The U.S. Department of Education finalized new regulations July 1 that expand federal accountability measures to nearly all college degree programs, which will go into effect in July 2027.
The new framework, called the Student Tuition and Transparency System and Earnings Accountability, evaluates undergraduate and graduate programs based on whether graduates earn more than the median income of workers ages 25-34 possessing the next-lowest level of education, according to the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators website. If a program’s graduate median earnings fall below this threshold two out of three consecutive years, the program loses eligibility to offer federal direct loans for two years, before reevaluation.
While the federal government has used earnings-based accountability measures in various forms since 2011, the new regulations expand it to nearly all Title IV-eligible academic programs, including those at UT. According to the Department of Education, Title IV refers to financial aid programs provided by the federal government for higher education.
The regulations will evaluate programs based solely on graduates’ earnings rather than both earnings and debt. They also change the consequences for failing programs, generally allowing them to continue participating in other Title IV student aid programs, like Pell Grants, said Jill Desjean, director of policy analysis at the NASFAA.
“There is a small caveat that a school or program could lose all federal student aid eligibility, but that’s if (more than) half of (the school’s) federal student aid recipients … fail this metric,” Desjean said. “I don’t think a place like UT Austin would find itself in that position.”
A spokesperson for the University declined to comment at this time, due to limited information on the regulation’s impact.
While these regulations apply to public universities nationwide, Jeffrey Denning, an associate professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the College of Education, said they are designed to identify programs with consistently poor graduate earnings rather than broadly affect all college programs.
“My instinct is that very few programs at UT would be at risk of having their average earnings be below the average earnings of a high school (graduate) in Texas,” Denning said.
Desjean said she is confident that institutions like UT are already inspecting historically low-earning programs like fine arts to determine if they will pass the metric, or making changes to ensure they do.
Stella Melucci, a theater and dance junior, said a graduate’s salary does not fully reflect the impact of careers in the arts or other public-service professions.
“It’s measuring our value based off the amount of money we make,” Melucci said. “That does put artists in a bad spot, because I know a lot of artists that create art for free. … They’re still giving to their community.”
However, Denning said the government’s standard is not very high, and graduate earnings may be “a good first place to start” when measuring a program’s performance.
“Students should be considering how much they’re paying for college, the debt they’re taking out and what they expect to earn afterwards,” Denning said. “That should be a part of their decision-making process about college.”