A College President Weighs in on Higher Ed’s New Accountability Rule

Last summer, Congress put in place a new system of federal accountability for colleges that will force institutional leaders to grapple with the career outcomes their students face in a new way. Those who don’t meet the mark will lose access to federal student loans in as few as two years. Just yesterday evening, the Department of Education published a final rule that will guide implementation of this reform. I spoke with Matt Gianneschi, President of Colorado Mountain College and an innovative leader on workforce-oriented learning, about how he is responding. Beth: Matt, what do you make of the “do no economic harm” provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), and do you think this will affect students as it comes into effect? Matt: The “do no economic harm” provision of the OBBBA is a sensible, practical starting point for motivating institutions to focus on post-graduation outcomes. Frankly, proving that graduates earn at least one dollar more per year than a typical individual without a college degree is a low bar given the billions invested in student loans, but the provision will spark productive discussions in cabinet meetings, among faculty members, and in college boardrooms. With the provision in place, it is no longer possible to ignore inconvenient questions regarding graduates’ well-being. This is a good thing. Though a modest proposal, the “do no harm” provision will serve as a consumer protection “fail-safe” to ensure that students avoid potentially problematic debt. It will also force institutional leaders—faculty, administrators, and board members—to pay attention to the labor market outcomes of their graduates. This is a very good thing for the academy. Of course, there will be a small share of programs that fail the “one dollar benefit” test, but, by and large, the policy will demonstrate that college degrees at all levels pay off, which will go a long way toward rebuilding the public’s trust in higher education. I believe in my soul that institutional leaders shoulder an ethical duty to ensure that no student graduates worse off than when they arrived, so this new standard causes me no scruples. Beth: Are any of your programs at Colorado Mountain College going to be affected by this standard? If so, how will you address it? Matt: Based on initial data from my college’s research team, no programs at Colorado Mountain College currently fall below this standard. My college has actively implemented “labor market aware” policies for nearly a decade—that is, we actively utilize post-graduate earnings information in program approval and discontinuance procedures. We call this our “program vitality index.” And keep in mind that CMC campuses operate in some of the highest-cost communities in the nation, so we wouldn’t exist if the graduates of our programs failed to earn a degree premium. Average starting wages in Colorado’s mountain communities are higher and reflect the costs of living in small resort communities. By using the “living wage” benchmark as a minimum expectation for graduates in our programs, my colleagues and I have designed systems to provide a mix of programs that comfortably exceed the “do no harm” provision and evaluate those that do not. Of course, we do have some programs that fall below our self-imposed “livable wage” threshold; these are subject to internal review procedures, which are ongoing. Beth: Are there ways in which colleges could skirt these new standards to avoid having to implement this protection for their students? Matt: I have no firsthand knowledge of decisions college leaders might consider to avoid accountability under the OBBBA’s rule, but one could imagine strategies to accomplish this. For example, several decades ago I served as the Chief Academic Officer for the Colorado Department of Higher Education. One of my responsibilities at that time was to work with colleges to discontinue academic programs that failed to meet the state’s minimum enrollment and graduation standards. Most colleges with “failing” programs simply chose to discontinue them. But it was not uncommon to see colleges merge or blend their underperforming academic programs with higher-performing ones. It’s not a stretch to assume that we’ll observe modifications like these in the years ahead, provided the changes are permissible under accreditation or authorization rules. I also don’t see such changes as particularly problematic if they are otherwise operationally sound. Adaptation has been a hallmark of American higher education for generations; we should encourage institutions to be instinctively entrepreneurial, to tinker and adapt to the realities of their markets—and occasionally fail—all while maintaining consistency with their missions. The most relevant institutions in the future will be those that pay attention to their markets of students and employers and adjust accordingly. The post A College President Weighs in on Higher Ed’s New Accountability Rule appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI .