Which certificate and associate’s programs are likely to produce salaries
high enough to repay your student loan? Ididio used new data to redesign abandoned
Department of Education Gainful Employment measures. We want to make sure student
consumers aren’t being asked to pay too much for an educational program
which might not lead to a decent salary.
In the chart below, the size of each dot shows how many schools offer
certificates or associate’s degrees for that career. Hover over an
y dot (or long-press on a phone) to show the percentage of schools offering the
program that are able to pass our revised gainful employment standards. Then head
to the next section of our story to explore which schools are offering each program
and observe what a difference the right school can make in a student’s chances of
success! Select a single degree area and see the performance in that degree
for all schools. The table view includes all institutions that reported
completions of certificates or associate’s-level degrees. Click at the
upper-right-hand corner to switch to the scatter view of gainful employment
performance for the schools with adequate program-level data. You can select
any row in the table or dot in the graphic to see great information
about each selected school.
Which certificate and associate’s programs pass the Gainful Employment standards?
Use More Stringent Quality Check
Failing the standards requires only one of the two gainful employment methodologies.
SOURCES:
2019 College Scorecard
2010 CIP Codes
In the following section, we’ll select a single degree area and see the
performance in that degree for all schools. The table view includes all institutions
that reported certificate or associate’s-level degree completions, while
the scatter view gives a clear look at gainful employment performance for the
schools with adequate program-level data. You can select any row in the table or dot
in the graphic to see great information about each selected school.
School listings for each career program
First, choose a career area
Computer & Mathematical
Then select a program dot or use this list
Computer/IT Management
Restrict the schools to these states
Use More Stringent Quality Check
Failing the standards requires only one of the two gainful employment methodologies.
The Department of Education’s College Scorecard
provides program-level median starting earnings and median accumulated federal student loan
debt for each school. They also calculate anticipated monthly federal loan
payment amounts based on a 10-year timeframe. This data is only available for individual programs
that are large enough that this data can be shared without threatening student
privacy. College Scorecard also provides a 2-year student completion count for each program, which
we halved to estimate annual completions.
The Department of Education’s Gainful Employment standards
are difficult to locate directly on the Federal Student Aid site because they are
no longer calculated. They define discretionary income to be earnings minus 150%
of the poverty guideline, which we determined to be $12,060 in 2017 (the second
earnings year reported by College Scorecard)
based on the Department of Health and Human Services’s threshold
estimate for the country as a whole. The guidelines suggest the loan payment should be less
than 8% of annual earnings, and less than 20% of discretionary income. When payment amounts
are greater than 12% of annual earnings or 30% of discretionary income, those are
outright failing, with debt-to-earnings ratios in between these thresholds flagged as
concerning. Using the data from College Scorecard, we are able to recreate the
gainful employment labels for each program-school combination. As The Institute for College Access and Success notes,
our calculations cannot reproduce the Gainful Employment standards are they were intended
because the original calculations looked at the debt for all students including non-borrowers,
while College Scorecard figures only calculate the debt load for borrowers. Therefore,
the debt load will be higher in these calculations, causing more colleges to fail
the standard. The original calculation was for federal debt only, and the
new calculation includes private loan debt. Finally, gainful employment used earnings that
were a little further out than 1-2 years. It would be ideal to have further guidance from the
Department of Education of what new guidelines might most appropriately be applied to this data.
Graduation rates for each college were calculated using IPEDS 2018 outcomes data for all student
groups with the measure of completion of any degree within 8 years. The
default rate is the percentage of students who have ceased efforts to repay federal
student loans within 3 years of departing the institution. It is a
school-wide estimate provided by College Scorecard.
Our estimates for completion rates and default rates for associate’s
and certificate students are based on IPEDS outcomes reporting and
College Scorecard loan default data, respectively, for all schools
that awarded a majority of 1- and 2-year degrees. For bachelor’s student
success rates, we looked at all schools for which a majority of
undergraduate awards were at the bachelor’s level. For each metric,
we calculated an average of each school’s metric weighted by
total number of students in each schools’ outcomes cohort.
The data displayed in the graphics and tables has been updated since the
recording of the story video to reflect recent school closures.
SOURCES:
