbers, housed on institutional websites, often use varying definitions and inconsistent update cycles. They’re subject to spin, especially in times of enrollment or financial stress.
“When people can’t trust the data, they stop trusting the institutions,” Huntington-Klein notes.
Short-term strategies: Adapt while the system stands
Despite the turmoil, there is still time to act. While the long-term prognosis for NCES remains uncertain, leaders can take immediate steps to mitigate risk and preserve insight:
- Audit your dependencies: Identify every report, decision, dashboard and accreditation process that draws from NCES or IPEDS data.
- Strengthen internal review: Without federal validation, institutions must double down on internal quality assurance. Don’t assume that data is accurate just because it was submitted.
- Upskill IR teams: Move your institutional research function from compliance-driven to insight-driven. Emphasize interpretation, forecasting and scenario planning.
- Build or join regional collaboratives: Data-sharing consortia can restore lost comparability and promote consistent practices.
- Invest in public-facing data: Your website may become your most important source of truth. Clean, visual, and clearly defined metrics are essential to retaining public trust.
Finnegan notes, “Higher education has become accustomed to not putting cash into this system. Now that will have to change.”
Rebuilding the infrastructure
Assuming the federal scaffolding doesn’t return anytime soon, what’s next? Institutions can collaborate—through consortia, professional organizations and state systems—to develop alternative frameworks for data stewardship. That may include:
- State-level data warehouses that are interoperable and standardized.
- Multi-institution consortia that define common metrics and share benchmarking tools.
- Professional associations like AIR, AACC, AERA and AASCU that coordinate advocacy and technical development.
“There’s an ethical question here,” Finnegan emphasized. “Do we want a privatized model for educational accountability? Who will control the narrative then?” Huntington-Klein agreed: “The danger isn’t that we stop collecting data, it’s that we forget why we did it in the first place.”
In higher education, data isn’t just about compliance. It tells the world who you are. It shapes how legislators fund you, how partners evaluate you and how prospective students perceive you.
If there isn’t clean, credible, comparable data readily available, others will fill that void—with anecdote, opinion or ideology. Each institution’s future depends on owning its own story through facts that are well-collected, well-presented and widely understood.
Leaders can build local and collective capacity to tell their stories well, with or without federal scaffolding.
From data submitters to data stewards
The layoffs at NCES weren’t just a staffing decision. They were a message that the federal government may no longer serve as the guarantor of higher education’s data.
Institutional leaders can decide how to respond. By transitioning from passive data submitters to active data stewards, leaders can ensure that their institutions can still ask and answer the big questions, even without federal support.
As Finnegan puts it, “This is a moment where we decide. Do we let go of shared visibility or do we rebuild it together?”
