Low Scope College Degree Programs: Department to Prepare List

The Department of Education is working to create college degrees that offer minimum ROI to the students. According to a press release issued by department, the department wants to prepare a list of degree programs that “provide the least financial value to students”. This will help the financially disadvantaged students and the department will warn them at the time of applying for financial assistance.

Millions of students in the US pursue their college degrees on loans from federal government, through Pell Grants and other programs. Students are required to pay back the loan after completion of their degree programs. So if a student gets into a potentially low scope degree program, it becomes really difficult for the families to pay back the student loan.

The department will warn student borrowers if the program has low financial value or low ROI, and may avoid them the excessive burden of student loan. Institutions with low financial value programs would be required to submit “improvement plans” to the Department.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said,  “We cannot return to the same broken system we had before the pandemic, when a million borrowers defaulted on their loans a year and snowballing interest left millions owing more than they initially borrowed.”

The department is putting its efforts to minimize the student’s burden and maximize the chances of student loan returns. Finding out the college programs that offer good ROI is the dream of every student, but such colleges and programs normally have high merit requirements as everyone wants to get into such programs. On the other hand, low ROI programs have least requirements and anyone interested to pursue a college degree program can easily get into it.

It would be interesting to find out how departments such efforts will affect the number of seats being filled in programs that provide least financial value to the students. Will it decrease the number of college graduates and overburden the highly ranked programs?