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This Annual Statistical Report of the Public Schools of Arkansas, Open Enrollment Public Charter Schools, and Education Service Cooperatives, 2023-2024 Actual and 2024-2025 Budgeted (ASR) is submitted in compliance with the provisions of A.C.A. § 6-20-2201 et seq. The information contained in the report was obtained from the Annual Financial Report (2023-2024 actual) submitted in Cycle 9, and Budget (2024-2025 budgeted) submitted in Cycle 1. The school districts are listed according to Local Education Agency (LEA) number in the Rankings report, and are ranked from highest to lowest on the following data: (1) Per Pupil Expenditures; (2) Average Daily Attendance (ADA); (3) Average Daily Membership (ADM); (4) K-12 Licensed Full-Time Equivalent (FTE); (5) Average Salary of K-12 Licensed (FTE); (6) Licensed (FTE); and (7) Average Salary of Licensed (FTE).

We survey undergraduate students at a large public university to understand the pecuniary and non-pecuniary factors driving their college major and career decisions with a focus on K-12 teaching. While the average student reports there is a 6% chance they will pursue teaching, almost 27% report a nonzero chance of working as a teacher in the future. Students, relative to existing statistics, generally believe they would earn substantially more in a non-teaching job (relative to a teaching job). We run a randomized information experiment where we provide students with information on the pecuniary and non-pecuniary job characteristics of teachers and non-teachers. This low-cost informational intervention impacts students' beliefs about their job characteristics if they were to work as a teacher or non-teacher, and increases the reported likelihood they will major or minor in education by 35% and pursue a job as a teacher or in education by 14%. Linking the survey data with administrative transcript records, we find that the intervention had small (and weak) impacts on the decision to minor in education in the subsequent year. Overall, our results indicate that students hold biased beliefs about their career prospects, they update these beliefs when provided with information, and that this information has limited impacts on their choices regarding studying and having a career in teaching.

This First Look report introduces new data for national and state-level public elementary and secondary revenues and expenditures for fiscal year (FY) 2022. Specifically, this report includes the following school finance data: (1) revenue and expenditure totals; (2) revenues by source; (3) expenditures by function, subfunction, and object; (4) current expenditures; (5) revenues and current expenditures per pupil; (6) expenditures from Title I funds; and (7) revenues and expenditures from COVID-19 Federal Assistance Funds. The expenditure functions include instruction, support services, food services, and enterprise operations. The support services function is further broken down into seven subfunctions: instructional staff support services, pupil support services, general administration, school administration, operations and maintenance, student transportation, other support services (such as business services). Objects reported within a function or subfunction include salaries and wages, employee benefits, purchased services, supplies, and equipment. The purpose of a First Look report is to introduce new data through the presentation of tables containing descriptive information. The selected findings chosen for this report demonstrate the range of information available when using NPEFS. They do not represent all of the data and are not meant to emphasize any particular issue. While the tables in this report include data for all NPEFS respondents, the selected findings are limited to the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

This First Look report introduces new data for national and state-level public elementary and secondary revenues and expenditures for fiscal year (FY) 2022. Specifically, this report includes the following school finance data: (1) revenue and expenditure totals; (2) revenues by source; (3) expenditures by function, subfunction, and object; (4) current expenditures; (5) revenues and current expenditures per pupil; (6) expenditures from Title I funds; and (7) revenues and expenditures from COVID-19 Federal Assistance Funds. The expenditure functions include instruction, support services, food services, and enterprise operations. The support services function is further broken down into seven subfunctions: instructional staff support services, pupil support services, general administration, school administration, operations and maintenance, student transportation, other support services (such as business services).1 Objects reported within a function or subfunction include salaries and wages, employee benefits, purchased services, supplies, and equipment. The finance data used in this report are from the National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS), a component of the Common Core of Data (CCD). The CCD is one of NCES's primary survey programs on public elementary and secondary education in the United States. State education agencies (SEAs) in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the five other jurisdictions of American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands report these data annually to NCES. The NPEFS instructions ask SEAs to report revenues and expenditures covering prekindergarten through high school public education in regular, special, and vocational schools; charter schools; and state-run education programs (such as special education schools or education programs for incarcerated youth).

This report explores the higher education financial aid workforce, including pay and pay equity, staffing, representation, and retention. Taken together, the results in this report suggest the need for colleges and universities to implement strategies to better retain people of color within the financial aid employee pipeline and to ensure equitable pay for people of color and women. Further, to encourage retention, institutions of higher education should consider increasing pay and opportunities for remote and flexible work. Institutions should use these findings to consider whether they have sufficient employees (or combination of employees and outsourcing) to handle the workload required of the financial aid office.

In 2022, the Boston Opportunity Agenda, the Birth to Eight Collaborative and the City of Boston's Office of Early Childhood partnered in the development of this survey of hundreds of early education professionals in the city of Boston, and then expanded its reach to total more than 600 respondents across the state. In it, educators and administrators shared their demographics and educational background, as well as elements of their work experience, wages, and more. Taken together, the data portray a diverse workforce of dedicated professionals who also must manage low wages and long hours in a system that seeks to attract thousands of new workers to replace retiring workers and meet the need for more available early education seats.

The 2023-2024 AASA Superintendent Salary & Benefits Study marks the twelfth consecutive edition of this report. The 2023-2024 version employed a slightly revised and updated survey instrument. The survey tracked the demographics, salary, benefits, and other elements of the employment agreements of school superintendents throughout the country. This year's study results are based on 2,706 complete responses -- the highest response rate since inception of the study in 1999. The survey was distributed online and relied on superintendents responding to 66 items with the understanding that the report of findings would contain no personally identifiable information. Therefore, readers must consider the data descriptive and not necessarily representative of all superintendents. The study is intended to provide superintendents with actionable information needed to negotiate and manage their compensation and benefits.

A committee report accompanying a national defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2022 includes a provision for the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to review the Department of Defense's (DOD's) payroll system for overseas DOD Education Activity employees. This report: (1) describes the status of DOD's efforts to address auditors' prior recommendations to improve its civilian payroll system, which includes overseas DOD Education Activity employees; and (2) examines the process DOD used to calculate overseas DOD Education Activity employees' pay, including base pay, differentials, additional allowances, and deductions, as well as how the department communicated payroll changes to employees. GAO reviewed an extract from a database containing all civilian payroll notices of findings and recommendations as of March 2023 to report on the status of prior recommendations. GAO also examined fiscal year 2021 payroll records (the most recent available at the time of GAO's analysis) and interviewed DOD representatives to gain an understanding of the payroll process. GAO traced payroll records for 10 employees to supporting documentation and verified the calculations using applicable criteria. GAO also reviewed payroll adjustments for 24 employees that were the result of either normal adjustments or payroll errors. Since DOD was not able to provide sufficient supporting documentation timely, the number of DOD Education Activity employees that GAO was able to review was too small to support generalizable conclusions.

The Association of Departments of English (ADE) Ad Hoc Committee on English Majors' Career Preparation and Outcomes was charged with reporting on career outcomes for English majors and minors; gathering case studies and other forms of evidence of departments' effective strategies and curricular innovations for working with students on career preparation and professional development; offering advice on how to prepare students to explain how their study has readied them for a variety of careers and developed in them skills and values that are needed by hiring institutions in a variety of economic sectors; coaching faculty members to speak knowledgeably about such matters; and helping departments explain, to a variety of constituencies, how their work meets these challenges. The committee's "Report on English Majors' Career Preparation and Outcomes" documents that, despite myths to the contrary, English majors are employed, earn good salaries, and experience satisfaction with their career paths. The report offers six key recommendations for how departments can support students' career preparation and offers case studies from institutions with impressive career-preparation programming. [This report was published with the Association of Departments of English (ADE).]

Commonfund Higher Education Price Index® (HEPI) data show that costs for colleges and universities rose 4.0 percent in FY2023, a decreased rate of inflation compared with 5.2 percent in FY2022 and up from 2.7 percent in FY2021. (FY2023 covers the period from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023, and coincides with the budget year of most institutions of higher education.) This year, some of the biggest questions facing higher education are in the process of being answered -- will inflation continue to make headlines, and how will institutions respond, especially as high interest rates and market volatility persist? Price increases lingered longer than some anticipated throughout the real economy, impacting students, households, and institutional budgets. Commonfund understands the importance of having high-quality and relevant data inputs to anchor good governance and decision making for the long term. That's why Commonfund's annual HEPI isolates costs most relevant to the operation of higher ed. As this year's report shows, costs for a market basket of items making up those operating budgets increased at an annual rate of 4.0 percent in FY2023 compared with 5.2 percent in FY2022 (and 2.7 percent in FY2021). Inflation is easing, but for higher education institutions, it is still well above the prior decade's norm. [For the 2022 Update, see ED626333.]

This report presents selected findings from the 2021-22 Principal Follow-up Survey (PFS). The PFS is a longitudinal component of the National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS), which is a nationally representative survey of public and private K-12 schools, principals, and teachers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) conducted the 2021-22 PFS as a follow up to the 2020-21 NTPS to provide attrition and mobility information about principals in K-12 public and private schools. The purpose was to assess how many principals from the 2020-21 school year still worked as a principal in the same school during the 2021-22 school year ("stayer"), how many had moved to become a principal in another school ("mover"), and how many were no longer working as a principal ("leaver"). The purpose of this First Look is to provide summaries of the new data collected using tables of descriptive information. [For "Principal Attrition and Mobility: Results from the 2021-22 Principal Follow-Up Survey to the National Teacher and Principal Survey. First Look--Summary. NCES 2023-046", see ED629616.]

This report presents selected findings from the 2021-22 Principal Follow-up Survey (PFS). The PFS is a longitudinal component of the National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS), which is a nationally representative survey of public and private K-12 schools, principals, and teachers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) conducted the 2021-22 PFS as a follow up to the 2020-21 NTPS to provide attrition and mobility information about principals in K-12 public and private schools. The purpose was to assess how many principals from the 2020-21 school year still worked as a principal in the same school during the 2021-22 school year ("stayer"), how many had moved to become a principal in another school ("mover"), and how many were no longer working as a principal ("leaver"). [For "Principal Attrition and Mobility: Results from the 2021-22 Principal Follow-Up Survey to the National Teacher and Principal Survey. First Look. NCES 2023-046," see ED629615.]

Data about compensation received by employees in Illinois' 48 public community colleges are gathered by the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB). Data in the Fiscal Year 2023 Salary Report, which derive from the ICCB Faculty, Staff, and Salary (C1) Data and Supplementary Faculty, Staff, and Salary Information, reflect the census date of October 1, 2022. Most tables in this report contain information on full-time employees. The report includes faculty salary data which are based on actual contracts, salaries from salary schedules, overload faculty salary rates, and part-time faculty salary rates. Also included are administrative salaries, other (nonteaching) professional staff salaries; information on average faculty load; salaries for selected administrators; and fiscal year 2022 salaries actually paid to faculty, administrators, other (nonteaching) professionals, and classified staff.

This introductory report outlines the challenges of postsecondary completion, the variable value provided by a postsecondary pathway, and the corresponding cost and debt. Together, these challenges create an inequitable, ineffective, and unsustainable U.S. postsecondary system in which individuals are increasingly reluctant to participate or return. After exploring the challenges, the authors propose three enablers of choice that people from systemically marginalized communities too often do not have access to -- and that could be the basis for transforming the postsecondary system: (1) information; (2) the social capital of navigation; and (3) versatile, inclusive, high-quality postsecondary pathway options. [The Suder Foundation provided financial support for this work.]

Increasingly, obtaining a job that pays family-sustaining wages means getting a college degree or other postsecondary credential. However, according to the 2021 U.S. Census, only 31.5 percent of Texans ages 25 and older have a bachelor's degree or higher. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB)--the highest authority in the state regarding public higher education--has therefore set out a strategic plan to increase that percentage. Specifically, the plan calls for 60 percent of Texans ages 25 to 64 to have a postsecondary credential "of value" by 2030. THECB seeks to improve student outcomes by promoting a variety of student success interventions, particularly corequisite models. To meet this goal, THECB is giving grants to colleges across the state to fund student success programs: programs designed to help more students stay in college and earn degrees, particularly students of color, students from lower-income backgrounds, and students who need additional assistance to make satisfactory academic progress (that is, to earn enough credits to keep their federal financial aid). This brief summarizes some of the information THECB and its partners will use in that effort. It describes best practices and programs with proven effectiveness--the information that policymakers and practitioners need to consider in designing and promoting student success programs. The findings are based on MDRC's 20-year history conducting rigorous evaluations in postsecondary education as well as research and evaluations by other researchers. [This brief was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Education Stabilization Fund Program Governor's Emergency Education Relief Fund, as part of the THECB Student Success Acceleration Program Implementation Grants.]

We use over 25 years of longitudinal data from Washington state to provide a descriptive portrait of the paraeducator workforce in the state. Paraeducators are more racially and ethnically diverse than special education teachers, particularly in the last decade, and tend to be less experienced. They also have full-time salaries that are about half of the average special education teacher salary. Paraeducator-to-student ratios have decreased over time in the state, but they are higher in schools serving more students of color. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, paraeducator attrition rates from the state's public school workforce have increased dramatically over time; for example, the paraeducator attrition rate after the 2021-22 school year (23%) was over twice as high as the attrition rate after the 2008-09 school year (8%). These findings have implications for how policymakers and school leaders should approach decision-making related to the paraeducator workforce, as well as how researchers might approach further research with this group of educators.

This report provides a deep dive into higher ed admissions employees, who play a key role in the future sustainability of colleges and universities. In addition to highlighting the pay and size of the admissions workforce, the report focuses on time in position, diversity, and pay equity. Taken together, we find that colleges and universities have long relied on admissions positions with high turnover and young employees to do a great deal of the legwork of building the next graduating class. Trends in age and turnover were similar over time and not due to the Great Resignation. We argue that colleges and universities would benefit from considering how they could reconceptualize crucial admissions positions, particularly admissions coordinators and counselors, to encourage higher retention. Efforts to increase retention among admissions coordinators and counselors should be combined with a focus on recruiting and retaining people of color. Asian and Hispanic or Latina/o employees were underrepresented in admissions positions relative to U.S. bachelor's degree holders. In addition, the representation of people of color declined at each subsequent level of the admissions workforce, indicating gaps in the promotion of underrepresented minorities. Finally, the admissions workforce has many areas of strength in pay equity, with some notable exceptions. Hispanic or Latino men who were heads of admissions are paid only 87 cents on the dollar to White men who are heads of admissions. Further, 52% of chief admissions officers are Black or White women, yet they are paid less than White men. A pay equity analysis that includes market rate data would help identify areas for improvement at the institutional level.

For a growing share of learners and workers in the United States, college is failing to live up to its economic mobility promise. The cost of college is rising, accompanied by mounting student debt, and many graduates are underemployed following college. Students face steep barriers to college enrollment and success, including time demands, access to housing and childcare, and transportation. These conditions have prompted many learners and workers to reconsider whether college is truly worth the expense. Higher education leaders are facing a moment of reckoning in which they must improve the economic returns of a college education. However, there is little clarity around which programs and initiatives best improve a student's earnings and employment later in their career. The dearth of information reflects, at least in part, the lack of attention and resources such programs have received from the majority of post-secondary institutions. This white paper puts "college-to-jobs" programs in focus, making the case that they should be a priority for future policy, investment, and research. It maps the field of initiatives that smooth transitions for college students to the workforce, identifying 13 "interventions" that have been deployed to improve college students' economic outcomes. The Playbook provides answers to a crucial question at a time of inflection for postsecondary education: what can we do to launch more college students onto successful career trajectories? [This report was co-published by the Project on Workforce and was funded by the Capital One Foundation.]

The public schools of Arkansas, open enrollment public charter schools, and education service cooperatives annual statistical report (ASR), 2021-2022 actual and 2022-2023 budgeted, is presented here. The rankings of selected items of the public schools, 2021-2022 actual, are also included. The school districts are listed according to Local Education Agency (LEA) number in the Rankings report, and are ranked from highest to lowest on the following data: (1) Per Pupil Expenditures; (2) Average Daily Attendance (ADA); (3) Average Daily Membership (ADM); (4) K-12 Licensed Full-Time Equivalent (FTE); (5) Average Salary of K-12 Licensed (FTE); (6) Licensed (FTE); and (7) Average Salary of Licensed (FTE). [For the 2020-2021 report, see ED621553.]

Early care and education (ECE) programs for children prior to kindergarten in California are provided through a mixed delivery system that includes licensed home- and center-based programs as well as school settings. The requirements, experience, and supports for educators vary widely across settings, depending more on funding sources and regulatory status and less on what educators and children may need. This situation is typical across the ECE system for children from infancy through preschool, though California has made substantial changes in providing preschool for four-year-olds. Transitional Kindergarten (TK) was introduced into this mix in the 2012-13 school year. As of the 2022-23 school year, TK became the only free, universal ECE program in California available for four-year-olds. This brief explores the experiences of ECE lead teachers across settings: TK classrooms, child care centers, and family child care (FCC) programs. It examines their demographics, classroom context, working conditions, compensation, and economic well-being. It identifies threads of continuity among lead teachers regardless of setting: for instance, virtually all these early educators are women, and many are age 40 or older. They teach similar numbers of dual-language learner students, and they face similar classroom challenges. By contrast, educators in centers and FCC providers are much more likely to be women of color and/or immigrant women. Teacher pay and benefits also diverge sharply, with TK educators earning at least twice the salary of other lead teachers with a bachelor's degree along with corresponding metrics of economic well-being. By exploring the experiences of teachers by setting, the authors aim to understand the state of equity in ECE employment. For the purposes of this analysis, they focus on educators who lead their respective classrooms in order to compare similar job roles and level of teaching responsibilities. They then explore the implications for sustaining an effective and equitable ECE system in California.

This framework provides a set of recommendations for postsecondary institutions and employers to support Black learners and workers to build professional social capital. It expands on a related JFF market scan that maps the landscape of nonprofit and social enterprise-led social capital initiatives.

This paper assesses the reliability and validity of cognitive and socioemotional skills measures and investigates the correlation between schooling, skills acquisition, and labor earnings. The primary data from Pakistan incorporates two innovations related to measurement and sampling. On measurement, the paper develops and implements a battery of instruments intended to capture cognitive and socioemotional skills among young adults. On sampling, the paper uses a panel that follows respondents from their original rural locations in 2003 to their residences in 2018, a period over which 38 percent of the respondents left their native villages. In terms of their validity and reliability, our skills measures compare favorably to previous measurement attempts in low- and middle-income countries. The following are documented in the data: (a) more years of schooling are correlated with higher cognitive and socioemotional skills; (b) labor earnings are correlated with cognitive and socioemotional skills as well as years of schooling; and (c) the earnings-skills correlations depend on respondents' migration status. The magnitudes of the correlations between schooling and skills on the one hand and earnings and skills on the other are consistent with a widespread concern that such skills are under-produced in the schooling system. [This report was prepared by the World Bank Group's Development Research Group, Development Economics. Funding was provided by RISE and World Bank's Strategic Research Program Fund.]

This is the executive summary of the report, "What Works: Ten Education, Training, and Work-Based Pathway Changes That Lead to Good Jobs. Findings by Race, Gender, and Class from the Georgetown University Pathways-to-Career Policy Simulation Model." To identify the pathway changes with the greatest potential, the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW) developed the Pathways-to-Career policy simulation model. The model uses longitudinal data to identify promising junctures at which a strategic intervention could increase the likelihood of working in a good job--one define as providing minimum annual earnings of about $38,000 per year, with a median of $57,000, at age 30. The Pathways-to-Career model establishes an actionable, solution-oriented framework for improving the economic lives of young adults by simulating the potential impacts of different pathway changes at critical junctures along the route from adolescence to early adulthood. Using the model, the researchers identified 10 pathway changes involving education, training, and work experience that could most improve the likelihood of having a good job at age 30. [For the full report, see ED628027.]

"The Improving the Pipeline for Tennessee's Workforce: Academic Supply for Occupational Demand Report" is the second joint report between the Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC), Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development (TDLWD), Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD), and Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE). This year's report maintains the Career Cluster structure, grouping occupations and aligned training programs in one place. Accompanying dashboards and data downloads are also available for readers who prefer to work with the data directly. This report includes a few new features, including a revised approach to measuring degree completers' employment and wages, as well as a simplification of report layout to improve readability and flow. Multiple state agencies facilitate this report's completion and there are many audiences for this report. Each year, efforts to refine and improve the report and associated outputs will continue to ensure the report is useful in education and workforce planning. This report: (1) Identifies in-demand occupations and aligned academic programs at the postsecondary and secondary levels as well as registered apprenticeships organized across 14 career clusters; (2) Includes in-demand occupations tables identifying the number of region(s) where the occupation is in-demand, entry level wages, indicators for jobs which are STEM fields and those which support TNECD's target industries, and the typical training level required for employment; (3) Contains aligned academic programs tables with information about degree production and completers, matriculation into Tennessee's job market, and first-year wages for those identified in Tennessee employment data. The calculation for employment outcomes changed in this year's report; (4) Spotlights select agency initiatives promoting education and workforce alignment in K12, higher education, and the workforce; and (5) Offers an overview of data, methods, and sources highlighting existing data use and areas for further exploration. [For the 2022 report, see ED624524.]

The number of college graduates in the United States reached nearly 68.6 million in 2021, of which approximately 68 million had ever held a job, with nearly 52 million currently employed and 16 million not employed. Although the number of employed college graduates increased by 1.2 million (2.5%) between 2019 and 2021, the number of nonemployed college graduates increased by 2.5 million (17.9%). This large increase in nonemployment coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and signals important changes in the labor market for college graduates. This InfoBrief provides an overview of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the college-educated workforce, drawing on new data from the National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG). In addition to collecting basic information on labor force status and earnings, the NSCG collects detailed information on reasons for nonemployment, access to various job benefits, participation in professional activities, and measures of job satisfaction. The 2021 cycle of the NSCG elicited additional information related to the pandemic, such as pandemic-related reasons for not working, presence of telework arrangements, and pandemic-related salary effects. Some of this information is highlighted below.

The Biden administration is pursuing two higher education policies through a series of rulemaking processes that aim to make higher education more affordable and less risky for students. One policy focuses on the system's back end by helping students repay their loans, and the other focuses on the front end by cutting off access to federal aid for educational programs where graduate earnings are consistently low. The administration's new income-driven repayment (IDR) plan for student loans is the back-end policy, and the gainful employment (GE) rule is the front-end policy. In this brief, the authors estimate how much the Biden administration's GE and IDR policies might complement one another by estimating repayment rates for loans repaid in IDR before and after the GE rule goes into effect. This approach gauges how well the two policies align and can show how much the GE rule screens out programs where typical borrowers' debt and earnings profiles are likely to lead to loan forgiveness in IDR. The approach also can reveal how much debt will be left unpaid under the Biden IDR plan in programs that are currently exempt from GE. That information can help policymakers consider whether additional quality assurance policies may be necessary and whether loan forgiveness benefits in the Biden IDR plan should be targeted differently.

Texas State Technical College (TSTC) single mission is graduating students who can go on to attain higher-paying jobs. The state's funding formula was specifically designed to hold TSTC accountable to accomplish this mission. Texas statute stipulates that TSTC will offer "courses of study in technical-vocational education for which there is demand" and "contribute to the educational and economic development of the State of Texas by offering occupationally oriented programs." In developing these programs, "primary consideration shall be placed on industrial and technological manpower needs of the state." This case study examines how TSTC, which focuses exclusively on economic advancement and is funded based on the economic benefits it provides to its graduates operates. Policymakers in other states who are looking to build more responsive and effective postsecondary institutions ought to take a close look at the financial structure that has enabled TSTC's unique success.

Policymakers enacted a series of reforms in the mid-2000s that significantly expanded benefits in the federal student loan program for students pursuing graduate degrees. These reforms allow students to borrow up to the full cost of attendance for their degrees and use an Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) program that offers loan forgiveness after 20 years of payments or as early as 10 years for those who use the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. Despite virtually unlimited access to federal loans and the availability of a generous IDR program, policymakers have done little to prevent institutions from offering high-cost programs and those that consistently leave students with high debts relative to their incomes. To inform the future development of quality assurance policies, this report analyzes debt and earnings data in the Department of Education's College Scorecard for master's degree programs. Although federal loan policies increase access to graduate degrees and the economic payoff they provide, these policies also entail risks for both students and taxpayers. The College Scorecard provides a new source of information that policymakers can use to determine where those risks are greatest and gauge the potential effects of quality assurance policies that target programs where borrowers take on high debt relative to what they can expect to earn with their degrees.