FR notice requesting comments:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/04/09/2019-06920/agency-information-collection-activities-comment-request-2019-20-national-postsecondary-student-aid
Draft supporting statement
https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=ED-2019-ICCD-0049-0001
Click on "Open Docket Folder" then "Supporting Statements" -- see three documents
The 2019-20 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:20) is a nationally representative cross-sectional study of how students and their families finance education beyond high school in a given academic year. NPSAS is conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and was first implemented by NCES during the 1986-87 academic year and has been fielded every 2 to 4 years since. This request is to conduct the 11th cycle in the NPSAS series that will be conducted during the 2019-20 academic year. NPSAS:20 will be both nationally- and state-representative.
NPSAS:20 will consist of nationally-representative sample undergraduate and graduate students, and a nationally-representative sample of first-time beginning students (FTBs). Subsets of questions in the student interview will focus on describing aspects of the experience of beginning students in their first year of postsecondary education, including student debt and education experiences. This submission covers materials and procedures related to institution sampling, institution contacting, enrollment list collection, and matching to administrative data files as part of the NPSAS:20 data collection.
The NPSAS:20 enrollment list collection from institutions will take place from October 2019 through July 2020, the student records collection will take place from February through November 2020, and the student survey data collection will take place from January through November 2020.
The NPSAS:20 sample will include 125,000 nationally-representative undergraduate and 25,00 nationally-representative graduate students who will be asked to complete an interview and for whom we will collect student records and administrative data. The sample will be augmented with an additional 250,000 sample undergraduate students to create state-representative samples for undergraduate students overall and in public 2-year and public 4-year institutions. These additional students will not be asked to complete an interview; we will only have student records and administrative data. The entire sample of 375,000 undergraduates will also be nationally-representative for estimates based on student records and administrative data. Also, NPSAS:20 will serve as the base year for the 2020 cohort of the Beginning Postsecondary Students (BPS) Longitudinal Study and will include a nationally-representative sample of first-time beginning students (FTBs). Subsets of questions in the student interview will focus on describing aspects of the experience of beginning students in their first year of postsecondary education, including student debt and education experiences.
We will select a total of 3,106 institutions which will include a census of all public 2-year and all public 4-year institutions and a sample of 1,381 institutions from the “all other institutions” stratum.
NCES lists external consultations, including several economists.
