For example, parents used to be able to borrow up to the entire cost of their child’s education, but that’ll now be capped at $20,000 a year and $65,000 per child. The University of Dayton (before grants and scholarships) charges $50,610 per academic year, with housing and food adding about $17,000 more, according to the university’s website.
With a federal borrowing limit, students and their families will need to borrow from private sources that can be more expensive.
The bill also tightens repayment terms by doing away with economic hardship deferrals. If you lose your job, you still have to pay.
The changes will lead to difficult questions. Prospective students will ask whether the cost of a four-year college makes sense, and universities, facing an even greater decrease in revenue, will need to make hard choices about what they offer (and what they might not).
For decades, society saw a college degree as a status symbol, which made sense in times past. Being the first member of your family to graduate from a higher education facility carried cachet. My sister, brother, and I all hold master’s degrees, an accomplishment considering we were raised by a single mother in a housing project in the Bronx, NY.
Some jobs, like in newspapers, demanded that their reporters and editors have a college degree under the theory that education made for a more inquisitive and analytical person.
Those times have passed. Technology companies will train employees as software engineers, coders, and data collectors, eliminating the need (in some cases) for a four-year education.
Community colleges like Sinclair offer nursing programs that prepare students for a high-demand field with good wages. LPNs in the Dayton area make $29 an hour on average and RN’s $41 hourly, according to Zip Recruiter.
Trades remain in demand. Apprentice plumbers ($19 per hour), electricians ($22 per hour), and HVAC workers ($19 per hour) only require a desire to work, not a college degree.
Still, some young adults continue to feel pressure to get that degree, and I often saw that in the college classes I taught. About one-third of the class attended because of expectation, not motivation.
These changes will force students to explore other education options, considering polls already show respondents believe college costs too much and don’t offer a good value.
That doesn’t mean four-year schools and graduate programs will disappear. Law, medical, and engineering schools, to name a few, will still be in demand given their advanced course requirements.
But just as students will be forced to make a value judgment, schools will be forced to adjust to a new landscape. Colleges across the country are slashing jobs and costs due to uncertain funding. Just this year, Utah State University merged five universities into two, Rosemont College merged with Villanova, and Seattle University and Cornish College of the Arts announced plans to merge. While some of the decisions were based on state budget cuts, the looming federal changes don’t help.
Who knows if these changes will stick — if the currently leaderless Democrats take the House in the midterms and the White House in 2028, they could reverse this provision.
But for now, these changes will force conversations on the best way to pursue education, and lead colleges and universities to determine what they need, what they don’t, and whether state systems should follow the lead of Utah.
Those are good discussions.
Ray Marcano’s column appears on these pages each Sunday.