The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is cutting access to student loans for degrees that have low earning potential, including social work.
The new rule, first announced in April 2026, was finalized in June 2026 and will take effect in 2027. The Department of Education will begin denying loans for degrees that fail its “earnings test” in both 2027 and 2028 in time for the 2028-29 academic year.
In September 2026. a rumor spread that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump was planning to cut access to student loans for candidates pursuing degrees in programs with low earning prospects, including social work and English literature.
Public interest in the claim was apparently sparked by news reports that came out several weeks earlier in the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic and other media outlets.
Social media posts on Facebook and X amplified the claim online. On X, for example, one account said the Department of Education was “cutting off student loans” for degrees that “don’t pay off,” listing a series of examples (archived):
The list read:
Programs failing:
– Cosmetology
– Massage therapy / bodywork
– Culinary arts
– Medical / dental assisting
– Religious Studies
– Social work / mental health counseling
– Fine and studio arts
– Music
– Graphic design
– English literature
– Early childhood education
In addition, several Snopes readers emailed, seeking to confirm whether the claim is true. It is.
The so-called ‘earnings accountability’ rule
In April, the Department of Education proposed a new rule tying the approval of student loans to the earning prospects of the students’ chosen disciplines.
On June 29, the department posted on its website a fact sheet detailing a new package of rules, including the one above. The document said (on Page 3) that the department would start calculating a new “earnings test” in 2027 for 2027 and 2028, and that resulting student loan denials would begin in 2028-29 for degrees that fail the earnings test twice.
The fact sheet said the rule was designed to hold “all institutions, regardless of tax status or credential level, accountable for providing graduates with a financial return on their investment.”
Calling it the “Student Tuition and Transparency System (STATS) and Earnings Accountability” rule, the fact sheet said it would create “a new accountability framework that applies a commonsense earnings test across all sectors, institutions, and programs.”
A spokesperson for the department told Snopes:
ED [the Department of Education], in coordination with the IRS [Internal Revenue Service], will run data for the first cohort of graduates in 2027. If a program fails to show at least a modest financial return on investment for its graduates in two out of three consecutive award years, it will lose eligibility to participate in the federal Direct Loan program.
Will some students be banned from taking out loans?
On Page 3, the fact sheet explained how the new eligibility rule would work to cut student loans for degrees with low-earning prospects:
Loss of Federal Direct Loan Program Eligibility
The final rule requires that programs that fail the earnings test in two out of three consecutive years lose eligibility to participate in the Direct Loan program. At that time, such programs are classified as “low-earning outcome programs”.
In other words, the Department of Education will run the earnings test in 2027 and 2028. Degrees that fail the test will result in student loan denials for their candidates.
The notice of proposed rulemaking on the website of the Federal Register, published on April 20, 2026, outlined some degrees that may be most affected by the new “accountability” rules (emphasis ours):
Mental and Social Health & Allied Professions master’s degree programs (CIP=51.15), Teacher Education and Professional Development associate’s degree programs (CIP=13.12), and Drama/Theater Arts bachelor’s degree programs (CIPs=50.05, 50.07, and 50.09) are anticipated to be most impacted by the proposed regulations. These programs are often between 10 and 20 times more likely to fail the accountability framework under the proposed regulation relative to the current regulations. These higher fail rates are driven by the fact that a large share of these programs are offered at public and non-profit institutions, which would no longer be exempt from the accountability framework under the proposed rule.
The final rule notice in the Federal Register provided an updated estimate of which degrees are likely to fail the earnings test and be denied student loans. Those include humanities and liberal arts, education, health-related degrees, but also culinary and personal services, social and behavioral sciences, and more. It’s unclear if all the specific professions listed in the X post at the top of this article would fall under the broad categories listed in the final rule.
The final rule also defined “earnings” to clarify which data the Department of Education would use from the IRS in its earning test calculations: “… wages, income as reported to the Internal Revenue Service, and other earned income, including from self-employment.”
For further reading, Snopes examined the claim that the Department of Education would stop counting certain programs, including nursing, as “professional degrees.”
