New Federal Earnings Rules Raise the Stakes for Career Outcomes in Higher Education

Nearly every higher ed program in the country is about to be measured by a single number: what its graduates earn, regardless of whether the institution is public, private, or for-profit, or whether the program is undergraduate or graduate.

This new reality will change the stakes around career outcomes and on how early institutions can understand and influence them. It also creates an opportunity for institutions to think differently about the data they use to understand and improve them.

Before joining PeopleGrove, I spent much of my career on or alongside college campuses, including leading enrollment efforts at two private institutions and consulting with undergraduate and graduate programs across the country. I know how quickly a new federal requirement can become one more priority competing for institutional attention, particularly while leaders are still determining what that federal requirement actually means for their programs.

In July, the U.S. Department of Education posted its final Student Tuition and Transparency System (STATS) and Earnings Accountability rule, establishing a new earnings standard for higher education programs.

For undergraduate programs, graduates generally must earn more than the typical high school diploma holder. For graduate programs, the comparison is to the typical bachelor's degree holder.

Unlike previous Gainful Employment requirements, this new rule is not limited to a subset of institutions or programs. The Department of Education states nearly all programs and sectors will be subject to the new transparency and earnings accountability framework, regardless of an institution's tax status or credential level.

A program that fails the earnings premium measure in two out of three consecutive award years can lose eligibility for federal Direct Loans. If a program fails for three consecutive award years, the Department of Education can terminate its eligibility for all Title IV federal student aid, including Pell Grants.

Those consequences deserve attention on their own terms. But I think there’s a deeper question worth asking underneath the compliance deadline: How well can institutions see, understand, and improve the path from education to career outcomes?

Career Outcomes Are Built Long Before They Are Measured

The federal earnings measure looks at what happens after students leave an institution. As those of us who have worked in higher education know, the work that contributes to those outcomes begins much earlier.

Students need support understanding where their education can take them, developing skills employers value, applying what they're learning through real experiences, and building relationships with people who can help them navigate the transition to a career.

A job board can help a student find an opening, but a job board alone doesn’t give them the clarity, experience, or professional network needed to compete for it.

In conversations with our customers, the new rules are reinforcing the value of work many have already begun. Institutions leveraging PeopleGrove have already invested in connecting pieces of the student journey that have historically been spread across career services, academic programs, experiential learning, alumni engagement, and other areas of campus They're creating more opportunities for students to build the experiences and relationships that can shape what comes after graduation.

When institutions connect opportunities like these with data about student participation and outcomes, they can begin to see and tell more of the story behind where graduates land.

Instead of only answering, "Where did our graduates land?" the questions become: “What experiences did students have before graduation? Were they building professional networks? What do those patterns say about where students are thriving. And where do they need more support?”

How Can Institutions Connect Career Readiness Data to Career Outcomes?

The Experience Hub gives institutions a way to provide access, manage and measure internships, research, service learning, and other experiential opportunities, with visibility into participation, progress, and skill development, plus a co-curricular transcript that captures it all.

Students build relationships with alumni, mentors, and employers inside the Engagement Hub, widening their understanding of careers and their access to professional networks. Outcomes tracking closes the loop, capturing first-destination results and how students make the transition into employment or continued education.

Seeing engagement, experiential learning, skill development, and first-destination outcomes together gives leaders a fuller picture of the path from learning to launch.

How Does Career Outcomes Visibility Help Institutions Act Earlier?

For a career leader, dean, or provost, that more complete picture creates room to act sooner. Picture comparing academic programs side by side: one shows strong alumni and employer engagement but limited experiential participation. Another has strong experiential participation but weaker first-destination outcomes. A third has students who aren't building professional connections early enough.

To be clear, none of those signals alone predicts whether a program will meet the Department's future earnings threshold. This kind of visibility doesn't substitute for the measure itself. What it does is help leaders ask better questions while there's still time to act on the answers: Could more students benefit from internships? Could alumni help students understand career paths tied to their majors? Should career exploration start earlier, or connect more directly to coursework?

And when something is clearly working in one program, the same visibility helps a leader spot it and expand it elsewhere, turning data from a record of what happened into a basis for deciding what to do next.

Career Outcomes Are Becoming a Shared Institutional Strategy

For career services leaders, this moment gives them backup for an argument they've been making for years: career readiness can't start a few months before graduation, and it can't live exclusively inside a career center, especially when NACE reports Career Staff to Student ratios of over 2,200:1

Faculty shape what students learn. Academic programs create chances to apply it. Career and experiential learning teams help students turn that learning into a path forward. Alumni and mentors provide relationships and networks. Employers create openings and tell institutions what the workforce actually needs. Career services sits at the intersection of all of it which puts career leaders in a strong position to rally the rest of campus around one shared question: What helps our students achieve strong outcomes after graduation, and where can we do more?

That's also where I think technology needs to show up differently: helping leaders connect the experiences and relationships that influence career success to the outcomes they're already tracking, and helping them see that data earlier, before it becomes a compliance report.

A Chance to Get Ahead of the Outcomes Conversation

STATS and Earnings Accountability will replace the existing Financial Value Transparency and Gainful Employment regulations on July 1, 2027.

Career leaders have real influence over the data behind the reports for the forthcoming STATS submission. The data their teams collect, the experiences they help facilitate, the alumni and employer relationships they cultivate, and the first-destination outcomes they measure.

For PeopleGrove customers, much of that foundation is already built into the student journey. As expectations around earnings and outcomes evolve, we're working alongside those institutions on what the next level of visibility should look like.

The new federal framework raises the stakes on one measure: earnings. But it also gives institutions a reason to make career outcomes more visible, more actionable, and more central to how they think about their work

As institutions begin considering what the new earnings accountability framework could mean for their programs, I welcome the opportunity to compare notes. Connect with me and our team of higher education experts to talk about the career outcomes you're working to understand, the data you have today, and where greater visibility could help.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, “U.S. Department of Education Issues Final Rule to Hold All Colleges and Universities Accountable for Low-Earning Programs,” June 29, 2026.