INSIDE HIGHER ED — The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday approved an amendment to add the College Transparency Act to another bill, which the House then passed. Under the College Transparency Act, colleges would be required to collect and submit data to the Department of Education regarding student enrollment, persistence, transfer and completion measures for all programs and degree levels. The data would also be disaggregated by demographics, including race and ethnicity, gender, and age. The bill would permit the Department of Education to periodically share limited data with other federal agencies, like the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration, to calculate postgraduate outcomes, such as income and career prospects. The result would be much more information about how colleges perform at educating students. Despite all the information that will be provided about students’ performance, sponsors of the bill insist there are no real dangers to people’s privacy, as the information will be provided in aggregate form. The transparency act has broad support from higher education organizations and has been endorsed by more than 150 such organizations and other groups.