Currently, whether a family receives a posthumous degree for a deceased student is often left to the discretion of individual college departments or administrators, leading to inconsistent outcomes and added stress for grieving families. This bill creates a national standard, ensuring that a student's academic progress is recognized regardless of which school they attended.

For many families, receiving a degree is a vital part of the grieving process that honors the time, money, and effort the student invested in their future. By preventing accrediting bodies from counting these degrees against a school's statistics, the bill removes a potential hurdle that might otherwise make a university hesitant to grant such degrees for fear of looking like their graduation rates are lower than they actually are.