The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, President Donald Trump’s signature legislation, contains a provision to stop universities from being able to receive federal loans for degrees that don’t pay off, sparing students and taxpayers alike from having to foot the bill for useless majors — part of why the act is also known as the Working Families Tax Cuts.Unfortunately, the Department of Education’s implementation, as it stands, could hurt the very working families it’s intended to help by accidentally going after cosmetologists rather than laser-focusing on colleges with bloated budgets that charge $400,000 for grievance studies degrees.Loans from cosmetology schools only make up about 0.5% of the government student loan portfolio, with the average cosmetology student taking out between $10,000 and $14,000 in student debt. That’s about half the amount in loans ($27,000) that an average undergraduate student takes out.
And with nearly 55% of liberal arts majors being underemployed after graduation — that is, working in jobs where a high school diploma would have been enough — the payoff for most of these graduates is simply not worth it. Under Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, undergraduate and graduate majors that have a lower average salary than that of a high school graduate are ineligible for federal funds — in other words, if you can expect to make $7.25 an hour working after earning your degree at a retail job that you also could have gotten after high school, the taxpayer isn’t going to pay for your underwater basketweaving degree.
