U.S. Department of Education, Contracts and Purchasing Operations, 7th and D Streets, SW, GSA-NCR Building, Room 3636, Washington, DC 20202-4444

R -- NATIONAL POSTSECONDARY STUDENT AID STUDY POC Contact Kate Oliver, Contract Specialist on 202/708-8225 or Dean Pike, Contract Specialist 202/708-8569 Notice of Availability of Draft Statement of Work. The U.S. Department of Education has a recurring requirement to conduct the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) which is a comprehensive nationwide study of how students and their families pay for postsecondary education. It includes nationally representative samples of undergraduates, graduates, and first-professional students; students attending less-than-2-year institutions, community colleges, 4-year colleges, and major universities. Students who receive financial aid as well as those who do not receive aid participate in NPSAS. NPSAS:2000 has several major components, including a field test data collection in 1999 and the full-scale data collection in 2000. The contract also includes three Options. The first option is to design and implement sampling and data collection procedures such that at least 52,000 students (85 percent of those eligible) participate in the telephone interview. This represents an increase of about 20,000 students compared to NPSAS:96. Option 2 -- to conduct the field test and full-scale data collection and produce the technical and descriptive reports for the bachelor's degree recipient cohort (B&B). Option 3 to implement collection of credit card balances when requesting locator information from consumer credit bureaus, depending on field test results. Potential offerors are invited to review the draft statement of work. The draft statement of work will be announced on or about 1/27/98. The document will be available on the OCFO Web site at http://ocfo.ed.gov under Contracts Information. For technical questions only on the OCFO Web, contact Sharon Masciana at 202/708-7665. For questions relating to actual document posting call the contract specialists listed above. With this posting the Department is requesting public comments and advice on the content, time schedule, feasibility and other aspects of this draft statement of work. Please submit your comments via e-mail to Kathleen_Oliver@ed.gov or Dean_Pike@ed.gov or FAX (if less then 15 pages) to 202/708-9817, or by mail to the attention of Kate Oliver/Dean Pike, U.S. Department of Education, Contracts and Purchasing Operations, ROB-3, Rm. 3616/MS 4447, 7th & D Streets, SW, Washington, DC 20202-4447. All comments are due by COB February 11, 1998. THIS IS NOT A SYNOPSIS OF SOLICITATION. At the time a solicitation synopsis is released, potential offerors may request a copy of the actual solicitation. (0027)

Loren Data Corp. http://www.ld.com (SYN# 0058 19980129\R-0007.SOL)