Field guide
The Title IV Compliance Guide for Career Colleges
Title IV compliance for a career college comes down to a handful of rules that all connect: aid is earned by attendance, withdrawals trigger a return calculation, students must keep progressing to stay eligible, and programs have to prove their graduates earn. This guide explains each one in plain language and links to a deep dive on every topic. Start anywhere; they all reference each other, because in practice they all run off the same student record.
The core calculations
The Title IV math every career college lives and dies by, with the formulas shown.
What Is R2T4, and How Is It Calculated?
The Return of Title IV Funds rule: the five-step formula and the one date that drives all of it.
Read the deep dive →Last Date of Attendance (LDA): Why It Drives Your Title IV
The single data point that sets the withdrawal date and the entire R2T4 result.
Read the deep dive →Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP), Explained
The two measures plus the timeframe ceiling, and why warning is still aid-eligible.
Read the deep dive →COD vs G5 vs Ledger: Three-Way Reconciliation
The three federal records of your money that must agree, and why they drift apart.
Read the deep dive →Clock-hour and gainful employment
What makes career education different from a credit-hour university, and the outcomes test that decides program eligibility.
Clock-Hour vs Credit-Hour: Why Your SIS Choice Is Different
How one unit difference changes attendance, SAP, R2T4, and disbursements.
Read the deep dive →What Is Gainful Employment, and How Do You Report It?
The earnings test, which agencies are involved, and how the 2026 rule changes scope.
Read the deep dive →How to Prepare for an ACCSC / ABHES / COE Site Visit
Map standards to evidence, make outcome numbers defensible, assemble the binder.
Read the deep dive →Your system and your data
Choosing, migrating to, and getting your records out of a student information system, without losing compliance.
What's the Best SIS for Career, Trade, and Vocational Colleges?
The criteria that actually matter, and an honest read on where ApolloSRM fits.
Read the deep dive →How to Migrate Off a Legacy SIS Without Downtime
Run in parallel, reconcile to the penny, keep a rollback. Three steps.
Read the deep dive →How to Get Your Student Data Out of a Legacy SIS
Your data is yours: what to demand, what formats to insist on, how to verify.
Read the deep dive →What to Do When Your SIS Vendor Goes Down
The business-continuity checklist when the system you depend on disappears.
Read the deep dive →Run the numbers yourself
Want to see the R2T4 math instead of reading about it? The public calculator runs the same engine, with every step shown, no login required.
Open the R2T4 calculator →Run all of this on one student record, with the math computed instead of reconstructed.
Go for launch, start free →