The government is pulling student loan money from worthless college degree programs and its about time

Students will no longer be able to take out federal loans to pay for degree programs that fail to provide them a return on investment, thanks to a new federal policy that went into effect on July 1.And it’s about time.It’s a response to a shocking fact: Graduates of more than 800 college programs across the country — including at institutions like the University of South California and New York City’s New School — make less than the average high-school grad four years after getting a degree, despite all that time, effort and tuition money.Now the American government will have no part in propping up degree programs that may not even lead to a livable wage.A provision of the Big Beautiful Bill cuts them off from federal aid access if they can’t break the non-grad salary baseline.Programs that fail the test for two out of three consecutive years will no longer be able to bury kids in debt — at least not on the taxpayer’s dime.These Big Beautiful Bill revisions represent “the biggest set of changes to financial aid in decades,” according to Robert Kelchen, head of the Department of Educational Leadership at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

And change is much needed.Teens and twentysomethings should be protected by the federal government from making a catastrophic financial decision, like taking on debt to finance a degree that ultimately could decrease their earnings potential.

But until now the government has been enabling those decisions by underwriting loans without regard to the value of the investment.“It makes complete sense from a student perspective and also from a taxpayer perspective [to stop giving] money to programs that leave students financially worse off,” Michael Itzkowitz, president of the HEA Group, said.The HEA Group, a policy organization focused on higher education and economic mobility, used Education Department data to compare average graduate earnings from some 32,000 bachelor degree programs around the country w...