[The View from 30,000 Feet is an occasional entry that offers a big-picture view of some of the topics covered on this blog.]
About one week ago Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent announced that the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, more commonly known as FAFSA, is introducing a new earnings indicator to complement the FAFSA process as a way of improving the information that individuals and families use in considering their postsecondary options. According to Kent, "As more than half of all Americans question whether a college degree is worth the price of tuition and the federal student loan portfolio nears a staggering $1.7 trillion, the Department of Education is taking significant steps to ensure that students and families have clear information to make informed postsecondary education enrollment decisions—before they take on debt they may never be able to repay . . . The new earnings indicator helps illuminate how graduates’ typical earnings compare with those of high school graduates. For example, . . . 3 percent of undergraduate students across the country attend an institution where graduates earn less than a high school graduate on average—yet, at these same institutions, students received billions in federal student loan disbursements last year. This new indicator will help students and families better understand how their choices could translate into real-world outcomes, and it will be provided at a crucial moment in the college decision-making process. This indicator is designed to inform—not limit—student choices. It’s one additional resource students can use—alongside factors like cost, mission, location, and personal interests—to identify the path that best aligns with their goals."
Since December 7, 2025, first-year undergraduate students are seeing a “lower earnings” disclosure in their FAFSA Submission Summary after they complete the form. A school receives this flag when the median earnings of its graduates, four years after graduation, are below the median earnings of high-school graduates in the same state. For schools that serve mostly out-of-state students, the comparison is made using the national median for high-school earnings. Clicking on the notice provides students detailed earnings information for all the schools listed on their FAFSA form. From there, students can choose to leave their selections as is, remove a flagged school, or add other institutions. As Kent added, "Students and families can use the indicator to better understand expected earnings outcomes and make data-informed decisions about college programs. High school counselors, college-access professionals, and other student support entities can incorporate the data into their guidance—helping students weigh multiple considerations and evaluate long-term opportunity and value. Institutions can reference this publicly available data as one of several indicators of outcomes and use it to support ongoing improvement efforts. For students and families who want to dig deeper, the College Scorecard offers program-level results and comparisons across colleges and universities nationwide."
Turner Business recently took a look at the data provided by the United States Department of Education. In doing so we noticed that most of institutions flagged by the earnings indicator are beauty schools, barber colleges and some technical/trade institutions. In Georgia, for example, the list includes Atlanta School of Massage and Pro Way Hair School. However, one might imagine that the earnings indicator used by FAFSA might evolve into something like an earnings ratio indicator (ERI) equal to college grad earnings to high school grad earnings and that institutions' whose ratios are less than 1 are flagged, as they are now. This evolution would allow FAFSA to advance its process to red flag institutions whose ratios are less than 1 and to yellow flag institutions whose ratios fall on the 1.0 to 1.5 portion of the continuum. We computed this ratio for the most recognizable institutions in Georgia, as well as some local institutions. As indicated below, if FAFSA advances to a red flag/yellow flag process as described above then USG institutions like East Georgia State College, Atlanta Metropolitan State College and Dalton State University will receive a yellow flag. In terms of more local institutions, so would Columbus Technical College and Point University. Although one might argue that this process would directly benefit CSU, it might indirectly harm CSU by harming the USG. The net effect would be uncertain. With an ERI of about 1.64, CSU would only be marginally above the yellow flag category, as are a number of other USG institutions. Perhaps this is an issue the leadership of these organizations should be considering now.
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