Dept of Education Issues “Earnings Premium” Rule; Philosophy, in General, Should Be OK
The US Department of Education has issued a new rule that makes the availability of Federal financial aid for students conditional on whether the programs the students are enrolled in meet an “earnings premium” criteria.
According to a press release from the Department of Education, the “Student Tuition and Transparency System (STATS) and Earnings Accountability rule” states that:
undergraduate programs will be required to demonstrate that their graduates earn more than the typical high school diploma holder, and graduate programs will be required to demonstrate that their graduates earn more than the typical bachelor’s degree holder. If a program fails to show at least this modest financial return on investment for its graduates in two out of three consecutive award years, it will lose eligibility to participate in the federal Direct Loan program. After three years of consistently failing the earnings premium measure, the Department could also terminate eligibility for Title IV of the Higher Education Act (HEA), including Pell Grant eligibility, for all of an institution’s low-earning outcome programs.
How will the figures the rule references be determined? A fact sheet about the rule states:
Undergraduate completers’ median earnings will be compared to the median earnings for working adults aged 25-34 with only a high school diploma either from the state in which the institution is located or nationwide, depending on the institution’s enrollment makeup. Similarly, graduate completers’ median earnings will be compared to the median earnings for working adults aged 25-34 with only a bachelor’s degree. Program earnings will be calculated using program completers’ median annual earnings, measured four years after completion.
There are, of course, questions here about fairness, paternalism, and the value of education, which people are welcome to discuss.
But we might also be curious about how much money are we talking about.
Here is data from the National Center for Education Statistics for the US in 2022 about the pay of 25- to 34-year-olds who worked full time, year round:
- median earnings of those whose highest degree is a high school diploma: $41,800
- median earnings of those whose highest degree is a bachelor’s degree: $66,600
- median earnings of those who have an MA or PhD: $80,200.
How does philosophy hold up?
According to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in 2024, the median salary of people aged 22 to 27 whose highest degree is a BA in philosophy is $52,000. That’s the same or higher than the median early career salary of those majoring in biochemistry, biology, communications, criminal justice, graphic design, earth sciences, elementary education, environmental studies, journalism, pharmacy, political science, and all of the other humanities (to name just some). (The median early career salary across all majors, according to the same source, is $58,000.)
As for the earnings of those with graduate degrees in philosophy, Payscale says that the average salary of someone with an MA in philosophy is $77,000. I don’t quite know how reliable that data is. For one thing, it is based on just 68 respondents, and only about half of the respondents identify as “entry level” or “early career”.
As for the salaries of those with a PhD in philosophy, while not all graduates go into academia, academic salaries are not a bad place to start. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that in 2024-25 the average salary for assistant professors across all types of colleges and universities was $85,983. For “instructors” it was $73,030. For “lecturers” it was $77,341.
Though we would need some better data to be sure, it does seem that, on average, philosophy programs will meet the criteria. That said, some specific programs will not. I would urge the chairs of departments that may seem to be at risk to be proactive about gathering the relevant data and, if appropriate, making the case to administrators about the earnings of the graduates of your programs.
Related:
– Philosophy Majors Make More Money Than Majors in any other Humanities Field
– Salaries of Philosophy Majors Over Time
– Net Return On Philosophy Major Is Comparable To That Of Engineering Major
– The Salary Boost of Getting an MA in Philosophy
APDA collects graduate student income and salary, but I don’t think we’ve posted the salary numbers from the 2025 survey yet (that is an oversight, but we did post about graduate student income: https://apda.ghost.io/2025-survey-results-financial-satisfaction-and-labour-status-comparison-to-2023/). In 2023 you can see at the blog post below that the mean for temporary academic jobs was 51k, permanent academic jobs 82k, and nonacademic jobs 112k. So it might depend on the ratio of temporary academic to other jobs for that program. Worth keeping in mind is that our data set is international, while this rule will likely focus on US numbers only.
https://apda.ghost.io/2023-survey-results-an-overview/
I just looked at the numbers for the 2025 survey and I agree that philosophy PhD programs as a whole should be OK (assuming they are not planning to apply this program by program). I don’t have data on MA or BA programs.
For all 2025 respondents, the median salary is $77,000, while the mean is $95,814. But there is variance on a number of factors (not tested for statistical significance):
Getting closer to the specific rule in question, if I restrict to those who graduated 2021 or earlier, due to the 4-year criterion, and also restrict to those who attended PhD programs in the United States, that leaves 300 responses (that were greater than 0). The median for these responses is $89,000; the mean is $104,207.
Where are lecturers earning $77,000? We have a chronic under-payment and exploitation problem in academia. While I want funding to continue going to philosophy students, let’s not lie about what people are actually paid for the work they do.
Yep. I’m at 65k/year at a prestigious public R1, having negotiated up from 60k in my offer letter to make the job worth taking over a competing (temporary) job somewhere worse but with significantly lower COL. I believe my temp colleagues make between 55k-65k.
Fwiw, those salaries are normal starting rates for Assistant Profs in the UK. Many Assistant Profs in the UK will start on about $60USD.
Of course, the UK has famously poor academic salaries. I am not saying these should be normalised! But by global standards, the US is far ahead of other countries. Not saying that your salary is good by the standards of your local peers, but just that it’s bearing in mind that you’re still considerably above the standards of many of your colleagues elsewhere (and not solely the UK).
These comparisons are not precise, though. You might earn better in the US, but your costs are likely to be also higher than in an average European country with a proper welfare net (just think of schooling, health care, no pension, transport). The UK is probably worse in this regard than continental European countries, but I think it is still better than the US.
I am currently a lecturer at an public R1 university. My salary before taxes is 40k. I am considered part-time given my course load and thus do not earn health benefits. I have requested teaching more courses so that I would be eligible and have been turned down. It can be quite miserable for lecturers, indeed.
That number comes from the Chronicle of Higher Education. I expect it’s running together several types of jobs with the title “lecturer”, and is very likely also combining across disciplines. I would not be surprised if there are “lecturers” in modern languages and freshman writing who make much less than that, and “lecturers” in the business school and law school who make much more than that. (When Joe Biden was elected president, he currently had a job as “adjunct faculty” at Penn – I’m guessing his pay was not the same as everyone else with that title at that institution.)
This is a good point. Lots of “clinical” faculty or similarly titled folks make good money, because they are often big name people from outside academia that are hired for a class or two. So if the law school brings in a partner from a big firm or a judge to teach a course, they get a clinical or similar title, but you aren’t paying them a standard adjunct salary.
I’m not sure how this would work. Many undergraduate students go into school with undeclared majors. Is the government going to withhold financial aid from them?
Does anyone know / have good guesses about which disciplines won’t be OK?
Perhaps ironically, education majors had the lowest median salaries in 2021, according to AAAS, but humanities are generally passing the bar: “In 2021, terminal bachelor’s degree holders (TBHs) in the humanities had annual median earnings of $64K, while the median for all workers with a terminal bachelor’s degree was $72K (Indicator III-06a).1supplemental table. Median earnings for humanities TBHs were 56% higher than those of workers with only a high school diploma ($41K).” So if this rule is applied we may see far fewer education majors and teachers in the states with generally lower incomes.
But I just noticed teacher salaries may actually be excluded from the data, since teaching usually requires both a bachelor’s degree and a teaching credential: “This will include earnings from students who completed the program during the cohort period and are employed. Certain students, including those who are enrolled in another institution or have completed a higher-credentialed program, are excluded” (https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2026/04/us-department-of-education-proposes-earnings-premium-metric)
A couple of resources in California include from the UC: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-center/uc-alumni-earnings
and CSU: https://tableau.calstate.edu/views/LaborMarketOutcomes/LaborMarketDashboard
It looks to me as though all UC majors would clear the hurdle, but some in the CSU system could be in trouble (arts/dance/music, anthropology, and some languages, like Chinese, French, German, Italian, and Japanese).
The fact sheet says: “Program earnings will be calculated using program completers’ median annual earnings, measured four years after completion.”
Who is getting this data? Is the Department of Education going to get graduates to tell them their median annual earnings? And does this include all graduates, not just those who received federal financial aid?
Or are universities going to be required by law to collect this data? And if so, how would they do that?
Are graduates going to be required by law to provide this data? And how would enforcement on that work?
Just wondering how they plan on implementing this. It’s not a terrible idea in principle. But I’m skeptical of how this is going to play out in practice.
This also does nothing to address the issue of students starting college or grad school but then dropping out along the way. And I have a related worry that some academic departments will be less likely to let poorer performing students actually finish their degrees. If departments believe poorer performing students are on their way to no jobs or lower salaries, they might prefer to ax these students as they near the end of their programs instead of running the risk of letting these students graduate and then fail to get a decent paying job.
This does appear to require institution level data, and soon: “Under the STATS collection, institutions will report program information, including the program name, CIP code, credential level, and program length. For each student, institutions will report data such as total cost of attendance, private education loans, and whether the student completed or withdrew from the program, among other data elements. This information will provide important insight for current and prospective students as they make decisions about pursuing higher education. Institutions are first required to submit the required STATS data to the Department no later than October 1, 2026, and annually thereafter on October 1.”
https://www.ed.gov/media/document/fact-sheet-trump-administration-implements-accountability-provisions-of-working-families-tax-cuts-act-114288.pdf
More helpful information here, from the initial notice: https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2026/04/us-department-of-education-proposes-earnings-premium-metric
“The Department will use student and program data reported by institutions, as well as earnings data from another federal agency; the IRS is expected to provide this earnings data.”
Ah, the IRS. Interesting. Thanks for finding that.
There’s nothing wrong with collecting the data and making it publicly available, but by making aid conditional on earnings the Dept. of Education is saying, in effect, that it sees no value in education apart from a monetary one. That’s probably not a good message for the Dept. of Education to be sending/embracing, though it’s unsurprising given the current administration.
“That’s probably not a good message for the Dept. of Education to be sending/embracing, though it’s unsurprising given the current administration.”
I mean, I agree, but Biden’s Ed Sec, Miguel Cardona, tweeted this on December 16, 2022:
There’s no mystery about what “industry demands” and “demands of tomorrow’s global workforce” ultimately come to.
And it’s not like Cardona’s claim expressed some kind of a paradigm shift. Higher education has been governed, even if indirectly, by market metrics — money — for decades. Sure, this or that administration might intensify said governance, or might newly metricize, abuse it, or hide it under inspiring messaging. But, surely, Trump II did not institute this general arrangement.
The difference between Ds and Rs on education more or less amounts to whether they want to kill it with a gun or a knife
Omg too true.
“Trump II did not institute this general arrangement”
I agree, and it’s reasonable to be concerned with practical results and “return on investment” considerations, just not to the exclusion of other things.
There has been a recent education reform in Denmark that introduced a similar policy here. The government looks at the employment statistics of graduates (with masters degrees*) 6 months after graduation. Graduates from the arts and humanities and social sciences tend to have a more difficult time getting jobs in the first 6 months after graduation (though they seem to do fine 1 year after). The government uses this information to set caps on programs, caps on how many students they can admit into the bachelors programmes.
I believe the relevant information about employment is easily found by the tax department.
*university students in Denmark are admitted to programmes, with the assumption that they will complete a 3 years bachelors and then a 2 year masters (almost all Danish university students complete a masters)
Of course this is a bad development, even if we grant that employability is one consideration that should be taken into account.
Norway – that tends to copy the worse ideas both from the US and the UK as well as from its Nordic peers – also evaluates programmes according to their employability prospects.
Basically, what is going on here is a populism-driven mantra of ‘usefulness’. Education’s function is reduced to preparing students for entering the labor market as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Big bang for your buck, in other words. Nothing else counts.
This of course also serves other – typically populist – agenda points, in particular, anti-elitism and anti-leftism (since the least employable students are from programmes of presumed leftist and liberal leanings, namely, humanities and social sciences).
What is interesting in this regard, at least in a Nordic perspective, is that nonetheless this approaches to education is not only endorsed by but is also enthusiastically pursued by parties on the left, It has become basically a taboo to even question it.
Madness. Humboldt is turning in his grave.
I agree with this. Inside Higher Ed estimates that 15% of arts BAs will be cut (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/student-aid-policy/2026/06/29/6-charts-breaking-down-new-federal-earnings-test). The reason? Not because the arts are not valuable/valued (they are, particularly for health and wellbeing https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/contribution-of-the-arts-to-society-and-the-economy/) or arts students are not satisfied with their majors (they are! and more than business majors, who are paid very well https://dreambound.com/college-major-survey-2023), but because the arts are not well paid, in general. Applying this rule at a program/disciplinary level means that it is no longer about the quality of the education, but about what areas of interest are highly compensated (e.g. an interest in money/business) and what areas of interest are not (e.g. an interest in caring for others).