January 24, 2026
ACTS Is A Leadership Opportunity for Modern Admissions Intelligence
The Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS) represents the most significant expansion of federal admissions reporting in decades and offers a pivotal moment for higher education leaders.
While ACTS introduces new compliance requirements, it also creates a strategic opportunity to modernize admissions analytics, strengthen data governance and elevate institutional decision-making.
What is ACTS?
Launched through an August 7, 2025 executive memorandum and directed to the National Center for Education Statistics, ACTS signals that admissions transparency is now a national priority.
Who Must Report and When
ACTS applies primarily to four-year institutions – public, private nonprofit and for-profit – with limited exemptions for institutions admitting all applicants and those not awarding non-need-based aid. Community colleges are generally out of scope, with exceptions for bachelor’s-granting units.
The ACTS collection opened December 18, 2025 and closes March 18, 2026. Year one requires retrospective reporting across multiple years, with estimates suggesting up to 200 hours of effort as institutions establish baselines, reconcile data and align across systems.
How ACTS Data Are Submitted
ACTS data are submitted through a new NCES Aggregator Tool that requires institutions to upload student-level data files with no direct identifiers included in the federal submission. The tool validates and aggregates the data into an IPEDS-ready file for final reporting.
This approach raises the stakes for cross-system integration, quality assurance and data governance. For many institutions, ACTS will surface long-standing fragmentation between admissions, financial aid, academic records and outcomes reporting. For a detailed look at the operational challenges IR teams are encountering—from cohort confusion to validation errors—see Six Pain Points Institutions Face in ACTS Reporting and How to Navigate Them.”
The reporting fields for the current year alone could be more than 11,000 with more than 100 new questions. When combined with the five-year lookback requirement, that number increases to almost 70,000 new reporting fields.¹
Turning ACTS Into a Strategic Advantage
When supported by a partner such as Dynamic Campus, ACTS can turn a compliance mandate into a governed, repeatable reporting capability, enabling clearer institutional storytelling, stronger data stewardship, modernized reporting practices and leader-ready analytics that support enrollment strategy, equity goals and resource effectiveness.
Dynamic Campus offers an Institutional Research as a Service solution that helps institutions:
ACTS is not simply a new reporting requirement. It is a leadership moment.
Institutions that invest in data governance and strong institutional research now will lower long-term compliance costs, improve institutional storytelling and build durable decision intelligence.
Q&A: What Higher Education Leaders Should Know About ACTS
Q Is ACTS just compliance?
A No. ACTS creates a trusted evidence base that integrates admissions, aid and outcomes for governance and leadership decision-making.
Q What are the strategic benefits?
A Greater transparency, improved data governance and clearer insight into enrollment, equity and resource effectiveness.
Q Will public data increase risk?
A ACTS data will be public. Accurate, contextualized reporting builds trust and reduces misinterpretation.
Q How disruptive will this be?
A Year one requires focused effort but creating repeatable processes dramatically reduce burden in future cycles.
Q What determines success?
A Strong reporting practices, cross-functional alignment across admissions, financial aid and outcomes, and leadership treating data as a strategic asset.
Q What should be monitored?
A Readiness timelines, coverage confidence, governance assurance and how ACTS informs institutional effectiveness.
Q How does ACTS align with mission?
A It enables evidence-based alignment between admissions, student success and institutional purpose.
Q What is the long-term value of investing in strong institutional research and better admissions data?
A Lower compliance costs, stronger decision intelligence, more productive board-level conversations and greater institutional resilience.
Dynamic Campus has served as a strategic partner for higher education institutions since 2002, enabling and accelerating success by helping transform technology processes and platforms.
Contact us today to arrange a no-obligation consultation to learn how we can help you achieve your ACTS submission.
