The latest federal proposal governing student aid has an appealing simplicity: If taxpayers are helping finance higher education, shouldn’t colleges be expected to demonstrate that their graduates are financially better off as a result?
Few Americans would object to that proposition. The cost of college has soared, student debt remains a burden for millions of families, and some institutions have undoubtedly promised more than they delivered.
Under proposed U.S. Department of Education regulations, programs whose graduates fail to meet certain earnings benchmarks could lose access to federal student loans and, in some circumstances, Pell Grants. Theology programs, arts programs, music conservatories, museum studies departments and a variety of trade school programs could find themselves at risk.
The regulations rest on an assumption that has become so familiar it is rarely examined: that the most meaningful measure of educational value is what graduates earn a few years after leaving school.
For most of their history, colleges and universities were not understood primarily as economic institutions. They prepared clergy, teachers, scholars, scientists, public servants and a variety of professionals. They transmitted culture, preserved knowledge and cultivated habits of inquiry. Economic advancement often followed from education, but it was not generally regarded as education’s sole purpose.
Of course, higher education has always had an economic dimension. Careers matter. Earnings matter. But do they tell the whole story?
The question seems especially relevant at a moment when Americans are becoming less certain about the relationship between education and work itself. College enrollment has declined. Apprenticeships, certifications and skilled trades are attracting renewed interest. At the same time, artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape professions that only a few years ago appeared to offer reliable paths to financial success.
In such an environment, confidence in earnings forecasts seems oddly misplaced. The future value of many skills and professions is becoming harder to predict. Yet policymakers propose to place even greater weight on salary outcomes when determining whether an academic program deserves public support.
Many fields that generate modest incomes produce benefits that cannot easily be captured on a spreadsheet. Clergy, teachers, social workers, artists and nonprofit professionals rarely rank among society’s highest earners. Yet few communities would willingly do without them.
The issue is not whether earnings matter. They plainly do. Nor is it whether students should have access to information about debt, employment outcomes and salaries. They should.
The issue is whether projected earnings should determine eligibility for public support. That is a very different proposition. It asks government officials to decide not merely which programs succeed economically, but which forms of education are sufficiently valuable to merit continued investment.
There is an irony here. For decades, colleges justified themselves in economic terms. Degrees were marketed as investments and education as a pathway to higher earnings. Universities helped transform learning into a financial proposition. Policymakers are now applying that same logic back to them.
But the real question raised by these regulations is not whether education has economic value. The question is whether economic value is the best measure of educational value.
That debate extends far beyond student loans. It goes to the heart of how we understand education, work and human flourishing in the 21st century.
