Department of Education to Cut Federal Funding of Useless College Degrees

The Trump administration is finally taking action on an issue that has been debated for years – public funding of college education that offers poor employment prospects. The current Education Department is ending federal student loans for college degree programs that don’t land the students in jobs with reasonable pay.

Last Friday (April 17), The Federalist cited Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent announcing the end of federal funding for “worthless college degrees” and stating in a press release:

“The Trump Administration’s proposed accountability framework is grounded in common sense: if postsecondary education programs do not leave graduates better off, taxpayers should not subsidize them.”

What the Trump administration is proposing makes a financial equation with student loans on one side and returns on the loan via employment after graduation on the other. Unless both sides are balanced, or the returns outweigh the investment, the equation isn’t worth federal funding. Students who get the loans for their college degrees then don’t earn enough after college to return the loan and later beg for debt forgiveness, meaning the taxpayer foots the bill via federal government. This happened under the Biden administration that supported the cancellation of over $180 billion in student loans by 5 million federal student loan borrowers (NBC, January 13, 2025)

The Federalist included the following stats in its story about the Trump administration’s announcement to end federal funding for useless college degree programs:

According to a 2024 survey from the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, 23 percent of bachelor’s programs and 43 percent of master’s programs have a negative return on investment.

The existing amount of federal funding going into student loans programs stands at about $1.7 trillion and one-fourth (that is 25%) of borrowers are in default while less than 40% of the borrowers are repaying the loans.

Conservatives have been calling for cutting these useless college degrees from federal funding for many years and continue to do so in favor of both the students, who are left stressed and feel robbed with more debt than earning to pay it back despite the degree, and the hardworking taxpayer of the nation. Not to mention the fact that many of these college degree holders are actually average to below average in intelligence.

Instead of getting degrees that don’t help with quality of life or intelligence, conservatives have advocated for learning skills to fill the work force needed to run the country.

Last November, an NBC News poll found that in a “dramatic shift,” 63% of Americans today believe that four-year college degrees are not worth the cost because these degrees leave the students “without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off.”