Lawmakers Consider Restricting College Degrees Leading to Low-Paying Jobs

Proposed legislation would limit state funding for certain degree programs (image via Getty Images)

Higher education in Texas is not only changing with federal funding cuts. It is also a key issue in the 89th Texas Legislature – again. While debates over DEI policies and state funding dominated the previous session, this time Texas Republicans are pushing to restrict degree programs based on how graduates’ debt stacks up against their income.

While in many countries public university education is free, in Texas students owe a staggering $120 billion in federal student loans. As student loan debt continues to climb, lawmakers are questioning whether the state should keep funding degrees that lead to low-paying jobs that leave graduates saddled with heavy debt. This shift has sparked concerns that degrees with societal value – like education and the arts – could face serious cuts or even be phased out entirely.

State Rep. Carl Tepper, R-Lubbock, filed House Bill 281, which would rank degree programs at public universities based on their debt-to-earnings ratio. The bill would apply to undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs, with the difference being the time frame for evaluating each program after graduation.

Degree programs where students generally make much more money than they accumulate in debt would be off the hook. But, degrees where debt is roughly equivalent to earnings in the first few years post-grad would be monitored. Degrees with debt equal to or 25% more than early earnings would face funding and enrollment limits. Degree programs where debt outweighs earnings post-grad by more than 25% could be phased out entirely.

This begs the question: Should a degree’s value be defined mostly by its financial return? Priscilla Aquino-Garza of Educate Texas argues that a degree’s value goes beyond just post-graduation earnings.

“You cannot measure passion. You cannot measure love of learning or the spark of exploring something,” Aquino-Garza said.

She also said while degrees like social work and education might be considered “low value” in terms of earnings, they’re essential to society and hold real value.

A 2021 study by the Texas Public Policy Foundation identifies several bachelor’s degrees that could be at risk of being phased out if this bill becomes law, including drama/theatre, film/video, studio art, music and psychology (in that order). The theatre degree stands out with a median debt-to-earnings ratio of 15% more debt than income, placing it at the highest risk under the proposed legislation.

The study also states that if policymakers applied the suggested hierarchy in HB 281, more than half of higher education programs in Texas would have “excellent outcomes.”

UT’s College of Liberal Arts Dean Ann Stevens says contrary to popular belief, liberal arts degrees do not have large debt-to-income ratios, so she isn’t too worried about majors in her college facing restrictions. Census data supports this.

“There’s definitely lots of reasons to be concerned about student loan debt,” Stevens said. “Many liberal arts majors will absolutely earn less than a STEM major or an engineering major [right out of college] but that doesn’t mean that students wouldn’t earn a good living or be able to start out small and grow.”

The bill is designed with a short-term focus. While the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board defines a “credential of value” as one where a student can pay back the cost of their education within 10 years, the bill only considers outcomes within two to five years of graduation.

Along with HB 281, state Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, filed an identical bill in the Senate (Senate Bill 757).