I’m a university president. Trump is right to make colleges deliver for students
Washington just sent a shockwave through the higher education establishment and American families are the clear winners. For years, traditional colleges and universities have operated like untouchable monopolies. They skyrocketed tuition costs, increased their administrative budgets, and happily pocketed federal financial aid checks. They did all of this without ever proving that their degrees lead to meaningful careers.
Colleges and universities will no longer escape with zero accountability.
Recently, the Department of Education under the Trump administration proposed a new accountability system. It is designed to eliminate the low return on investment that has burdened students and their parents for generations.
Under this new Student Tuition and Transparency System, institutions must pass a basic earnings premium test. Colleges and universities must prove that graduates from their undergraduate programs earn more money per year than a typical high school graduate. If they cannot meet this metric, the institution will lose access to federal student loans and potentially Pell Grants.
This proposal is not a radical political idea. It is economic common sense. As Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent correctly noted, if postsecondary education programs do not leave graduates better off, taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize them. More importantly, parents should not have to empty their retirement accounts to pay for them.
Higher education has told high school seniors to blindly chase campus prestige for too long. We handed young adults tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to pursue degrees that the modern labor market simply does not value or need. The devastating result is a generation drowning in student loan debt, moving back into their childhood bedrooms, and holding diplomas that cannot secure a livable wage.
As the president of Southeastern University, I see this proposed regulation as the reset American higher education desperately needs.
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This is a victory for the family sitting around the kitchen table trying to figure out how to afford college. It is a victory for the 18-year-old being told to borrow without being told the consequences. And it is a victory for the taxpayer who has been subsidizing broken institutions for too long.
A degree is only valuable if it equips a young adult to build a stable life, support a family, and contribute meaningfully to the economy. At Southeastern University, we understood this shift years ago. We did not wait for a federal mandate to hold ourselves accountable. We intentionally built an educational model designed for the modern workforce, partnering directly with employers, aligning academic programs with real economic demand, and ensuring students gain practical, career-ready experience long before they cross the graduation stage.
Education must function as a bridge to economic mobility. It should not be a trapdoor into years of insurmountable debt.
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The higher education establishment will fight this proposal. Count on it. The very institutions that fueled this crisis will be the loudest voices against this change. They will dress their opposition in the language of academic freedom and institutional independence. But protecting institutions that consistently fail their students is not academic freedom. It is institutional cowardice.
We cannot bend to that pressure. This policy is a direct defense of the American family and the American student. The federal government is finally demanding that colleges deliver on their expensive promises. For too long, institutions have been rewarded simply for existing rather than for producing results. That model is broken, and this proposal begins to fix it.
The future of American higher education belongs to the schools willing to be held accountable, the schools that offer affordable, practical degrees and actually prepare graduates to succeed in the workforce.
It is time to stop protecting broken institutions and start protecting the students they were built to serve.