Hello and welcome back to The Markup, Inside Higher Ed’s weekly roundup of all things higher ed policy. I’m your host, Katherine Knott, IHE’s news editor who is grateful for sunshine and 70-degree weather.
In the last week, Education Secretary Linda McMahon weighed in on the sole candidate to lead the University of Florida, writing on social media that “we need bold leaders to reorient higher education toward merit, truth-seeking, and academic rigor.” The candidate, former University of Alabama president Stuart Bell, has faced criticism for his support of DEI. McMahon said UF deserves a president who will fight to get rid of “discriminatory DEI.”
And, NASA will require the California Institute of Technology to compete to operate and manage the Jet Propulsion Lab, a federally funded research and development center that the university launched in 1936. Caltech leaders said they weren’t surprised by the decision and they’ve been preparing since last summer for the competition.
This Week’s Big Story
A new era of accountability for colleges looms as the Education Department enters the final stages of rolling out a rule that requires college programs to pass an earnings test in order to access federal student loans.
Before the department can finalize its plan, it will have to review and respond to more than 8,500 comments. Most of them were negative; commenters argued that metric was unfair, reduced the value of college to a student’s income and could devastate certain industries. (Reminder: Under the earnings test, college programs will have to show their graduates earn more than adults 25 to 34 with a high school diploma.)
Most of the critical comments came from representatives of beauty schools; Education Department data projects that 90 percent of cosmetology programs would fail. Cosmetology schools have previously sued to block similar accountability measures that never fully took effect, and many of the comments reiterate arguments made in court, such as that the earnings test doesn’t take into account unreported tips.
A smaller share of the comments warned that the proposal would have “a disproportionate, negative effect on faith-based higher education” in part because more religious or rabbinical studies programs are expected to fail the test. Some religious universities sought an exemption from the rule, arguing that it infringes their right to religious liberty.
Not every comment criticized the new policy, however. Some student advocates praised the earnings test, calling it a much-needed guardrail to protect students and ensure taxpayer dollars support programs that are worth the investment. If anything, they argued the accountability metric could be stronger. They’d like to see the Education Department measure and publish each program’s debt-to-earnings ratio as well, even if it isn’t factored in when deciding which institutions get access to aid.
This proposal is the third and final portion of regulations related to Congress’s overhaul of federal student aid policy in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It’s set to take effect July 1.
