The Education Department is finalizing guidelines for an earnings test that would punish nearly half of all graduate programs in visual arts, music and performance based on the low income of recent alumni, according to the government’s calculations.
The proposed guidelines apply to all university programs, and institutions whose alumni fail to meet them twice in three years could lose their ability to enroll students using federal loans. Those students would most likely need to transfer to other programs or quit their education. According to experts, that would lead to a sharp decrease in enrollment and the likelihood of school closures.
For master’s degree programs, the agency would calculate the earnings of alumni four years after graduation to see whether they earn more than the median salary for working adults aged 25 to 34 who have a bachelor’s degree. Previous tests measured all programs against the salary of working adults with high school diplomas — a lower threshold for universities to pass.
“They are taking a DOGE approach to education,” said Tom Eccles, who runs the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, adding that most universities were just learning about the guidelines. “They are deciding what the metric is, as though there were an objective way to measure the value of an arts education.”
Most students pursuing an arts degree know that becoming the next Picasso or Lady Gaga is a long shot, and that an arts degree is unlikely to have an immediate payoff. A preliminary analysis of the economic data released by the Education Department shows that many of the country’s top arts programs would not pass the revised earnings test.