New Trump Rule Could Cut Enrollment at Nearly Half of Arts MA Programs
The controversial proposal would measure alumni income to determine whether a program can matriculate students who take out federal loans.
Approximately 44% of fine and studio arts Master’s degree programs in the United States could lose the ability to matriculate students who rely on federal loans to pay for their tuition, according to new guidelines proposed by the Trump administration.
The Department of Education’s (ED) proposal, first published in April, would prohibit Master’s programs in the arts from enrolling students who use federal loans if the program’s recent alumni earned less than the median salary of a Bachelor’s degree holder between the ages of 25 and 34. Currently, the Department evaluates Master’s program eligibility based on the earnings of its alumni compared with those of high school diploma holders aged 25–34.
Billed by the Trump administration as a means to penalize expensive and for-profit degree granters that project low average earning outcomes, the new criteria could mean steep drops in enrollment or complete closure for some programs, according to the New York Times. The measure has prompted public outrage against a perceived “blacklisting” of arts degrees, captured in the nearly 9,000 public comments submitted to the ED.
Arts degrees are one of the many higher education tracks that would be impacted by the proposal. The ED estimates that 6% of total degree programs in the country would fail the department's new standards for federal loans. The latest restrictions build upon the Trump administration’s rigid caps for federal assistance on loans for professional degrees in healthcare roles largely held by women, including social work and nursing.
Under the guidelines, the federal government would consider a Master’s degree program based on alumni incomes four years after graduation. If two consecutive cohorts in each three-year period failed to earn more than Bachelor’s degree holders, the institution would be ineligible to accept federal loans for that degree.
The ED plans to restrict so-called “failing” degree programs' access to the Federal Direct Loans, which let students and their families borrow for tuition at subsidized rates and include a post-graduation repayment grace period.
The department has until July to authorize its new criteria, according to the Times, but the guidelines may not take effect until next fall. The agency has not yet responded to Hyperallergic's request for comment.
Public commenters and arts education institutions alike have met the measure with fierce opposition. In a statement shared with Hyperallergic, the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City said that “success is not solely measured by income, but by the value of one’s contributions to their communities and society at large.”
"We strongly oppose a proposed earnings test, yet another part of the current administration’s efforts to dismantle higher education and disproportionately devalue the arts," said the statement from SVA, which grants both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees across arts disciplines.
Others have voiced concerns that the government's proposed criteria did not necessarily factor in freelance or other income reported through 1099 forms. (The ED said that self-employed graduates would be counted in its review, but did not mention which specific tax forms would be analyzed.)
Chase Kahn, an admissions manager at the New York Film Academy, called upon the ED to explicitly include 1099 income in its calculations and create a “transparent” appeal process for the revocation of loan eligibility.
“Without these changes, the rule will harm the working-class and first-generation students it claims to protect,” Kahn wrote in public comments submitted to the department.
Robert Rosenberg-Kale, a New York Film Academy faculty member, wrote in public comments that the proposed measure “treats arts and media programs as if their value were captured in a single early-career W-2 number.”
“In reality, those programs train the workforce for one of America's largest export industries ... A rule that strips federal student aid from those programs is, in effect, a federal disinvestment in the workforce pipeline for that industry,” Rosenberg-Kale said.
