AB 718 obligates the California State University (CSU), and asks the University of California (UC), to provide admitted students with average graduate salary and average student‑loan payment information tied to the admitted student’s intended area of study. The statute phases reporting: systemwide averages for academic years 2026–27 through 2031–32, then campus‑disaggregated averages starting 2032–33.
The bill permits institutions to rely on data collected under Section 66014.3 and requires compliance with state and federal privacy laws.
This is a point‑of‑decision transparency measure: it pushes labor‑market and loan‑burden metrics into the admission letter itself. That changes what information reaches applicants at the moment they must choose a campus and program; it creates operational work for institutions (data assembly, format, legal review) and raises methodological and privacy questions about how program‑level outcomes are computed and presented.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill requires CSU—and requests UC—to include average salary and average student‑loan payment figures specific to an admitted student’s intended area of study on admission letters. It sets a phased timeline: systemwide averages for 2026–27 through 2031–32, and campus‑level averages beginning 2032–33, and allows use of Section 66014.3 data to meet the requirement.
Who It Affects
Admissions offices, institutional research and IT teams, financial aid and career services at CSU and UC campuses, prospective students and their families, and vendors or units that compile labor‑market outcome data. Campus counsel and privacy officers will also be involved because the statute ties disclosure to privacy law compliance.
Why It Matters
By putting earnings and loan‑payment figures in the admission packet, the bill aims to influence enrollment choices and improve consumer information. For institutions, this is an operational and legal obligation; for students, it reframes admission as a financial decision informed by labor‑market signals rather than solely by prestige or fit.
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What This Bill Actually Does
AB 718 changes what a California public university admission letter must (or should) deliver to an admitted applicant. Instead of only announcing admission, the letter must include two types of numeric context: average salary outcomes and average student‑loan payment amounts tied to the applicant’s intended area of study.
The bill envisions these figures arriving as part of the admission notification itself—when students are making enrollment choices.
The bill phases the granularity of the data. For the first six academic years after implementation (2026–27 through 2031–32), campuses may present systemwide averages for the relevant field of study, meaning a composite across campuses in the UC or CSU system.
Beginning in 2032–33, the law expects those figures to be broken down by campus, so an admitted student sees salary and loan‑payment averages for graduates from that specific campus and program. That shift reflects a policy judgment that program‑level, campus‑specific outcomes should be feasible after a transition period.Operationally, the statute delegates the heavy lifting to campus data systems and institutional researchers.
It allows campuses to use the labor‑market outcome data collection established under Section 66014.3, but it does not prescribe a calculation method for “average student‑loan payment,” nor a display format for admission letters. The law also explicitly requires adherence to state and federal privacy protections, which will constrain how small‑cell or low‑count program results are published.Implementing the statute will force several concrete choices: how to map an admitted student’s declared or intended major to the labor‑market categories used in available datasets; whether to show mean or median earnings and payments; how to update figures for timeliness; and how to present loan‑payment amounts (example schedules, aggregate averages, or ranges).
Those choices will determine how understandable—and how legally and ethically defensible—the disclosures are.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill mandates that the California State University include average salary and average student‑loan payment data specific to an admitted student's intended area of study on admission letters; the University of California is formally requested to do the same.
From academic years 2026–27 through 2031–32, the law requires the data to reflect systemwide averages for the relevant field of study rather than campus‑level figures.
Beginning with the 2032–33 academic year, institutions must provide the average salary and loan‑payment data disaggregated by campus (campus‑specific program outcomes).
The statute permits campuses to satisfy the requirement using the labor‑market outcome data collected under Education Code Section 66014.3.
All data disclosed under the statute must comply with applicable state and federal privacy laws, which affects suppression rules and how low‑count program results are presented.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Admission‑letter disclosure requirement
This subdivision establishes the core obligation: CSU shall include, and UC is requested to include, average salary and average student‑loan payment data tied to each admitted student's intended area of study on admission letters. The mechanics (format, placement in the letter, and accompanying explanatory text) are not specified, leaving campuses discretion over presentation but creating legal exposure if the data is inaccurate or misleading.
Phase 1—Systemwide averages (2026–27 through 2031–32)
For the six academic years following implementation, the bill requires systemwide averages for the relevant field of study. That eases immediate operational burdens: campuses can draw on aggregated system data rather than produce unstable campus‑level estimates. Practically, this window obliges institutions to align program taxonomy across the system and to ensure that systemwide calculations are defensible and consistently updated.
Phase 2—Campus‑disaggregated averages (beginning 2032–33)
Starting in 2032–33, campuses must report the same metrics at the campus level for the admitted student's intended field. That raises requirements for data volume, record linking (graduate records to earnings and loan repayment data), and disclosure controls to avoid identifying individuals in small programs. Campus Institutional Research offices will need to validate that campus estimates meet statistical reliability standards before publishing them in admission letters.
Permissible data source—Section 66014.3
This subdivision authorizes use of the labor‑market outcome data collected under Section 66014.3 to meet the disclosure requirement. That leverages an existing statutory collection framework but also imports whatever limitations Section 66014.3 has (timeliness, definition differences, or occupational mapping). Relying on that infrastructure reduces duplication but requires mapping between admission‑level program codes and the labor‑market categories in Section 66014.3 datasets.
Privacy and legal compliance
This provision mandates that any data collected or published under the section comply with all applicable state and federal privacy laws. Implementers must consider FERPA, state student privacy statutes, and data‑sharing agreements; they will need suppression rules and legal review processes to prevent disclosure of personally identifiable information when program counts are small.
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Explore Education in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Prospective students and families — They receive earnings and loan‑payment context at the point they must choose whether to enroll, improving information for financial and career planning.
- High school and college counselors — The new disclosure creates a concrete, standardized data point to use in advising conversations and in comparing programs across campuses.
- Policymakers and workforce analysts — Campus‑level outcomes (after 2032–33) provide another dataset to assess alignment between programs and labor‑market demand, informing funding and accountability decisions.
Who Bears the Cost
- California State University system — The CSU is legally required to implement the disclosures and will incur costs for data preparation, legal review, IT changes to admissions materials, and ongoing updates and quality assurance.
- Campus institutional research, IT, and financial aid offices — Those units must map admissions data to outcome datasets, create suppression protocols, and coordinate to compute 'average student‑loan payment' metrics, increasing workload without specified funding.
- Smaller programs and departments — Programs with small graduate cohorts may face data suppression or unstable estimates, and could see enrollment shifts if published outcomes are unattractive, affecting departmental planning and budgeting.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is between offering applicants clear, comparable financial and labor‑market signals at the moment of enrollment and the risk that simplified, imperfect metrics will mislead or discourage students—especially from lower‑paying but socially important fields—while imposing unfunded operational and legal burdens on campuses.
The statute sets a clear transparency objective but leaves critical implementation choices unspecified. It does not define how to calculate “average student‑loan payment” (for example, whether to reflect median vs mean payments, include only federal loans, or account for income‑driven repayment plans).
Those choices materially affect the headline numbers applicants see and create legal risk if a disclosure is later characterized as misleading. Institutions will need to adopt a methodology and stand by it.
The requirement to move from systemwide to campus‑level disclosure creates a statistical reliability problem. Campus‑level estimates for narrow majors or new programs may be based on few observations, triggering suppression or wide confidence intervals; either outcome undercuts the utility of the disclosure.
Privacy laws and FERPA constraints will further limit what can be published, especially for small cohorts. Finally, the bill provides no appropriation; absent dedicated funding, campuses must reallocate staff and IT resources, potentially delaying compliance or prompting minimalist presentations that meet the letter but not the spirit of the law.
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