Tag: Career pathways and economic mobility

  • I earned my associate degree while still in high school, and it changed my life

    I earned my associate degree while still in high school, and it changed my life

    by Maxwell Fjeld, The Hechinger Report
    December 1, 2025

    Earning an associate degree alongside my high school diploma was an ambitious goal that turned into a positive high school experience for me. By taking on the responsibilities of a college student, I further prepared myself for life after high school.  

    I needed to plan out my own days. I needed to keep myself on task. I needed to learn how to monitor and juggle due dates, lecture times and exams while ensuring that my extracurricular activities did not create conflicts. 

    All of this was life-changing for a rural Minnesota high school student. Dual enrollment through Minnesota’s PSEO program saved me time and money and helped me explore my interests and narrow my focus to business management. After three years of earning dual credits as a high school student, I graduated from community college and was the student speaker at the commencement earlier this year in May — one month before graduating from high school. 

    As a student earning college credits while still in high school, I gained exposure to different career fields and developed a passion for civic engagement. At the beginning of my senior year, while taking courses at the local community and technical college, I was elected to serve as that school’s first cross-campus student body president. 

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.  

    While most states have dual-enrollment programs, Minnesota’s support for its PSEO students stands out. As policymakers consider legislative and funding initiatives to strengthen dual enrollment in other states, I believe that three features of our program could provide a blueprint for states that want to do more. 

    First, the college credits I earned are transferable and meet degree requirements.  

    Second, the PSEO program permitted me to take enough credits each semester to earn my associate degree. While the number of dual-enrollment credits high school students can earn varies by state and program, when strict limitations are set on those numbers, the program can become a barrier to higher education instead of an alternate pathway.  

    Third, Minnesota’s PSEO program limits the cost burden placed on students. With rising costs and logistical challenges to pursuing higher education credentials, the head start that students can create for themselves via loosened restrictions on dual-enrollment credits can make a real financial impact, especially for students like me from small towns. 

    Dual-enrollment costs vary significantly from state to state, with some programs charging for tuition, fees, textbooks and other college costs. In Minnesota, those costs are covered by the Department of Education. In addition, if families meet income requirements, the expenses incurred by students for education-related transportation are also covered.  

    If I did not have state support, I would not have been able to participate in the program. Financial support is a crucial component to being a successful dual-enrollment student. When the barrier of cost is removed, American families benefit, especially students from low-income, rural and farming backgrounds.  

    Early exposure to college helped me choose my major by taking college classes to experiment — for free. When I first started, I was interested in computer science as a major. After taking a computer science class and then an economics class the following semester, I chose business as my major.  

    The ability to explore different fields of study was cost-saving and game-changing for me and is an opportunity that could be just as beneficial for other students. 

    Targeted investments in programs like this have benefited many students, including my father in the 1990s. His dual-enrollment experience allowed him to get a head start on his education and gain valuable life skills at a young age and is a great example of dual enrollment’s potential generational impact. 

    Related: STUDENT VOICE: I’m thriving in my dual-enrollment program, but it could be a whole lot better 

    When dual-enrollment students receive guidance and support, it can be transformational. Early exposure to college introduced me to college-level opportunities. As student government president, I went to Washington, D.C., to attend a national student summit. I was able to meet with congressional office staffers and advocate for today’s students and for federal investment in dual-enrollment programs, explaining my story and raising awareness. 

    The daily life of high school is draining for some and can be devastating for others. I had many friends who came to believe that the bullying, peer-pressure and culture they experienced in high school would continue in college, so they deemed higher education “not worth it.” 

    Through dual enrollment, I saw the difference in culture; students who face burnout from daily high school life can refocus and feel good about their futures again. 

    Congress can help state legislatures by establishing strong dual-enrollment programs nationwide. With adequate government support, dual-enrollment programs can help students from all walks of life and increase college graduation rates. If all states offer access to the same opportunities that I had in high school, our next generation will be better prepared for the workforce and more successful. 

    Maxwell Fjeld is pursuing his bachelor’s degree at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities’ Carlson School of Management after earning an associate degree upon high school graduation through dual enrollment. He is also a student ambassador fellow at Today’s Students Coalition. 

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected]. 

    This story about dual-enrollment programs was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter. 

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  • College students are tired of being told that we ‘should be grateful’ for our internships. We also want to get paid

    College students are tired of being told that we ‘should be grateful’ for our internships. We also want to get paid

    by Savannah Celeste Scott, The Hechinger Report
    November 17, 2025

    Imagine clocking out of an eight-hour shift and your compensation is a pat on the back and experience for your resume.  

    This scenario is a disturbing reality for around one million college students, and it needs to stop. Students work countless hours on top of their academic pursuits only to be told they should be “grateful for the opportunity.”  

    The government must pass legislation mandating that all internships include monetary compensation; employers must stop exploiting students and recent graduates while they build necessary work experience.  

    The idea of an unpaid internship is odd considering that most of us grew up learning that work is rewarded. Some 71 percent of American households give children ages 5 to 17 an allowance for doing their chores, a Wells Fargo study found.  

    Practices like that have led many of us to believe that labor should be paid, and it should be no different when we enter the job market.  

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.  

    There is a disturbing correlation between unpaid internships and exploitation, especially for people from marginalized communities. Historically, Black people have been the face of working without compensation — a phenomenon dating back to early American slave practices.  

    Unpaid work is not just exploitation — it is dehumanizing. No person can survive without money, so no one should be required to work with no compensation to help them live. The reality is that, unlike higher-income students, low-income students cannot afford to work for free. They need money to cover their tuition, afford groceries and pay for a place to live. This is why unpaid internships further the cycle of economic exploitation, the student-run Columbia Spectator noted.  

    Yet there are plenty of people who believe compensation does not always have to be monetary. Many students have heard employers extol the value of “experience” as they try to persuade them to work without pay.  

    Such was the case for me when I was hired for a legal internship as a freshman in college. I thoroughly enjoyed my internship, as it gave me both professional and social opportunities. But it was an extremely difficult time for me both mentally and financially.  

    I was taking 16 credit hours, regularly writing for a student publication and working another part-time job to save money for law school. The stress of going into the office every day to handle casework — often ranging from domestic violence to sexual assault cases — was mentally taxing when combined with schoolwork and extracurricular responsibilities.  

    While the experience that the internship provided was incredible, monetary compensation would have made it much less stressful, as I would not have needed the other job.  

    Unpaid internships can also hurt graduates’ prospects in the job market. Those who have had unpaid internships receive fewer job offers on average than those who completed paid internships, statistics from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) show.  

    The average student who completed an unpaid internship also saw $22,500 less in their starting salaries than those who completed paid internships. According to the Delta Institute, “employers offering compensation tend to invest more in mentoring, performance feedback, and skill-building”; that added investment provides students with more preparation for the job market and helps them look more impressive to an employer.  

    Related: Looking for internships? They are in short supply 

    Unpaid interns have been fighting for compensation for decades. A lawsuit filed by two interns against Fox Searchlight over their lack of compensation when working on the movie “Black Swan” resulted in a legal battle that lasted five years. The two interns were finally compensated a total of $13,500 for their work — despite the film grossing more than $300 million.  

    The Fox Searchlight lawsuit sparked a wave of other impassioned interns to plead their cases as well, including a class-action lawsuit against NBCUniversal back in July 2013. That resulted in a $6.4 million settlement split among thousands of interns.  

    In both cases, the employers made millions of dollars in profits but still refused to pay their interns until they were legally forced to do so.  

    According to Shawn VanDerziel, the president and chief executive officer of NACE, paid internships are a “game changer” to employers and employees alike. The dilemma is this: Employers want labor, and students want internships. The most obvious solution would be to pay students for the work that they do.  

    Students do not work for fun. They work because they want to create better futures for themselves; their success will be less likely if they don’t receive monetary compensation. The government needs to make it illegal for employers to exploit students by having them work without pay.  

    College students should not be expected to work for free.  

    Savannah Celeste Scott is a senior at the University of Georgia in Athens, studying journalism, Spanish and law, jurisprudence and the state on a pre-law track.  

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].  

    This story about unpaid internships was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

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  • Trump administration cuts canceled this college student’s career start in politics

    Trump administration cuts canceled this college student’s career start in politics

    This story was produced in partnership with Teen Vogue and reprinted with permission. 

    Christopher Cade wants to be president someday. His inspiration largely comes from family members, who have been involved in local politics and activism since long before he was born. But policies from the Trump administration and the Ohio Legislature are complicating his college experience — and his plans to become a politician.

    Cade is a student at Ohio State University double-majoring in public policy analysis and political science with a focus on American political theory. He recalls his maternal grandmother, Maude Hill — who had a large hand in raising him — talking to him about her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. She also worked at Columbus, Ohio-based affordable housing development nonprofit, Homeport, and has gone to Capitol Hill to speak with the state delegation multiple times. His dad is the senior vice president of the housing choice voucher program at the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, and his older brother has a degree in political science and is interested in social justice advocacy work, Cade said. Last fall, his first on campus, Cade began applying to opportunities to bolster his resume for a future career in politics.

    The now 19-year-old secured an internship with the U.S. Department of Transportation and a work-study job on campus in the university’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion. But the federal opportunity was scrapped when the Trump administration imposed a hiring freeze and budget cuts. His campus job ended when the university announced it would “sunset” the diversity office in response to federal and state anti-diversity, equity and inclusion orders and actions, according to Cade.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    The work-study position was with the university’s Bell National Resource Center on the African American Male, which was founded to support Black men to stay in college. It’s a cause he was excited about. 

    “I would help order food or speak with students or do interviews,” said Cade. “I developed a good 20 different programs for the next year.” 

    In February, when the university announced it was closing the office, “I was like, ‘Well, so six months of work just for no reason,’” he said.

    OSU President Ted Carter released a statement on Feb. 27 saying the closure of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion was a response to both state and federal actions regarding DEI in public education. The move eliminated 17 staff positions, not including student roles, the university said. Programming and services provided by the Office of Student Life’s Center for Belonging and Social Change were also scrapped. 

    The change came before the Trump administration’s initial deadline for complying with a memo that threatened to cut funding for public colleges and universities, as well as K-12 schools, that offer DEI programs and initiatives. In March, the administration announced that OSU was one of roughly 50 universities under federal investigation for allegedly discriminating against white and Asian students in graduate admissions. Additionally, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed legislation in March banning DEI programs in the state’s public colleges and universities. The legislation went into effect in June.

    Before the DEI office closed, Cade said, “I felt so heard and seen.” He’d attended a private, predominantly white, Catholic high school, he said. “It was not a place that supported me culturally and helped me understand more about who I am and my Blackness,” he recalled. At the university, though, “the programming we had throughout the year [was] about how to change the narrative on who a Black man is and what it means when you go out here and interact with people.

    “And then for them to close down all these programs, that essentially told me that I wasn’t cared about.”

    After the February announcement, students pushed back, organizing protests and a sit-in at the student union. But eventually, those efforts quieted.

    Cade says students felt like there was a “cloud of darkness” hanging over them. But he also thought of his Office of Diversity and Inclusion coworkers, some of whom had spent decades working there, helping students. In particular he thought of his former colleague Chila Thomas, who celebrated her fifth anniversary last year as the executive director of the Young Scholars Program. That program, which helps low-income aspiring first-generation college students get to and through college, was one of several of the office’s programs that will continue. The day after Carter’s announcement, she and others in the office spent time giving students space to talk through their feelings, despite the uncertainties surrounding their own employment, Cade said. 

    Related: A case study of what’s ahead with Trump DEI crackdowns: Utah has already cut public college DEI initiatives 

    Since the university crackdown on DEI, Cade said he’s experienced more discomfort on campus, even outright racism. He says he was approached by a white person who said, “I’m so glad they’re getting rid of DEI” and spit on his shoe and used a racial slur.  

    “I don’t know how that could ever be acceptable to anyone, but that was [when] a flip switched in my head,” Cade said. “I couldn’t sit down and be sad and silent. I had to stand up and make change.”

    In March, he traveled with other students to Washington, D.C., as part of the Undergraduate Student Government’s Governmental Relations Committee. They met with Ohio Rep. Troy Balderson and an aide, along with staffers from the offices of fellow Ohio lawmakers Sen. Bernie Moreno and Rep. Joyce Beatty, to discuss college affordability, DEI policies and the federal hiring freeze. Cade says he described how he was affected by the U.S. Department of Transportation canceling his internship.

    In Carter’s announcement, he stated that all student employees would be “offered alternative jobs at the university,” but Cade said during a meeting with Office of Diversity and Inclusion student employees, an OSU dean clarified that they would have to apply for new opportunities. With the policy changes meaning there were fewer work-study roles and more students in need of jobs, Cade saw the market as increasingly competitive, and he began to job hunt elsewhere. This summer he secured work with the Ohio Department of Transportation as a communications and policy intern. In October he began an intake assistant role in the Office of Civil Rights Compliance at the university. (Ohio State Director of Media and PR Chris Booker told Teen Vogue that the school could not comment on the experiences of individual students but that “all student employees and graduate associates impacted by these program changes were offered the opportunity to pursue transitioning into alternative positions at the university, as well as support in navigating that change.”)

    Although he was drawn to OSU for the John Glenn College of Public Affairs’ master’s program, Cade says he might have reconsidered schools had he known that the university would bend to lawmakers’ anti-DEI efforts. While he’s concerned about how education-related legislation and policies may continue to affect his college experience, he worries most about some of his peers. College is already so hard to navigate for so many young people, said Cade. “And this is just another thing that says, ‘Oh yeah, this isn’t for me.’”

    This story was published in partnership with Teen Vogue.

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  • College students hedge their bets in a chaotic labor market by double-majoring

    College students hedge their bets in a chaotic labor market by double-majoring

    by Jon Marcus, The Hechinger Report
    November 5, 2025

    After he graduates from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Drew Wesson hopes to begin a career in strategic communication, a field with higher-than-average job growth and earnings.

    One year into his time at the university, Wesson became more strategic about this goal. Like nearly 1 in 3 of his classmates, he declared a second major to better stand out in an unpredictable labor market.

    It’s part of a trend that’s spreading nationwide, according to a Hechinger Report analysis of federal data, as students fret about getting jobs in an economy that some fear is shifting faster than a traditional college education can keep up.

    “There’s kind of a fear of graduating and going out into the job market,” said Wesson, a sophomore from Minneapolis who is double-majoring in international security and journalism. “And having more skills and more knowledge and more majors gives you a competitive edge.”

    The number of students at UW-Madison who double-major has grown by 25 percent over the last decade, the data show. But double-majoring is also on the rise at private, nonprofit colleges across the country, and at other public institutions, including the University of California, San Diego, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

    Nearly 5.4 million credentials — degrees or certificates — were earned by the 4.8 million college and university graduates in 2023-24, the most recent year for which the figure is available. That means about 12 percent left school with more than one, compared to 6 percent ten years earlier. Academic minors don’t count as a credential and aren’t tracked..

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    “Students are feeling a sort of spiraling lack of control in a very dynamic labor market,” said Rachel Slama, associate director of Cornell University’s Future of Learning Lab, which studies how technology and other innovations are changing education. “They’re probably clinging to the one thing that’s in their control, which is the majors they choose. And they think that more is more.”

    They may be right, according to one of the few studies of this topic, by scholars at St. Lawrence University and Vanderbilt Law School. Students who have one major in business and a second in science, technology, engineering or math, it found, earn more than if they majored in only one of those disciplines, the 2016 study found. 

    Graduates who double-major are also 56 percent less likely to be laid off, have their pay cut or suffer other negative effects in economic downturns, according to another study, released last year by researchers at Ohio State and four other universities. These outcomes show “the importance of diverse skill sets,” the researchers concluded. If there’s a drop in demand for the skills associated with one major, “a double major can pursue a job related to the unaffected major.” 

    At Wisconsin, nearly 6 in 10 students in computer science who pick a second major choose the lucrative discipline of data science; the number of jobs in data science is projected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to increase 34 percent over about the next 10 years, at salaries that are nearly twice the national average.

    The unemployment rate among new bachelor’s degree recipients is now higher than for workers overall, and at its highest level since 2014, not including the pandemic years, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. That’s partly because artificial intelligence and other factors are transforming what employers need. 

    Nearly half of recent graduates feel underqualified to apply for even entry-level jobs, a survey by the education technology company Cengage Group finds. Only 30 percent say they have full-time jobs related to the fields that they studied.

    Meanwhile, colleges and universities — traditionally slow to transform what and how they teach — are encouraging students to combine majors as a faster way to keep up with changes in the labor market, said Taylor Odle, an assistant professor at UW-Madison who studies the economics of education and the value of credentials in the workforce.

    “Institutions are thinking strategically about how to align their degree programs with industry, and it might be by pairing two things they already have,” Odle said.

    There are other reasons for the rising popularity of double majors. At UW-Madison, for example, one factor propelling the growth is that there are no minors, noted Taylor Odle, an assistant professor there who studies the economics of education and the value of credentials in the workforce.. 

    Double-majoring isn’t easy. It typically means earning more than the usual minimum number of credits required to graduate, on top of extracurricular and other obligations. Wesson, at UW-Madison, for instance, is an officer of student government, a reporter and photographer for the campus newspaper and an honors student.

    Some separate majors have overlapping requirements. Even if they don’t, most universities and colleges charge the same tuition per semester no matter how many courses undergraduates take. So unless a second major extends the number of semesters a student needs to complete required courses, or forces him or her to take additional classes in the summers, double-majoring doesn’t typically cost more or take longer.

    Meanwhile, more students are arriving at college having already knocked off credits by taking dual-enrollment and Advanced Placement classes in high school. 

    About 2.5 million high school students participate in dual enrollment, according to an analysis of federal data by the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. (The Hechinger Report, which produced this story, is an independent unit of Teachers College.)

    This means they have room in their schedules in college for second majors, said Kelle Parsons, who focuses on higher education as a principal researcher at the American Institutes for Research.

    Related: After years of quietly falling, college tuition is on the rise again

    For some students, double-majoring makes more sense than changing majors altogether. About 30 percent of students change their majors at least once, and 10 percent two or more times, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Adding a second major is less drastic than dropping a first one and starting again from scratch, said Patrick Denice, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Western Ontario.

    “If you add a [second] major, you hedge your bets against a changing labor market without losing those credits and that coursework you’ve already earned” toward the first one, said Denice, who has studied why students at U.S. universities pick and change their majors.

    There’s yet another reason students are increasingly double-majoring. Even as they crowd into specialties associated with career opportunities, such as business and health-related disciplines — which together now account for nearly 1 in 3 undergraduate fields of study — some are adding second majors for which they simply have a passion.

    Related: Students can’t get into basic college courses, dragging out their time in school

    “They’re trying to satisfy their parents, who want them to be employed,” said J. Wesley Null, vice provost for undergraduate education and academic affairs at Baylor University, where there were more than twice as many double majors last year than there were in 2014. “But they’re also interested in a lot of interdisciplinary kinds of things. They’ll combine biology with Sanskrit or Chinese. These really bright students have a lot of diverse interests.”

    At the University of Chicago, where the number of double majors has also more than doubled, “I see students committing to one career but wanting to have more breadth,” said Melina Hale, dean of the college. “They’re going and exploring all of these other majors and finding one they love.”

    Double-majoring is also “a great way for students to demonstrate that they know how to think in different ways,” said Hale, herself a biologist who has collaborated with engineers. “If you’re going into a job in finance and have a deep background in history, you’re bringing different ways of approaching problems.”

    Related: To fill seats, more colleges offer credit for life experience

    This way of thinking is pushing still another trend: More students nationwide are earning certificates, which they can get in a matter of months and alongside their degrees, in subjects such as business management. Seventeen percent of bachelor’s degree recipients also finished college with at least one certificate in 2023-24, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center reports.

    Known as “stackable credentials,” these kinds of certificates “have been talked about for a long time,” said Ryan Lufkin, vice president of global academic strategy at the educational technology company Instructure. “And now there’s really demand for them.” 

    That’s because — like double-majoring and minoring — they make applicants stand out to employers, said Odle, at UW-Madison. 

    Students, he said, “are trying to emphasize their attractiveness in the labor market. They’re trying to cover their bases.”

    Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, [email protected] or jpm.82 on Signal.

    This story about double majors was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

    Data analysis by Marina Villeneuve.

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  • The new AI tools are fast but can’t replace the judgment, care and cultural knowledge teachers bring to the table

    The new AI tools are fast but can’t replace the judgment, care and cultural knowledge teachers bring to the table

    by Tanishia Lavette Williams, The Hechinger Report
    November 4, 2025

    The year I co-taught world history and English language arts with two colleagues, we were tasked with telling the story of the world in 180 days to about 120 ninth graders. We invited students to consider how texts and histories speak to one another: “The Analects” as imperial governance, “Sundiata” as Mali’s political memory, “Julius Caesar” as a window into the unraveling of a republic. 

    By winter, our students had given us nicknames. Some days, we were a triumvirate. Some days, we were Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Hades. It was a joke, but it held a deeper meaning. Our students were learning to make connections by weaving us into the histories they studied. They were building a worldview, and they saw themselves in it. 

    Designed to foster critical thinking, this teaching was deeply human. It involved combing through texts for missing voices, adapting lessons to reflect the interests of the students in front of us and trusting that learning, like understanding, unfolds slowly. That labor can’t be optimized for efficiency. 

    Yet, today, there’s a growing push to teach faster. Thousands of New York teachers are being trained to use AI tools for lesson planning, part of a $23 million initiative backed by OpenAI, Microsoft and Anthropic. The program promises to reduce teacher burnout and streamline planning. At the same time, a new private school in Manhattan is touting an AI-driven model that “speed-teaches” core subjects in just two hours of instruction each day while deliberately avoiding politically controversial issues. 

    Marketed as innovation, this stripped-down vision of education treats learning as a technical output rather than as a human process in which students ask hard questions and teachers cultivate the critical thinking that fuels curiosity. A recent analysis of AI-generated civics lesson plans found that they consistently lacked multicultural content and prompts for critical thinking. These AI tools are fast, but shallow. They fail to capture the nuance, care and complexity that deep learning demands. 

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.  

    When I was a teacher, I often reviewed lesson plans to help colleagues refine their teaching practices. Later, as a principal in Washington, D.C., and New York City, I came to understand that lesson plans, the documents connecting curriculum and achievement, were among the few steady examples of classroom practice. Despite their importance, lesson plans were rarely evaluated for their effectiveness.  

    When I wrote my dissertation, after 20 years of working in schools, lesson plan analysis was a core part of my research. Analyzing plans across multiple schools, I found that the activities and tasks included in lesson plans were reliable indicators of the depth of knowledge teachers required and, by extension, the limits of what students were asked to learn. 

    Reviewing hundreds of plans made clear that most lessons rarely offered more than a single dominant voice — and thus confined both what counted as knowledge and what qualified as achievement. Shifting plans toward deeper, more inclusive student learning required deliberate effort to incorporate primary sources, weave together multiple narratives and design tasks that push students beyond mere recall. 

     I also found that creating the conditions for such learning takes time. There is no substitute for that. Where this work took hold, students were making meaning, seeing patterns, asking why and finding themselves in the story. 

    That’s the transformation AI can’t deliver. When curriculum tools are trained on the same data that has long omitted perspectives, they don’t correct bias; they reproduce it. The developers of ChatGPT acknowledge that the model is “skewed toward Western views and performs best in English” and warn educators to review its content carefully for stereotypes and bias. Those same distortions appear at the systems level — a 2025 study in the World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews found that biased educational algorithms can shape students’ educational paths and create new structural barriers. 

    Ask an AI tool for a lesson on westward expansion, and you’ll get a tidy narrative about pioneers and Manifest Destiny. Request a unit on the Civil Rights Movement and you may get a few lines on Martin Luther King Jr., but hardly a word about Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer or the grassroots organizers who made the movement possible. Native nations, meanwhile, are reduced to footnotes or omitted altogether. 

    Curriculum redlining — the systematic exclusion or downplaying of entire histories, perspectives and communities — has already been embedded in educational materials for generations. So what happens when “efficiency” becomes the goal? Whose histories are deemed too complex, too political or too inconvenient to make the cut? 

    Related: What aspects of teaching should remain human? 

    None of this is theoretical. It’s already happening in classrooms across the country. Educators are under pressure to teach more with less: less time, fewer resources, narrower guardrails. AI promises relief but overlooks profound ethical questions. 

    Students don’t benefit from autogenerated worksheets. They benefit from lessons that challenge them, invite them to wrestle with complexity and help them connect learning to the world around them. That requires deliberate planning and professional judgment from a human who views education as a mechanism to spark inquiry. 

    Recently, I asked my students at Brandeis University to use AI to generate a list of individuals who embody concepts such as beauty, knowledge and leadership. The results, overwhelmingly white, male and Western, mirrored what is pervasive in textbooks.  

    My students responded with sharp analysis. One student created color palettes to demonstrate the narrow scope of skin tones generated by AI. Another student developed a “Missing Gender” summary to highlight omissions. It was a clear reminder that students are ready to think critically but require opportunities to do so.  

    AI can only do what it’s programmed to do, which means it draws from existing, stratified information and lags behind new paradigms. That makes it both backward-looking and vulnerable to reproducing bias.  

    Teaching with humanity, by contrast, requires judgment, care and cultural knowledge. These are qualities no algorithm can automate. When we surrender lesson planning to AI, we don’t just lose stories; we also lose the opportunity to engage with them. We lose the critical habits of inquiry and connection that teaching is meant to foster. 

    Tanishia Lavette Williams is the inaugural education stratification postdoctoral fellow at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy, a Kay fellow at Brandeis University and a visiting scholar at Harvard University. 

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].  

    This story about male AI and teaching was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.  

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  • Student-parents belong on college campuses. So do their children

    Student-parents belong on college campuses. So do their children

    Too many student-parents never make it to graduation, in no small part because their campuses don’t adequately help them fit college into their lives — or even just fit in.

    Yet over 3 million student-parents across the nation, myself included, are pursuing higher education, seeking the intergenerational benefits that come with earning a degree. To reap them, we must overcome many obstacles, as colleges aren’t designed for students like us.

    For me, the last hurdle I had to clear was graduation itself. After years of sacrifice — not just my own, but my whole family’s — walking the stage with my four children at my graduation from the University of California, Santa Cruz was deeply important.

    The university, however, didn’t understand that or account for us. When I asked to accept my diploma with my kids, I was met with resistance, a particularly tough reminder of the work institutions have left to do to meet the needs and priorities of student-parents.

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

    Earning my college degree in my late 30s was undoubtedly a major achievement, but so was going back for my bachelor’s in the first place — I didn’t even finish high school the first time around.

    After I became a mom at 20, I earned my GED, hoping it would help me support my family. Continuing my education only got harder. I started and stopped community college more times than I can count, juggling bills, jobs, custody battles and parenting.

    Finally, I transferred to UCSC, proud that I was taking this step two decades in the making and changing the trajectory of my and my family’s lives.

    However, I didn’t fully realize what my education would cost my children. Used to our tight-knit Tongan community, they felt like cultural outsiders when we moved to Santa Cruz, no longer surrounded by family, our native language or familiar foods and music.

    My children sacrificed their home and sense of belonging so that I could pursue this dream. As graduation approached, I knew I wanted to walk the stage with them. They had earned it just as much as I had.

    Yet the administration denied my request, citing the added logistical difficulties. They suggested I bring my kids to a separate, informal celebration for those of us living in family student housing instead. The offer sounded like “be invisible or settle for less.”

    I immediately started mobilizing UCSC’s Student Parent Organization, where I was president. Working with the student government, I drafted a resolution permitting student-parents to walk with their children. I reached out to alumni, administrators, fellow parents and friends for support.

    Thanks to our collective voice, the dean of students changed his mind, offered an apology and committed to changing the policy going forward for all graduating student-parents. Though my kids and I were placed at the end of the ceremony, we crossed the stage together as a family.

    That seed of inclusion will grow in them, just like it will for all the children of student-parents who walk that path in the future.

    The next year, my mentee and friend walked with her son at the UCSC commencement, this time without pushback. The university invited them to rehearsal, and on graduation day, they had VIP seats. She was one of the first to walk, not the last.

    That is the power of advocacy. It turns exclusion into inclusion. It rewrites the rules not just for one person, but for those who come after. I am proud to continue my advocacy work as a graduate student at the University of San Francisco and a member of The California Alliance for Student Parent Success.

    I have since seen institutions across California make good progress on their efforts to support student-parents, but colleges and universities nationwide must still do more. At the University at Buffalo, university police chased a graduating student across the stage when he attempted to bring his infant son with him.

    Related: A federal program helped student-parents thrive. Now it’s on life support

    These stories and the momentum building in the wake of September’s National Student Parent Month should serve as a call to higher education leaders across the country to cultivate campus climates that build trust and belonging among student-parents.

    This work should start before we even step foot on campus and continue until we graduate.

    Institutions that truly wish to serve families will ensure that the value we bring to higher education is visible. They will account for student-parents when planning campus events and weave together support networks of faculty, staff and peers who can respond to our needs.

    When we ask institutions for policies and practices to better accommodate our families, they will listen and act. They will hold themselves accountable to all of their students, parents included.

    Walking the stage with my kids was a step in the right direction, albeit an uphill climb. Let’s keep going and do better by student-parents and their families.

    Krystle Pale is a UC Santa Cruz graduate, a mother of five and a recent Advisory Committee member of The California Alliance for Student Parent Success.

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].

    This story about student-parents was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • As more question the value of a degree, colleges fight to prove their return on investment

    As more question the value of a degree, colleges fight to prove their return on investment

    This story was produced by the Associated Press and reprinted with permission. 

    WASHINGTON – For a generation of young Americans, choosing where to go to college — or whether to go at all — has become a complex calculation of costs and benefits that often revolves around a single question: Is the degree worth its price?

    Public confidence in higher education has plummeted in recent years amid high tuition prices, skyrocketing student loans and a dismal job market — plus ideological concerns from conservatives. Now, colleges are scrambling to prove their value to students.

    Borrowed from the business world, the term “return on investment” has been plastered on college advertisements across the U.S. A battery of new rankings grade campuses on the financial benefits they deliver. States such as Colorado have started publishing yearly reports on the monetary payoff of college, and Texas now factors it into calculations for how much taxpayer money goes to community colleges.

    “Students are becoming more aware of the times when college doesn’t pay off,” said Preston Cooper, who has studied college ROI at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “It’s front of mind for universities today in a way that it was not necessarily 15, 20 years ago.”

    Related: Interested in more news about colleges and universities? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter. 

    A wide body of research indicates a bachelor’s degree still pays off, at least on average and in the long run. Yet there’s growing recognition that not all degrees lead to a good salary, and even some that seem like a good bet are becoming riskier as graduates face one of the toughest job markets in years. 

    A new analysis released Thursday by the Strada Education Foundation finds 70 percent of recent public university graduates can expect a positive return within 10 years — meaning their earnings over a decade will exceed that of a typical high school graduate by an amount greater than the cost of their degree. Yet it varies by state, from 53 percent in North Dakota to 82 percent in Washington, D.C. States where college is more affordable have fared better, the report says.

    It’s a critical issue for families who wonder how college tuition prices could ever pay off, said Emilia Mattucci, a high school counselor at East Allegheny schools, near Pittsburgh. More than two-thirds of her school’s students come from low-income families, and many aren’t willing to take on the level of debt that past generations accepted.

    Instead, more are heading to technical schools or the trades and passing on four-year universities, she said.

    “A lot of families are just saying they can’t afford it, or they don’t want to go into debt for years and years and years,” she said.

    Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been among those questioning the need for a four-year degree. Speaking at the Reagan Institute think tank in September, McMahon praised programs that prepare students for careers right out of high school.

    “I’m not saying kids shouldn’t go to college,” she said. “I’m just saying all kids don’t have to go in order to be successful.”

    Related: OPINION: College is worth it for most students, but its benefits are not equitable

    American higher education has been grappling with both sides of the ROI equation — tuition costs and graduate earnings. It’s becoming even more important as colleges compete for decreasing numbers of college-age students as a result of falling birth rates.

    Tuition rates have stayed flat on many campuses in recent years to address affordability concerns, and many private colleges have lowered their sticker prices in an effort to better reflect the cost most students actually pay after factoring in financial aid.

    The other part of the equation — making sure graduates land good jobs — is more complicated.

    A group of college presidents recently met at Gallup’s Washington headquarters to study public polling on higher education. One of the chief reasons for flagging confidence is a perception that colleges aren’t giving graduates the skills employers need, said Kevin Guskiewicz, president of Michigan State University, one of the leaders at the meeting.

    “We’re trying to get out in front of that,” he said.

    The issue has been a priority for Guskiewicz since he arrived on campus last year. He gathered a council of Michigan business leaders to identify skills that graduates will need for jobs, from agriculture to banking. The goal is to mold degree programs to the job market’s needs and to get students internships and work experience that can lead to a job.

    Related: What’s a college degree worth? States start to demand colleges share the data

    Bridging the gap to the job market has been a persistent struggle for U.S. colleges, said Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, a think tank that studies the workforce. Last year the institute, partnering with Strada researchers, found 52 percent of recent college graduates were in jobs that didn’t require a degree. Even higher-demand fields, such as education and nursing, had large numbers of graduates in that situation.

    “No programs are immune, and no schools are immune,” Sigelman said. 

    The federal government has been trying to fix the problem for decades, going back to President Barack Obama’s administration. A federal rule first established in 2011 aimed to cut federal money to college programs that leave graduates with low earnings, though it primarily targeted for-profit colleges.

    A Republican reconciliation bill passed this year takes a wider view, requiring most colleges to hit earnings standards to be eligible for federal funding. The goal is to make sure college graduates end up earning more than those without a degree. 

    Others see transparency as a key solution.

    For decades, students had little way to know whether graduates of specific degree programs were landing good jobs after college. That started to change with the College Scorecard in 2015, a federal website that shares broad earnings outcomes for college programs. More recently, bipartisan legislation in Congress has sought to give the public even more detailed data.

    Lawmakers in North Carolina ordered a 2023 study on the financial return for degrees across the state’s public universities. It found that 93 percent produced a positive return, meaning graduates were expected to earn more over their lives than someone without a similar degree.

    The data is available to the public, showing, for example, that undergraduate degrees in applied math and business tend to have high returns at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, while graduate degrees in psychology and foreign languages often don’t.

    Colleges are belatedly realizing how important that kind of data is to students and their families, said Lee Roberts, chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill, in an interview.

    “In uncertain times, students are even more focused — I would say rightly so — on what their job prospects are going to be,” he added. “So I think colleges and universities really owe students and their families this data.”

    The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

    The Strada Education Foundation, whose research is mentioned in this story, is one of the many funders of The Hechinger Report.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • Higher Education must help shape how students learn, lead and build the skills employers want most

    Higher Education must help shape how students learn, lead and build the skills employers want most

    For the first time in more than a decade, confidence in the nation’s colleges and universities is rising. Forty-two percent of Americans now say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, up from 36 percent last year.  

    It’s a welcome shift, but it’s certainly not time for institutions to take a victory lap. 

    For years, persistent concerns about rising tuition, student debt and an uncertain job market have led many to question whether college was still worth the cost. Headlines have routinely spotlighted graduates who are underemployed, overwhelmed or unsure how to translate their degrees into careers.  

    With the rapid rise of AI reshaping entry-level hiring, those doubts are only going to intensify. Politicians, pundits and anxious parents are already asking: Why aren’t students better prepared for the real world?  

    But the conversation is broken, and the framing is far too simplistic. The real question isn’t whether college prepares students for careers. It’s how. And the “how” is more complex, personal and misunderstood than most people realize.  

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter. 

    What’s missing from this conversation is a clearer understanding of where career preparation actually happens. It’s not confined to the classroom or the career center. It unfolds in the everyday often overlooked experiences that shape how students learn, lead and build confidence.  

    While earning a degree is important, it’s not enough. Students need a better map for navigating college. They need to know from day one that half the value of their experience will come from what they do outside the classroom.  

    To rebuild America’s trust, colleges must point beyond course catalogs and job placement rates. They need to understand how students actually spend their time in college. And they need to understand what those experiences teach them. 

    Ask someone thriving in their career which part of college most shaped their success, and their answer might surprise you. (I had this experience recently at a dinner with a dozen impressive philanthropic, tech and advocacy leaders.) You might expect them to name a major, a key class or an internship. But they’re more likely to mention running the student newspaper, leading a sorority, conducting undergraduate research, serving in student government or joining the debate team.  

    Such activities aren’t extracurriculars. They are career-curriculars. They’re the proving grounds where students build real-world skills, grow professional networks and gain confidence to navigate complexity. But most people don’t discuss these experiences until they’re asked about them.  

    Over time, institutions have created a false divide. The classroom is seen as the domain of learning, and career services is seen as the domain of workforce preparation. But this overlooks an important part of the undergraduate experience: everything in between.  

    The vast middle of campus life — clubs, competitions, mentorship, leadership roles, part-time jobs and collaborative projects — is where learning becomes doing. It’s where students take risks, test ideas and develop the communication, teamwork and problem-solving skills that employers need.  

    This oversight has made career services a stand-in for something much bigger. Career services should serve as an essential safety net for students who didn’t or couldn’t fully engage in campus life, but not as the launchpad we often imagine it to be. 

    Related: OPINION: College is worth it for most students, but its benefits are not equitable 

    We also need to confront a harder truth: Many students enter college assuming success after college is a given. Students are often told that going to college leads to success. They are rarely told, however, what that journey actually requires. They believe knowledge will be poured into them and that jobs will magically appear once the diploma is in hand. And for good reason, we’ve told them as much. 

    But college isn’t a vending machine. You can’t insert tuition and expect a job to roll out. Instead, it’s a platform, a laboratory and a proving ground. It requires students to extract value through effort, initiative and exploration, especially outside the classroom.  

    The credential matters, but it’s not the whole story. A degree can open doors, but it won’t define a career. It’s the skills students build, the relationships they form and the challenges they take on along the way to graduation that shape their future. 

    As more college leaders rightfully focus on the college-to-career transition, colleges must broadcast that while career services plays a helpful role, students themselves are the primary drivers of their future. But to be clear, colleges bear a grave responsibility here. It’s on us to reinforce the idea that learning occurs everywhere on campus, that the most powerful career preparation comes from doing, not just studying. It’s also on us to address college affordability, so that students have the time to participate in campus life, and to ensure that on-campus jobs are meaningful learning experiences.  

    Higher education can’t afford public confidence to dip again. The value of college isn’t missing. We’re just not looking in the right place. 

    Bridget Burns is the founding CEO of the University Innovation Alliance (UIA), a nationally recognized consortium of 19 public research universities driving student success innovation for nearly 600,000 students. 

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected]. 

    This story about college experiences was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter. 

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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  • Cosmetology schools and other certificate programs got exemption from rules on graduates’ earning levels

    Cosmetology schools and other certificate programs got exemption from rules on graduates’ earning levels

     

    Remiah Ward’s shift at the SmartStyle salon inside Walmart was almost over, and she’d barely made $30 in tips from the haircuts she’d done that day. It wasn’t unusual — a year after her graduation from beauty school, tips plus minimum wage weren’t enough to cover her rent.

    She scarcely had time to eat and sleep before she had to drive back to the same Walmart in central Florida to stock shelves on the night shift. That job paid $14 an hour, but it meant she sometimes spent 18 hours a day in the same building. She worked six days a week but still struggled to catch up on bills and sleep. 

    The admissions officer at the American Institute of Beauty, where she enrolled straight out of high school, had sold her on a different dream. She would easily earn enough to pay back the $10,000 she borrowed to attend, she said she was told. Ward had no way of knowing that stylists from her school earn $20,200 a year, on average, four years after graduating. Seven years later, her debt, plus interest, is still unpaid.

    In July, Republicans in Congress pushed through policies aimed at ensuring that what happened to Ward wouldn’t happen to other Americans on the government’s dime; colleges whose graduates don’t earn at least as much as someone with a high school diploma will now risk losing access to federal student loans. But one group managed to slip through the cracks — thousands of schools like the American Institute of Beauty were exempt. 

    Remiah Ward worked two jobs while trying to make it as a hair stylist but never made enough to pay her all her bills and has had to put her dream career on hold. Credit: Courtesy Remiah Ward

    Certificate schools succeeded in getting a carve-out. The industry breathed a collective sigh of relief, and with good reason. At least 1,280 certificate-granting programs, which enrolled more than 220,000 students, would have been at risk of losing federal student loan funding if they had been included in the bill, according to a Hechinger Report analysis of federal data. [See table.] About 80% of those are for-profit programs, and 45 percent are cosmetology schools.

    “There is this very strange donut hole in accountability where workforce programs are held accountable, two-year degree programs are held accountable, but everything in between gets off without any accountability,” said Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute.

    The schools spared are known as certificate programs and, with their promise of an affordable and relatively quick path to economic security, are the fastest growing part of higher education. They usually take about a year to complete and train people to be hair-stylists, welders, medical assistants and cooks, among other jobs.

    As with traditional colleges, there are big differences in quality among certificate programs. Some hair stylists can make a middle-class living if they work in a busy salon. But for people who have to pay back hefty student loans, the low wages for stylists in the early years can be an insurmountable obstacle.

    Ward found herself facing that dilemma. When she could no longer sustain the lack of sleep from her double shifts at Walmart, she pressed pause on her styling career and took a job with Amazon, loading and unloading planes. She wasn’t ready to give up her dream career, though, so in addition to her 10-hour days moving boxes, she took part-time gigs at local hair salons. She didn’t have family to help pay rent, not to mention loan payments, so she couldn’t afford to work fulltime at a salon, which is essential to build up a regular clientele — and bigger tips. Without that, she couldn’t get much beyond minimum wage. 

    A representative from the American Institute of Beauty denied that Ward was told she would easily repay her loan.

    “No admissions representative, not at AIB or elsewhere, would ever make such a statement,” Denise Herman, general counsel and assistant vice president of AIB, said in an email. 

    The high cost of many for-profit cosmetology schools — tuition can be upward of $20,000, usually for a one-year program  — can leave former students mired in debt. In May, the government released data showing 850 colleges where at least a third of borrowers haven’t made a loan payment for 90 days or more, putting them on track to default. About 42 percent of those were for-profit cosmetology and barbering schools (including AIB).

    Brittany Mcnew says she loves working as a stylist but that her income takes a hit when traffic is slow in her salon in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Credit: Meredith Kolodner/The Hechinger Report

    Herman blamed the Biden administration policy that after the pandemic let borrowers forgo payments without any penalty.

    “Debtors became ‘comfortable’ not making payments,” said Herman. “AIB provides the graduate with the information graduates need to make their payments. What that graduate decides to pay, or not pay, is not influenced by AIB.”

    Under the “big beautiful bill” passed in July, two- and four-year colleges must ensure that, after four years, graduates on average make at least as much as someone in their state who has only a high school diploma. The colleges must inform students if they fail that test, and if it happens for two out of three years, the college will be ineligible to receive federal loan funds.

    Some for-profit certificate schools lobbied hard for an exemption. The American Association of Career Schools, which represents proprietary cosmetology schools, spent $120,000 lobbying the Education Department and Congress, including on the “big beautiful bill,” in the first six months of this year. At the group’s major lobbying event in April, Sen. Bill Cassidy, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was the keynote speaker.

    Cassidy declined to answer questions about why certificate programs were excluded, but a fact sheet from his committee noted that they are already covered by something else, the gainful employment rule, which is also being challenged by the for-profit cosmetology industry.

    That federal gainful employment regulation, updated in 2023, requires in essence that graduates from career-oriented schools earn enough to be able to pay back their loans and earn more than a high school graduate. It also requires that consumers, like Ward, be given more information about how graduates from all colleges fare in the workplace.

    The rule posed an existential threat to a huge swath of cosmetology schools.

    In 2023, the American Association of Career Schools sued to block the gainful employment rule. 

    “AACS supports fair and reasonable accountability measures,” Cecil Kidd, the AACS’s executive director, said in an email. “However, we strongly object to arbitrary or discriminatory policies such as the US Department of Education’s Gainful Employment rule, which unfairly targets career schools while exempting many public and private non-profit institutions that fail to meet comparable outcomes.”

    He pointed to public comments in which AACS has argued that the rule imposes an unfair burden on cosmetology schools since stylists are predominantly women, who are more likely to have “personal commitments” that affect their earnings, and who rely on tips that are often pocketed as unreported income.

    Cameron Vandenboom is a successful hair stylist but says the high cost of her private beauty school wasn’t worth thousands of dollars in student debt: “I absolutely should have gone to community college.” Credit: Courtesy Shanna Kaye Photo

    In a twist that surprised advocates on both sides, the Education Department in May asked the court to effectively dismiss AACS’ lawsuit. 

    If the court rules in favor of the cosmetology schools, certificate programs will be free of all accountability requirements on their graduates’ earning levels, because they got the carveout in July. 

    Even if the court rules against cosmetology schools, advocates are pessimistic that the Trump administration will implement the gainful rules. The first Trump administration got rid of the original rules back in 2019 and Nicholas Kent, now the U.S. undersecretary of education, was previously the chief policy officer for Career Education Colleges and Universities, or CECU, the trade group that represents for-profit colleges, including certificate programs. He is a well-known critic of the rule.

    “I would be very surprised, if the unlikely scenario plays out that the Biden rule is upheld, that this Department of Education would just say, OK, the court has spoken,” said Jason Altmire, CECU’s executive director. “We are not opposed to accountability for certificate programs, so long as it’s fair to everybody and we have a voice in how you’re measuring programs.”  

    Altmire said CECU didn’t lobby for certificate programs to be carved out of Congress’ bill, but did argue against the earnings formula that Congress landed on. Altmire said it doesn’t take into account part-time work and the gender gap in wages.

    One objection from AACS, raised by CECU as well, is that the earnings measured don’t include tips, which are crucial to hair stylists’ income. Analyzed without including tips, 576 of 724 cosmetology schools in the Hechinger Report analysis would fail Congress’ earnings test. But even if tips were included and raised stylists’ income by 20 percent, 526 cosmetology schools would still fail.

    Earlier this year, Remiah Ward made the difficult decision to leave Florida and move to Kentucky, where the cost of living was more forgiving. She’s working from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. at an aluminum factory for $19.50 an hour. 

    One day, she might go back to styling after her debt is paid off. Like many former beauty school students, she wishes she’d had more information when she decided to enroll.

    “They really sugar-coated it. I was 18 years old, and I needed a trade that I was already pretty good at,” said Ward, who is now 26. “Everybody thinks they’re going to make a high return, and it’s just not the reality.”

    Marina Villeneuve contributed data analysis to this story. 

    This story about cosmetology schools produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger higher-education newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • Explore the earnings for graduates of beauty schools, other certificate programs

    Explore the earnings for graduates of beauty schools, other certificate programs

    Schools that train hairstylists, dental assistants and health aides will be able to keep getting federal student loan dollars even if the professionals they turn out don’t end up earning any more than a high school graduate.

    That’s because programs like those, which don’t end in a college degree, were granted an exemption from new accountability measures under President Donald Trump’s ”big, beautiful bill.” 

    A Hechinger Report analysis of federal data found at least 1,280 such certificate programs could have been at risk of their students losing access to federal student loans — but a successful lobbying effort excluded them from the accountability measures. 

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    Under the new law, most graduates of associate, bachelor’s and graduate degree programs must earn at least as much as someone who has only a high school diploma. If programs fail to hit that benchmark for two out of three years, their students will no longer be eligible for federal student loans. (And the schools must warn students of this possibility if they miss the mark for just one year). Without that borrowing power, many students could not afford to attend. And without those students, some of the schools might not survive. 

    Using the table below, see which certificate programs might have been flagged under the Trump law if not for the exemption. If graduates of a particular program ended up earning less than adults with only a high school diploma, that program could have faced losing eligibility for federal student loans under the Trump law.

    Methodology

    What exactly does the “big, beautiful bill” call for?

    The legislation requires the Department of Education to compare earnings of working adults who have only a high school diploma to the earnings of adults four years after they complete a degree program or graduate certificate. If a postsecondary program’s graduates fail to outearn adults with only high school degrees for two out of three years, students can no longer obtain federal student loans to attend that program. 

    The law also sets up an appeals process and a way for programs to apply to regain eligibility for federal student loans.

    What data was analyzed? 

    The law directs the education secretary to use census data to calculate median earnings for working adults with only a high school degree in the state where a program is located. The Department of Education will release regulations that spell out exactly how to do that math. For example, the law does not spell out whether it will look at census data averaged out over 12 months or a longer period of time. 

    For earnings data for high school graduates, The Hechinger Report relied on calculations from the Department of Education, which were derived from the 2022 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates Public Use Microdata Sample from the U.S. Census Bureau.

    To calculate median earnings for graduates, the law directs the Education Department to put together earnings data for a cohort of at least 30 graduates who received federal student aid for postsecondary education — which typically includes grants, loans or work-study. Graduates are excluded if they’re currently enrolled in another higher education program. If there are fewer than 30 students in a cohort, the Education Department can lump together several years of data to get to 30 students.

    To get earnings data for graduates of certificate programs, Hechinger used a federal database known as College Scorecard. We downloaded field of study data for the 2022-23 school year. From this data, The Hechinger Report extracted information about certificate programs, at their main campuses, and included only programs that had median earnings data. The federal database suppresses earnings data for small programs. That left 4,431 currently operating certificate programs. 

    How was a program determined to be at possible risk of failing the accountability measure?

    For each program, The Hechinger Report compared median graduate earnings to the high school graduate earnings data of the state where the program was located. If the graduates earned less, the program was considered to be at risk.  

    Under the law, postsecondary programs that don’t meet the earnings benchmark for one year have to inform all current students that they are at risk of losing their eligibility for federal student loans. 

    Are there any limitations to the data? 

    The “big, beautiful bill” takes online programs into account by considering whether students live in the same state where their academic program is based. Under the law, student earnings are compared with national data rather than state data when fewer than half of enrolled students live in the state where the school is located, which may be the case for online programs. 

    The Hechinger Report’s analysis instead compares every program with state earnings. That’s because the College Scorecard field of study data set is limited and only includes information about graduates employed within the same state as the institution, not whether enrolled students live in the same state as the program. In addition, College Scorecard data provides earnings data for all graduates without a breakdown for whether they receive federal aid.

    Also, the Hechinger database looks at the available median earnings of all students four years after graduation for the school year 2022-23, regardless of the number of graduates. Though College Scorecard suppresses data on smaller programs, median earnings data is available for programs with 16 or more working graduates. The “big, beautiful bill” directs the Department of Education to instead lump together years of data to create cohorts of at least 30 students.

    Contact investigative reporter Marina Villeneuve at 212-678-3430 or [email protected] or on Signal at mvilleneuve.78

    This story about beauty schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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