Financial and Student Outcomes Website Requirements
AY 2026-27 Guidance regarding P.L. 2025, c.161
September 2, 2026
By: OSHE Staff
The Office of the Secretary of Higher Education (OSHE), in alignment with Governor Sherrill's priorities, remains committed to ensuring New Jersey's higher education system is transparent, equitable, and responsive to the needs of New Jersey's families. advances this commitment by strengthening the information available to students as they navigate postsecondary options available to them. Clear, accessible data about postsecondary outcomes empowers students to make informed decisions and supports a more accountable higher education landscape. By requiring institutions to meet the standards set forth in this law, New Jersey is taking meaningful steps to enhance transparency and promote successful pathways for all learners.
P.L. 2025, c.161 requires all New Jersey public institutions of higher education to post certain student outcomes and fiscal information for inspection on their websites. This law is set to take effect for the 2026-27 academic year.
Inaugural Cycle
For this year, each public institution must post the required information on its website by January 29, 2027. For time-to-degree and student outcomes information, the reporting year for this inaugural cycle must use any student graduating, transferring, or other appropriate student outcome for the period July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2026, for the appropriate starting/new student cohort. For reporting financial information, the reporting year is fiscal year 2025, i.e., July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2025.
This guidance and all subsequent versions of it will remain in effect until superseded by regulatory language in the New Jersey Administrative Code.
For questions regarding this guidance, please contact OSHE by sending an email to research@oshe.nj.gov.
The following is required by all public institutions of higher education:
Navigation
Institutions must post the required information “for public inspection” with consideration for reasonable and intuitive ease of navigation. The required information should be navigable and directly searchable from the homepage without requiring a login, account creation, payment, or special software.
Updates
Institutions must annually update and post the required information for each subsequent reporting year.
Financial Assessment Information
- Each public institution of higher education is required to post the Financial Assessment and Risk Monitoring (FARM) survey submission file it received by email when submitting the FARM survey pursuant to N.J.S.A. 18A:3B-53.2. This PDF document was automatically sent to the email address entered into the FARM survey. Institutions must post the fiscal year 2025 FARM survey submission file provided in the February 2026 FARM survey.
- Each public institution of higher education must also post a copy of its annual independently audited financial statements for fiscal year 2025. This is the annual audit conducted pursuant to N.J.S.A. 18A:3B-50.
- As no institution of higher education has yet undergone an OSHE-directed comprehensive audit pursuant to N.J.S.A. 18A:3B-53.3, no posting requirement currently exists for this report.
- Each public institution is additionally required to post a clear summary of the required information.
- The FARM survey submission file suffices as its own summary for this requirement.
- Pursuant to N.J.S.A. 18A:3B-50, an institution’s senior staff prepare an evaluation/response to the independent auditor’s findings, if applicable. Institutions may post this evaluation/response, or prepare a separate summary, to satisfy this requirement for a clear summary. If there were no audit findings, there is no summary requirement.
- Each public institution must post the required information by January 29, 2027.
- Each institution must submit to OSHE the URL link of the webpage where this information is posted. Institutions will report this URL in the next FARM survey cycle, which is anticipated to begin in February 2027.
The following sections detail the requirements of four-year institutions of higher education and county colleges respectively:
Requirements for four-year public institutions of higher education
- All four-year public institutions of higher education are required to post the average time-to-degree completion for each baccalaureate degree awarded by the institution.
- "Baccalaureate degree" means bachelor’s degree type conferred by the four-year institution of higher education, e.g., Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Bachelor of Science in Nursing. Institutions are not required to report this information at the academic program or department level.
- A student's "time-to-degree completion" means the time elapsed between the student's initial matriculated (degree-seeking) enrollment at the reporting institution of higher education at the baccalaureate degree level and the degree conferral date (month and year).
- Institutions must separately report the following time-to-degree averages for baccalaureate degree completers between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026:
- First-time students;
- Transfer students; and
- Combined institutional average.
- Time-to-degree must be reported in years, where a decimal point will mean a partial year. Institutions may calculate time-to-degree utilizing the SURE Completions file in the following way:
- Take the admitted term and year to create a start date.
- Each start date will be September 1 or January 1 and a corresponding year, e.g., a student entering in Fall 2017 would have a start date of September 1, 2017.
- Take the completion term and year to create an end date, e.g., if the student graduated in May in the 2020-21 academic year, the award date would be May 1, 2021.
- Calculate the time to degree as ("05-01-2021" - "09-01-2017")/365.5, which would return 3.7 years.
- Average these values across each of the following three population for each bachelor degree type: first-time students, transfer students, and a combined institutional average. To calculate these averages, institutions may round to the tenth-place decimal or to the nearest whole number using standard rounding rules, e.g., 3.7 years would round to 4 years; 3.2 years would round to 3 years.
- If an institution has the start date and degree conferral date for students, those dates may be used for the calculation in place of the month/year available in SURE files; the resulting calculation will not greatly differ.
- Institutions may include explanatory notes describing factors that influence bachelor degree completion times.
- Time-to-degree completion averages must be posted to each institution’s website by January 29, 2027. Institutions may utilize the following format or something similar:
Time-to-Degree Averages for Bachelor Degree Earners as required by P.L. 2025, c.161
| Population |
Bachelor of Arts |
Bachelor of Science |
Bachelor of Fine Arts |
| First-time students |
X.X |
X.X |
X.X |
| Transfer students |
X.X |
X.X |
X.X |
| Combined |
X.X |
X.X |
X.X |
Explanatory Notes:
Requirements for county colleges:
- All county colleges are required to post a measure of student outcomes as determined by the Secretary of Higher Education, in consultation with the New Jersey Council of County Colleges, described below.
- The measure will be based on the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond's (Richmond Fed's) Survey of Community College Outcomes.
- County colleges are required to submit all Student Unit Record (SURE) system files in accordance with published deadlines on the OSHE website.
- OSHE, with institution's verification, will calculate each county college's student outcomes measure using SURE file data in line with the Richmond Fed's methodology.
- Student outcomes should be posted to each college's website by January 29, 2027, for the relevant reporting year.
