The Feds Are Cutting Off Student Loans for Degrees That Don't Pay Off

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The federal government is about to fundamentally change how Americans choose their college majors, and it’s going to shock a lot of people. 

Right now, you can get a federal student loan to study practically anything, whether that’s engineering or puppet theater. But under a newly finalized Department of Education rule called the Student Tuition and Transparency System (STATS), the government is cutting off the money supply for degrees that don't pay off. They are using IRS tax data to track down college programs where graduates end up making less money than a typical high school graduate. 

The bottom line is simple: If a degree doesn't lead to a good income, the government is pulling its funding, leaving you to pay out of pocket or find rich parents if you still want that major.

Students will be blocked from using federal student loans for those programs. If you don't have rich parents, a massive savings account, or a willingness to get absolutely crushed by high interest private bank loans, those majors will be completely out of reach.

The government isn't banning these majors by name, but they are setting a math trap that certain fields simply cannot survive. If a specific school's program fails the income test two out of three years, the money vanishes.

Because their entry level salaries are notoriously low compared to the tuition colleges charge, these 11 fields face the highest risk of losing federal funding:

• Cosmetology & Beauty Certificates: Facing a massive 90%+ failure rate for undergraduate certificates.
• Fine & Studio Arts: Painters, sculptors, and photographers are staring down heavy defunding.
• Music: Performance and theory programs are expected to fail the earnings baseline at high rates.
• Drama & Performing Arts: Theater and acting degrees rarely hit the government's income floor.
• Religious Studies & Theology: Divinity and ministry degrees routinely fall below the high school earnings benchmark.
• Social Work: Master's degrees in social work are heavily targeted because the jobs pay peanuts compared to the cost of grad school.
• Mental Health Counseling: Another grad-level field where entry-level salaries fail to beat a standard bachelor's degree holder.
• Early Childhood Education: Daycare and preschool teaching credentials don't pay enough to justify federal debt.
• Culinary Arts: Expensive cooking school programs are heavily exposed.
• Graphic Design: Commercial art programs at high-cost schools are on the chopping block.
• Medical & Dental Assisting: Short-term technical programs that charge high tuition for low-wage entry jobs.

Colleges run on federal student loan dollars. It is their lifeblood.

While the rules don't legally stop a university from offering a degree in fine arts or theater, a school cannot survive when 80% of its student body can no longer pay tuition.

Because of this, universities aren't going to just sit around and wait for students to magically find alternative funding. They are going to ax these programs entirely.

The policy officially kicks in with income tracking in July 2027, and the absolute earliest a school will get stripped of its funding is July 2028. Expect a massive wave of canceled majors and department shutdowns across the country before that deadline hits.

In addition, this aggressive weeding out of useless degrees raises a massive question: Is America eventually going to turn out like China, where the government just forcefully deletes hundreds of programs to replace them with AI degrees?

The comparison is closer than you think, but China is already miles ahead in executing it. According to an investigative report by Forbes, the Chinese Ministry of Education aggressively revoked or suspended 12,200 undergraduate programs between 2021 and 2025. That single move wiped out over 30% of all college courses nationwide.

As detailed by the South China Morning Post, China targeted the exact same types of majors the U.S. is squeezing out: arts, humanities, foreign languages, and traditional business management. They explicitly labeled them obsolete because entry level tasks in those fields are increasingly automated by artificial intelligence, leading to massive youth unemployment.

But instead of just letting the programs starve like the U.S. model does, China's authoritarian government forcefully replaced them. They simultaneously rolled out 10,200 new tech-focused majors. They didn't just add basic coding; they forced universities to build cutting edge departments centered entirely around advanced robotics, semiconductors, and embodied intelligence.

The U.S. and China are trying to solve the exact same problem: college degrees costing a fortune while producing graduates who can't make a living wage. The only difference is the method. China used direct government orders to kill 12,000 majors and replace them with AI tech. The U.S. is using the student loan system to quietly starve those same majors to death. Either way, the era of studying whatever you want using student loans, is officially coming to a close.

When Love Becomes a Ledger: The Dangerous Rise of Transactional Relationships

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A recent study found that many Gen Z daters have ghosted someone they met through a dating app because they could not afford to pay back money associated with a date, while other findings showed that rising costs are causing some young people to date less frequently or stop dating altogether due to financial pressures. The research also found that financial compatibility is becoming increasingly important when deciding whether to continue seeing someone.

While people may view these findings as evidence of inflation and economic hardship, I believe they point to a much deeper problem developing within society. The real issue is not simply that dating has become expensive. The issue is that human connection itself is beginning to be evaluated through an economic lens, where relationships increasingly resemble transactions instead of opportunities to discover whether two people genuinely connect on an emotional level.

Dating was once primarily about getting to know another person. Two individuals would spend time together to learn about each other's character, beliefs, interests, goals, and personality. The purpose was not to determine whether the relationship was profitable, but whether the relationship was meaningful. Financial circumstances could certainly impact long-term compatibility, yet they were not intended to become the central foundation upon which human worth was measured.

Today, however, many young people are growing up in a culture where money seems to influence nearly every aspect of life. Housing costs, education expenses, inflation, debt, and economic uncertainty create an environment where survival concerns often overshadow emotional ones. As a result, dating can begin to feel less like a journey of human discovery and more like an assessment of economic viability. Questions about feelings and compatibility increasingly compete with questions about earning power, future income, lifestyle expectations, and financial status.

The saddest aspect of this trend is that some individuals now appear reluctant to pursue relationships because they fear they cannot meet the financial expectations associated with them. When someone ghosts another person because they cannot afford to reciprocate a date, it suggests that shame, embarrassment, and financial anxiety have become powerful barriers to human connection. The tragedy is not simply the missed date. It's the belief that a person may no longer be enough simply for being themselves.

Research examining materialism gives us another reason to take this seriously. A meta-analysis of 72 studies involving 44,376 participants found an association between greater materialism and poorer social well-being, highlighting the particular vulnerability of younger populations. Other research found that people who place a high value on material success may expect someone close to them to be especially ambitious and attractive. Those expectations are associated with more conflict and less satisfaction in the relationship.

These findings should not surprise us. Human beings are fundamentally social creatures. Long before modern economies existed, our survival depended upon trust, community, cooperation, and emotional bonds. People thrive when they feel understood, accepted, valued, and connected. When wealth becomes the primary measure of success, relationships often become secondary to achievement. The result is a society that may become wealthier in material possessions while simultaneously becoming poorer in emotional health.

Additional research has found that materialistic values can lead people to place greater emphasis on status, achievement, appearance, and other external measures when evaluating relationships. Those higher expectations are associated with greater conflict and lower relationship satisfaction. In other words, when society teaches people to evaluate everything according to value and performance, it becomes easier to evaluate human beings in the same way. Instead of asking whether someone is kind, trustworthy, compassionate, or emotionally supportive, the focus shifts toward what they possess, what they earn, and what advantages they bring.

This shift raises important questions about the future direction of society. If relationships become increasingly transactional, then emotional connection risks becoming subordinate to practical calculation. People may begin viewing themselves less as human beings and more as economic assets. Their value becomes attached to metrics, numbers, and measurable outcomes rather than qualities such as empathy, wisdom, integrity, and love.

In this sense, the issue extends beyond dating and begins touching on broader concerns surrounding technology, identity, and transhumanism. Modern society already encourages individuals to quantify themselves through social media followers, engagement statistics, productivity metrics, credit scores, income levels, and countless other measurements. While numbers can provide useful  information, they are incapable of capturing the qualities that give life meaning. They cannot measure compassion, loyalty, character or the profound comfort that comes from feeling genuinely understood by another human being.

Civilizations do not become unhealthy simply because of economic challenges. They become unhealthy when people lose sight of the humanity within one another. A culture that consistently places things above people gradually teaches its members to view relationships as commodities rather than connections. When that happens, individuals may find themselves surrounded by more technology, more possessions, and more convenience than ever before while simultaneously experiencing deeper loneliness and emotional isolation.

The Gen Z dating study may therefore be revealing something much larger than dating habits. It may be exposing a society that has become so focused on economic survival and material success that many people are beginning to associate love with financial performance. When relationships are increasingly viewed through a transactional framework, genuine human connection becomes harder to find because affection starts carrying a price tag.

A healthy society remembers that people are not products, relationships are not business contracts, and love is not an economic transaction. The moment we begin measuring human worth primarily through money, status, or possessions, we risk losing the very qualities that make us human. The true wealth of a civilization has never been found in what its people own. It has always been found in how deeply its people connect with one another.

Perhaps the most important question is this: When did dating become so intertwined with spending money that the two became nearly impossible to separate?

Somewhere along the way, society began confusing generosity with impressing people, and connection with consumption. A first date does not need to be an expensive dinner, a fancy venue, or an opportunity to showcase financial status. Two people can learn just as much about one another while sitting in a park, sharing a conversation over a glass of water, or spending an hour talking at a local coffee shop. Genuine connection has never depended on the size of the bill.

Until society rediscovers this simple truth, we should not be surprised by the growing struggles in modern relationships. As long as dating is viewed as a financial performance rather than a process of discovering another human being, many people will continue to feel excluded, judged, or inadequate because of their economic circumstances. Relationships cannot thrive when affection is tied to purchasing power.

The healthiest relationships are not built on who spent the most money. They are built on shared values, trust, communication, mutual respect, and emotional compatibility. A person who feels compelled to constantly display wealth may be revealing more about insecurity than success. The qualities that sustain a relationship for decades are rarely the same qualities that create an expensive first impression.

If we want healthier relationships, we must get back to basics. Dating should once again become about curiosity rather than cost, a meaningful conversation rather than consumption, and real human connection rather than financial comparison. When people stop evaluating each other through the lens of status and spending, they can finally focus on the question that matters most: not what can this person afford, but who is this person, and do we genuinely belong in each other's lives.