To loan, or not to loan? Considering the Administration’s move on “low return” degrees

By Easton Martin

The federal government has spent decades underwriting a higher education machine that treats every diploma as an equal financial investment. That era is hitting a wall. Under a finalized Department of Education rule, the Trump administration is tying federal Direct Loan eligibility directly to post-graduation earnings, disqualifying degree programs whose alumni consistently fail an income-to-debt threshold.​

The policy leaves need-based Pell Grants intact, targeting only the debt pipeline. On paper, the logic reflects Lending 101: the taxpayer should not bankroll loans that borrowers cannot realistically repay. For a nation saddled with nearly $1.7 trillion in student debt, demanding a measurable return on investment looks like common-sense stewardship.

​Yet as the policy takes effect, it exposes an interesting tension between fiscal discipline and civil society. Measuring academic value strictly through tax returns risks penalizing vocations that purposefully reject commercial wealth. Religious education sits squarely in the crosshairs of such action.​

Advocates for fiscal restraint recognize that federal loan guarantees have created a massive moral hazard. For decades, universities have inflated tuition costs precisely because Uncle Sam wrote blank checks regardless of market demand or career viability. When schools bear zero financial risk for producing indebted graduates with bleak job prospects, runaway administrative bloat and frivolous program expansion naturally follow.​

Tying loan access to graduate earnings forces colleges to face economic reality. If a master’s program charges eighty thousand dollars for an entry-level field that pays thirty-five thousand, that program ought to adjust its pricing. Basic economics suggests tuition must fall once schools can no longer rely on federal loans to subsidize overinflated sticker prices. Cutting off the spigot protects young people from walking into financial servitude before their adult lives even begin. From this perspective, the administration is merely enforcing market discipline on an insulated ivory tower.​Market metrics, however, rarely capture the full worth of human endeavor. Higher education is not simply an employment agency or a vocational credentialing pipeline. It preserves, cultivates, and transmits civilizational knowledge.​

Nowhere is this truer than in religious institutions. A biblical studies degree does not aim to maximize personal profit. The entire tradition of Christian higher education exists to train pastors, church planters, missionaries, and scholars. Without intensive study in ancient Greek, Hebrew, and theology, Western society would lack the foundational scholarship that translated sacred texts into modern tongues and preserved moral order across millennia.​

A student entering seminary or a Christian university to prepare for pastoral ministry does not treat the degree as a high-return asset class. If the Department of Education assesses that training against the starting salary of a corporate accountant or a software engineer, the program fails every time.

​Faith-based institutions petitioned the Department of Education for exemptions under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment, but federal officials rejected those appeals. Regulators insisted the rule remains neutral because it applies universally based on objective earnings data, not religious content, and leaves faith-motivated students free to enroll out of pocket.​

That neutrality argument is technically accurate, yet practically fraught. Eliminating federal loan access does not legally forbid someone from studying scripture, but it drastically raises the financial barrier to entry.

Cutting off Direct Loans could trigger institutional collapse for small Christian colleges, Bible institutes, and regional seminaries that operate on razor-thin margins.​​The central question is how institutions and students respond. ​Perhaps this regulatory squeeze forces a healthy reckoning. Schools heavily reliant on government debt might finally strip away bloated administrative overhead, lower tuition, and return to lean, mission-focused instruction. Churches, denominations, and private philanthropists might step up, replacing federal dependency with robust local endowments, scholarships, and apprenticeship models. Relying less on Washington has always been a sound conservative instinct.

​Then again, the fallout could deliver a sharp blow to the American fabric. Sudden regulatory pressure shuttering smaller faith-based schools would cost the nation vital training grounds for moral leadership, community service, and linguistic scholarship. Choking off the pipeline of ministry leaders does not make the nation richer; it simply leaves it more secular and spiritually depleted.​

Whether this policy delivers a masterclass in taxpayer protection or an overzealous administrative blow to foundational institutions depends on how well the institutions and individuals are able to adjust.