Simplifying Federal Change: How Liaison Supports Compliance and Adaptation

Applicants will no longer be able to view the Title field on the Create Your Account, My Profile, or Reapplicant pages, or the full application PDF.

While Liaison has removed this field, any applicants who completed it prior to removal will retain that data.

Now that Title information is no longer being collected from applicants, starting in your CAS's 2023-2024 or 2024-2025 cycle, any data in the Title field (labeled as Salutation within WebAdMIT) will be removed from WebAdMIT. Then, starting in your CAS's next cycle, the Title field (i.e., Salutation field) will be removed from WebAdMIT. You will need to update any lists, exports, email templates, and other integrations to account for this field removal.

CASs can choose from two versions of the new combined race and ethnicity question:

• One that allows only major-category selections.
• Another that includes subcategory selections (with the option to write in responses).

The CAS API has been enhanced to support the new combined race and ethnicity blocks. To adjust your data integration, use the CAS API data dictionary or download this document to access the new race and ethnicity fields. Once the new combined question is configured, data will no longer populate the previous fields beginning with persInfo.raceAndEthn.race and persInfo.raceAndEthn.ethn. You can remove those mappings.

Note the impacts on the following endpoints:

GET Application v1 and v2: there is no change in the data models. If you use the new combined race and ethnicity question, the data will appear in the existing "raceAndEthnicities" JSON node with:

• type="raceAndEthnicity" for major category values only
• type="raceAndEthnicity2" for major category and subcategory values

POST Biographic v3: the expected payload structure depends on the configuration

• Subcategories are supported only for configurations that support category + subcategory mapping
• For raceAndEthnicity and raceAndEthnicity2 configurations, the category values (index _0) are allowed
• For restricted mapping configuration (see below), only allowed subcategories may be used for a selected category
  • American Indian or Alaska Native – no subcategories allowed
  • Asian – allowed subcategories include: Asian Indian, Cambodian, Chinese (except Taiwanese), Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Pakistani, Vietnamese, and Other Asian
  • Black or African American – no subcategories allowed
  • Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander - allowed subcategories include: Guamanian or Chamorro, Native Hawaiian, Samoan, and Other Pacific Islander
  • White - no subcategories allowed

See the CAS API Swagger page for more information.

If your CAS uses the new combined race and ethnicity block, we will update your Race & Ethnicity form in Outcomes during your rollover to add MENA as a top-level category and make the appropriate updates for the related subcategories.

If you have existing segments, exports, or reports that reference the previous Race & Ethnicity form, you will need to update them to point to the new field and values. Use the Outcomes Field Dictionary to access the new race and ethnicity fields from the forms race_ethnicity_2 or race_ethnicity_2_sub.

List Manager, Export Manager, and Applicant Header

If your CAS uses one of the new combined race and ethnicity questions, note that the existing Applicant Ethnicities field grouping will be removed from and the new Applicant Race and Ethnicity field grouping will be added to the List Manager, Export Manager, and Applicant Header. You may need to update existing templates and data imports for these new fields.

Use the WebAdMIT data dictionary or download this document to access the new race and ethnicity fields. If the applicant selects a race/ethnicity, the field will populate with "Yes"; otherwise, it will be blank.

Finally, note that the Hispanic (Yes / No / Blank) field, which distinguishes between applicants who responded no versus those who did not select an answer, is only available for the legacy Ethnicity question and is not available for CASs that use the new combined Race and Ethnicity question.

Scoring

The new combined race and ethnicity questions are not available in Scoring (the separate legacy race and ethnicity questions are).

Transfer Settings

If your CAS uses the new combined race and ethnicity question, the previous race and ethnicity fields will be removed from any lists, exports, scoring, and Applicant Header templates after the Transfer Settings process.

Report Manager

For the Report Manager, all race and ethnicity-related reports will automatically be updated to accept the new combined race and ethnicity major categories (subcategories are not included in any reports). Additionally, note the change in behavior for the Hispanic or Latino category:

• When using the separate legacy race and ethnicity questions, Hispanic or Latino is considered an ethnicity, and all other categories are races. If an applicant selects both Hispanic or Latino and another major race category, they are only reported in the Hispanic or Latino category in reports. This is known as the IPEDS "trumping rules."
• When using the new combined race and ethnicity question, Hispanic or Latino is considered a major race category. If an applicant selects both Hispanic or Latino and another major race category, they will either be reported in a Multiple category or, for reports that ignore two or more race categories, in each major category they select.

CASs can continue to collect race and ethnicity data. Historically, race and ethnicity questions have been optional on most CAS applications.

If the race and ethnicity question is removed from the CAS application, each college and university would determine the method by which they would collect this information locally based on institutional policies and procedures.

For CASs associated with a professional association (e.g., the Physician Assistant Education Association), the association consults its advisory boards to determine which data fields appear on the CAS application.

For CASs that operate independently of an association (e.g., California State University), the school or school system determines the data fields that appear on the CAS application.

You cannot hide race or ethnicity data from the data file, as the CAS API is intended to provide all of the CAS data to the institution so it can be manipulated once it is on the school’s server.

You can access a "Reviewer" PDF type that omits race and ethnicity data from the full application PDF. To do so:

• If downloading on demand: use reviewer for the pdfType query parameter in the GET Application PDF API endpoint.
• If using a subscription: use reviewer for pdfType in the responseOptions parameter in the POST Subscription APIs.

If you have an existing subscription, delete the subscription before creating a new subscription for the full application PDF, omitting race/ethnicity. To do so:

1. Determine which subscription has the Full Application PDF business event. The subscription may include additional business events.
2. Delete the subscription with the full application PDF business event.
3. Recreate the subscription with the new responseOptions parameter for the Full Application PDF business event.

"responseOptions": "contentType=application/pdf,pdfType=reviewer"

Roles

When configuring Roles, use the Application Data Restrictions area to remove race and ethnicity data from applications. This ensures that when someone on your team reviews an applicant record, race and ethnicity are not visible and cannot influence their admissions decision. See our Sample Roles for examples of how you might configure this feature.

Segments, Exports, and Reports

When you restrict race and ethnicity for a role, these fields are also hidden from the Segment Builder, Export Builder, and Report Builder for users with that role. If you’ve already built segments that use race and ethnicity, review who has access to those segments to ensure they don't unintentionally expose this data to reviewers.

Application PDFs

When race and ethnicity data are hidden from a role, the standard Outcomes Application PDFs respect these restrictions and also hide those fields. CAS Application PDFs, however, are not affected by role‑based data restrictions and can still display race and ethnicity information. To prevent this information from being viewed in CAS PDFs or other uploaded documents, consider adding attachments such as Application PDF or CV/Resume to the role's data restrictions to prevent this information from being discovered in those documents. The Application PDF data restriction specifically restricts the CAS Full Application PDF from being viewed by a role.

Work Groups

Use Work Groups to remove race and ethnicity data from the Applicant Details page and full application PDF during the application review process. So, when someone from your team is looking at a student’s application, it is eliminated as a factor in their admissions decision process. See the Work Groups Guide for example templates.

Lists, Exports, and Reports

If you have a user who also needs the data management functions like List Manager, Export Manager, and Report Manager, they’ll have access to race and ethnicity data. They still will not be able to review based on race unless they build a list or export using this information, examine the results, and then return to one of the applicants to review them with that knowledge. If you don’t want your users to have any access to race and ethnicity information, you’ll have to remove the following from their Work Group:

• The Manage Lists, Reports, and Exports permission.
• The applicable subpanels (race and ethnicity data may appear under the Personal Information or the CAS Custom Questions panel).

Additionally, if you have access to lists, exports, reports, etc., you can run and duplicate lists and exports. If you’re an administrator and you’re concerned about a particular list, export, etc. that another admissions member or faculty has created, you can double-check it by running it to see the data and/or duplicating it to see how it was built, and handle the situation accordingly.

Full Application PDFs

Use Work Groups to remove race and ethnicity data from the full application PDF during the application review process.

If a user builds a Work Group that suppresses race and ethnicity data and puts themselves into that Work Group, they could then download an application PDF without race and ethnicity information. Additionally, they could use the PDF Manager to bulk download the application PDFs and create a custom template of the sections and panels they want to include.