That’s where it is tricky: you’d think that what they chose, BUT it’s NOT above minimum wage - that would be a logical bar to clear.
It’s above what a person who graduated HS but didn’t graduate college makes, so, a hairdresser, a plumber, an HVAC technician, a retail salesperson, a dental hygienist, a factory worker, a police officer…
People who may make more than a teacher social worker, musician, museum docent, think tank intern, etc.
That would be a much better way to do it!
And if you average in all the hs grads who aren’t police officers (most who have a college degree)? All the underemployed/unemployed? The averages would go way down. Again, not sure how they’d go about getting all those statistics. Some of those HVAC, hairdressers, plumbers may have college degrees too.
Many many college grads don’t work in their major area or even in a job that requires a college degree. My friend’s daughter has a degree in applied math, works for a law firm in something to do with trademarks and makes decent money, but makes most of her income as an influencer. Does that stat show up anywhere?
I don’t see how the rule as it appears in the BBB rule can be implemented. They aren’t going to be able to carve out those who don’t make enough to justify the degree unless everyone in that program is doesn’t make anything, even in other areas. Some of those who major in underwater basket weaving are going to get jobs in other areas and make good money. Or go to grad school.
My college never asked me how much I made, what I did after college, if I worked at all.
I see this as being similar to the degree choices at Service Academies. There are limits based on what the government and armed forces value. Want a free education, select from the list.
The country is broke. Taxpayers are saying an investment XYZ degree is a bad “bet”. The private loan market is better suited to calculate the risk premium here.
It stinks, but some hard choices have to be made. I want more philosophers. I just don’t want to subsidize the next Diogenes.
Philosophy at the bachelor’s level does not appear to be one of the majors that is at high risk of having the median pay of a college’s graduates fall below that of the median pay of high school graduates.
Philosophy at the master’s level may have higher risk of median pay of graduates being below that of all bachelor’s degree graduates, but less likely when compared to the median pay of philosophy bachelor’s graduates (the comparison is median pay of whichever is lower of all bachelor’s graduates or those in the field).
So this rule will not likely stop many students studying philosophy from getting federal student loans.
Arts programs are the higher risk ones in terms of potentially being affected by this rule. Some other kinds of master’s level programs also may be higher risk. But most other bachelor’s level programs do not appear to be that high risk of being affected, including those in biology, English, and education.
I hope someone understands that there are students who major in the arts who then go on to professional programs to become lawyers, doctors, dentists, etc. Limiting undergrad majors, in my opinion, is a form of censorship.
Aside from my sneaking suspicion that predatory for-profits will have a loophole allowing them to continue with their unethical practices, I also suspect that the loans will be based on the income for people with degrees in that field, rather than the median income for graduates from that college. I also think that it will not take into consideration the percent of students who drop out after taking loans.
So even without a explicit loophole, I feel that for-profits will simply switch to only offering degrees in fields like business and CS. This will allow them to continue sucking up federal loan money, even though 70% of the students enrolled in the scam, I mean for-profit, never get a degree.
Of course, they are only cutting federal loans, and will be allowing predatory loan companies to come in and squeeze poor students for even more money. You better believe that there are a whole bunch of predatory loan companies that are itching to scramble in there and offer predatory loans to Pell-Grant eligible kids.
How is subsidizing the next Bernard Ebbers (PE) or Jeffrey Skilling (Engineering and Business) better than that?