Why Americans Will Get Less Help Paying for College

Summary

The Daily – Episode Summary

Episode: Why Americans Will Get Less Help Paying for College
Date: July 1, 2026
Host: Rachel Abrams
Guest: Ron Lieber, New York Times Personal Finance Columnist

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Rachel Abrams speaks with personal finance writer Ron Lieber to unpack sweeping new Trump administration policies affecting federal student loans in the U.S. The discussion covers the motivations, specifics, and likely impacts of these changes, particularly how caps on loans and new earnings tests could reshape college financing, university behavior, and student choices nationwide.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The New Federal Student Loan Policies

• Loan Amount Caps:

  • For the first time, federal PLUS loans for parents and graduate students now have borrowing caps.
  • Parent PLUS Loans:
    • $20,000/year—maximum of $65,000 across a student’s undergraduate career ([04:19]–[04:44]).
    • “That’s not a whole lot if you consider the fact that some universities charge that just for one year of school.” – Rachel Abrams ([04:40]).
  • Grad Students (non-professional):
    • $20,500/year, total cap $100,000 ([04:44]).
  • Professional Programs (MD, JD, MBA, DDS):
    • $50,000/year, $200,000 total ([04:44]).
  • Ongoing litigation may affect which programs are officially “professional” ([05:23]).

• Motivation:

  • Meant to prevent families from over-borrowing and potentially push colleges to curb price growth ([05:49]).

• Hostile Reception:

  • Schools raise concerns about access and equity, fearing low-income students will be harmed if shifted to private loans they may not qualify for ([24:39]).

2. Minimum Earnings Test for Loan Eligibility

• Earnings Benchmark:
  • To keep federal loan access, programs must show graduates earn more, on average, four years out than the average 25–34-year-old in the state with only a high school diploma ([06:57]).
• What’s at Risk?
  • Fine arts, theater, and religion majors at certain schools expected to struggle to pass ([08:08]).
  • Enforcement delayed: Programs lose loan access only if they fail the test two out of three years (three-year runway) ([08:08]–[09:20]).
• Aim:
  • Seeks to end taxpayer support for degrees that don’t increase earnings ([07:36]).
  • Applies alike to undergrad and graduate/professional programs ([07:36]).

3. Is This Political or Financial?

• Bipartisan Roots, but Political Overtones:
  • “Let's call it 23% political.” – Ron Lieber ([09:46]).
  • Fact sheet singles out USC (Los Angeles) and NYU (New York)—“not a coincidence” these are in large blue cities ([09:46]–[10:14]).
  • Still, widespread frustration with runaway student debt and borrowing, especially among taxpayers and both parties ([10:14]).

4. Historical Context: How Did We Get Here?

• 1980s:
  • Few college-goers, small sums borrowed—minimal underwriting ([11:30]).
• 2000s Expansion:
  • Federal loans open to grad students; assumption was “good credit risks” so few limits ([12:30]–[12:53]).
• The Great Recession Impact:
  • Mass defaults as unemployment soared; coupled with evidence surging loan availability may fuel tuition inflation ([13:46]–[15:11]).
• The Obama Administration’s Attempted Fixes:
  • Tightened underwriting, but reversed after pushback from colleges, especially HBCUs who were destabilized ([15:15]–[15:51]).
• Rise of Master’s Programs:
  • Proliferation due to profitability and student optimism about career payoff ([18:06]–[19:28]).
  • “There were 14,000 new master's degree programs that had been created... in the last two decades.” – Ron Lieber ([19:23]).
• Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF):
  • Schools promoted PSLF to reassure students borrowing large sums—even if often not well understood, leading to confusion or disappointment ([20:03]–[22:29]).
  • Cautionary story: Jed Shaffer, nonprofit worker, almost derailed by the complexities—“sort of the patron saint of lost student loan causes.” ([22:38]–[23:57]).

5. Potential Effects and Unintended Consequences

• Colleges’ Responses:
  • May cut tuition, increase financial aid (grants/scholarships), turn to private lenders, or recruit more students to cheaper programs ([26:41]).
  • Equity concerns about access for low-income/prospective students who may no longer qualify for private loans ([24:39]).
• Student Responses:
  • Some may give up on college; others will shop more carefully using new wage data ([27:36], [28:09]).
• Possible Benefits:
  • Could cull programs that only exist because federal dollars made them viable—pushing for more data-driven, transparent information on return on investment ([27:36]–[29:36]).

6. Transparency and Consumer Responsibility

• Ron Lieber’s Hope:
  • “Everybody who's shopping for higher education deserves way better answers and way more data... When there's a change in public policy that alters the marketplace, it's an opportunity for consumers to pause and say, huh, there's a change that's happened here. It's supposed to be for my benefit. What questions am I not asking that could make me more informed?” ([28:09], [29:36]).
  • “We are entitled to better answers to these questions from the institutions.” ([29:44]).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “It may seem counterintuitive to think, hey, we're fixing the problem of higher education being too costly here by giving families less in federal loans to pay for the cost. But I think the idea here is to provide more guardrails to keep families from overextending themselves.” – Ron Lieber ([05:49])

• “Why is the federal government subsidizing a degree that doesn't put you in any better financial position than a high school student?” – Rachel Abrams ([07:29])

• “Let's call it 23% political.” – Ron Lieber ([09:46])
  (On the politics behind the policy changes)

• “It actually seems kind of insane that this country ever devises a system where a family or a student could so easily borrow tens of thousands of dollars with basically no strings attached.” – Rachel Abrams ([10:59])

• “There were 14,000 new master's degree programs that had been created in the last two decades.” – Ron Lieber ([19:23])

• “We are entitled to better answers to these questions from the institutions.” – Ron Lieber ([29:44])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• First overview of new loan caps: [03:01]
• Specific cap amounts detailed: [04:19]
• Earnings test policy explained: [06:53]
• Potential impact on degree programs: [08:08]
• Political drivers and bipartisan context: [09:46]
• Historical background—origins of student lending system: [11:30]
• Obama-era fixes and reversals: [15:15]–[16:19]
• Growth of master’s programs: [18:06]
• Example: Jed Shaffer’s struggles with loan forgiveness: [22:38]
• University admins’ concerns: [24:39]
• Potential consequences for access and affordability: [26:41]
• Call for transparency and informed decision-making: [28:09], [29:44]

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Episode Tone & Final Thoughts

The conversation is pragmatic, critical, and historically informed, blending facts and first-hand reporting with real-life stories and a trace of incredulity over how America arrived at the current system. Both Abrams and Lieber press for more transparency and consumer empowerment, recognizing the complexity—and necessity—of change in college financing.

Final message:
Greater transparency, tougher financing scrutiny, but risk of lost access for low-income students—the effects of these policies will ripple across American higher education, prompting both colleges and students to ask harder questions and make more intentional choices.

Transcript

[Capital One Announcer]

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[Rachel Abrams]

From the New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the Daily. Today, as the cost of higher education has soared in recent decades, universities have attracted more scrutiny about the value of a four year degree. Now the Trump administration is taking those questions to the next level with a new set of policies that scale back the federal government student loan program. Today I talk to my colleague Ron Lieber, who writes about personal finance, about what these new changes are and how they might reshape higher education in America. It's Wednesday, july 1st. So, Ron, we have talked a lot on the show about how the administration has really focused on higher education. There have been concerns about anti Semitism on campus. The administration has accused a lot of different schools of being, as it describes, too woke. But you cover personal finance and you have been following a very different set of developments when it comes to higher education, which go into effect today, July 1st. So tell us what has been going on.

[Ron Lieber]

Sure. So the federal government put into place some changes to the way it lends money for higher education. I mean, there's $1.7 trillion in student loan debt, and that's more than credit card debt. It's more than auto loans. And you'll probably remember that there was this giant pause in the repayment of student loans. It happened at the beginning of the pandemic, but it went on for years. And since then, the Trump administration has been trying revise the federal government's repayment plans to make them a bit stricter. And some of those changes went into effect today. So that's going to be a big change for families who are in the process of paying off student loans. But there's an even bigger change that the administration also put into place, which is that instead of focusing solely on canceling student debt or changing up the repayment plans, they are also trying to reduce the amount of loans that are given out in the first place.

[Rachel Abrams]

Hmm. So what specifically is the government doing to try to achieve that goal?

[Ron Lieber]

So two things are happening that just went into effect. The first thing is that there are going to be caps on certain kinds of federal loans. First of all, there's this thing called the plus loan. Parents take that one out on behalf of their undergraduate students. Grandparents sometimes do it too, and they do it when that student's financial aid package, if any, is not enough to cover the cost. And then there are the loans for graduate students. And up until this point, there have been very few limits on the amount of money that you can borrow.

[Rachel Abrams]

You can borrow whatever you want up

[Ron Lieber]

to the cost of attendance, which includes room and board. You know, it can be over $100,000 per year. Right. And now parents are only going to be able to borrow a certain amount of money per year and a certain am amount of money over time through the entire process of completing a degree. And then graduate students who are borrowing for themselves are gonna have a different set of caps.

[Rachel Abrams]

And I know that there are probably a lot of nuances here, but just really generally speaking, can you give us a rough idea of what the caps are for grad students and from the parents borrowing for their undergrad children?

[Ron Lieber]

Yeah. So let's start with those parents. The cap is $20,000 a year for those federal loans that parents can get access to. And then the total limit over time might be four years, might be more, depending on how long the kid takes to get through. That's $65,000 total, which is not a

[Rachel Abrams]

whole lot if you consider the fact that some universities charge that just for one year of school.

[Ron Lieber]

Right. So now, over to those grad students, if you are in, you know, one of those standard master's degree programs, or, you know, other programs that are deemed non professional, you're limited to $20,500 per year, and the aggregate total that you're allowed to borrow is $100,000. And then there are so called professional programs. So those are things like business school, dental school, law school, medical school, they're limited to $50,000 a year and $200,000 over time.

[Rachel Abrams]

Got it. Okay.

[Ron Lieber]

And we should note that there is ongoing litigation over which of these graduate programs actually qualify as quote, unquote, professional, and therefore would have that higher cap where people could borrow more.

[Rachel Abrams]

So basically, the idea from the administration here is to keep students, keep parents from getting into a situation where they are borrowing essentially way more money than they can pay off.

[Ron Lieber]

Right. It may seem counterintuitive to think, hey, we're fixing the problem of higher education being too costly here by giving families less in federal loans to pay for the cost. But I think the idea here is to provide more guardrails to keep families from overextending themselves. And then that might drive down prices at least a bit.

[Rachel Abrams]

How so?

[Ron Lieber]

Well, if parents and students can't borrow as much, it may make it harder for a lot of the schools to charge what they're charging now. So schools might need to lower their prices to match whatever it is that the families of the students can actually pay.

[Rachel Abrams]

Okay, so you told us that two major buckets of changes were coming. What is the second?

[Ron Lieber]

So the second big change. The government has said that it does not want to provide student loans anymore to programs whose alumni don't meet a minimum earnings test.

[Rachel Abrams]

Okay, an earnings test. Explain what that is and how it works.

[Ron Lieber]

So here's the basic. For people who finish their undergraduate program, there's going to be a measurement four years later. And those folks from a particular program must, on average, earn more than the people in their state who only finished high school and are between the ages of 25 and 34. So the basic bottom line is, if you're not earning more than a high school graduate does, on average, what has the school done for you?

[Rachel Abrams]

And more to the point, why is the federal government subsidizing a degree that doesn't put you in any better financial position than a high school student? Is that the idea?

[Ron Lieber]

Exactly. So this earnings test, it will also be applied to advanced degrees and professional schools. And in that case, the test is similar, but with different numbers. It will look at the earnings of alumni 4 years after graduation to see whether they earn more than the median salary for working adults age 25 to 34 who have a basic bachelor's degree.

[Rachel Abrams]

Can you give some examples of programs that might fail this test?

[Ron Lieber]

Well, I've been looking at a pretty detailed data set of, like, over 30,000 undergraduate majors at all sorts of different schools. So undergraduate religion degrees at a lot of schools may end up flunking the test. A whole bunch of fine art schools with particular degrees and theater programs often end up at the bottom. Now, let's be clear here. There are not going to be any ramifications for any of this earnings stuff for at least three years, because the way the test is set up is that if a particular institution and its programs don't pass this earnings test in two out of three years, only then will there be consequences. And those consequences will be no more access to federal student loans. So the programs may not cease to exist at that point. But if a lot of people in those programs are borrowing a fair amount of money, those people are going to have to figure out some other way to pay for it, and the school's probably going to have to help them.

[Rachel Abrams]

So we said at the beginning of this conversation, it's no secret that the administration has targeted higher education in various ways. Like for instance, they threatened to cut off or did cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding to a bunch of different universities over the last year. And I wonder whether we should be thinking of the changes that you are describing as a kind of continuation of that effort. Like, in other words, how much of everything you're describing is political and how much is purely financial?

[Ron Lieber]

I don't know, Rachel. Let's call it 23% political. Right. If you look at the Education Department fact sheet that's explaining the rules, it very specifically calls out schools. The University of Southern California in Los Angeles and New York University in New York. I don't think it's a coincidence that those institutions are in big blue cities.

[Rachel Abrams]

Sure.

[Ron Lieber]

But there's been bipartisan consensus for a really long time that the student loan program is deeply problematic. And the fact of the matter is, is that, you know, these are taxpayer dollars here. And whatever the President may think, whatever Congress may think, there are a growing number of people who are really mad about the amount of borrowing that is required to get this higher education stuff. And they feel like there ought to be a way to control the price. Right. And so it's possible that this is a medium sized step towards changing things.

[Rachel Abrams]

I mean, the more you talk about this, Ron, it actually seems kind of insane that this country ever devises a system where a family or a student could so easily borrow tens of thousands of dollars with basically no strings attached.

[Ron Lieber]

In retrospect, it seems that way. Right. But we're talking about decades of history here that began with some very good intentions.

[Rachel Abrams]

Okay, so let's rewind the clock then. Why don't you tell us about how all of this got started and how we got to the point where we're at today.

[Ron Lieber]

So, 1980, it begins to become clear that a growing number of families were having trouble affording the last couple of thousand dollars each year for tuition, room and board. Now, let's remember at the time there weren't as many people going to college. There weren't as many low income people going, going to college. Right. And the federal government felt like, well, okay, if it's just a couple thousand dollars a year, no big deal, right? We don't need to necessarily put a cap on the amount that people are borrowing and we also don't really need to do all that much underwriting, because these folks are decent credit risks and it's not a high volume of people and it's not a high volume of dollars.

[Capital One Announcer]

Right.

[Rachel Abrams]

So the sort of vetting that typically happens, underwriting, when somebody borrows thousands and thousands of dollars, like making sure you can pay it back or you have a good credit score or whatever, you're saying that the federal government was not doing much of that?

[Ron Lieber]

That's correct. So flash forward another 25 years or so. We're in 2005, 2006, and the federal government opens those loans to graduate students. And again, big idea here is, well, these are people getting master's degrees, they're getting professional degrees. These people are really good risks as well.

[Rachel Abrams]

They're probably going to earn more.

[Ron Lieber]

Surely they're going to earn more. Right? And so there too, there didn't seem to be any need for any severe restrictions. But as time went on, a few problems began to emerge. So first, there are more and more people who are borrowing through these loan programs who are not necessarily the higher income earners that the government originally created some of these programs for. There are more middle income families, working class families using those parent loans because more and more people start going to college. And then the Dow tumbled more than 500 points after two. It's 2008, 2009, the Great Recession comes along and these borrowers start running into some trouble.

[Rachel Abrams]

Student loans for college just keep climbing.

[Ron Lieber]

No one expected the economy to take such a hit, leaving a lot of families scrambling. People are losing jobs and they cannot afford to make their payments. So I'm currently making six loan payments every month, which essentially add up to a full mortgage payment. And I was recently laid off, so. And that's just a terrible look for the federal government. This is bad. And so the other thing that's happening here is as more and more people do borrow, more questions emerge about whether all of this debt is actually fueling rising prices that people are paying to go to these institutions. And there begins to be some evidence that suggests that maybe those two things are connected. Student loan debt has now surpassed credit card debt for the first time ever. And so 2011 rolls around and the Obama administration takes a look at all this and says, hey, we need to try and rein this system in a bit, right? So that we have more certainty that the people who are aborted borrowing can actually afford to pay the debt back over time. When a big chunk of every paycheck goes towards student loans instead of being spent on other things, that's not just

[Rachel Abrams]

tough for middle class families. It's painful for the economy and it's hard.

[Ron Lieber]

And so his administration tightened the underwriting and within a year or two, a whole bunch of institutions, including some historically black colleges and universities, were on the brink of going out of business.

[Rachel Abrams]

Wow.

[Ron Lieber]

Their borrowers were disproportionately affected here because they were borrowing a lot from this federal parent loan program and once they no longer qualified for new loans, they could no longer afford those institutions.

[Rachel Abrams]

So what did the administration do?

[Ron Lieber]

They did what they felt like they had to do, and by 2014 they had essentially reversed the changes that they made and kind of made things go back to where they were before. And so borrowing kept going up. And part of the reason it did so is because some of the universities themselves were gaming the system.

[Capital One Announcer]

We'll be right back. This podcast is supported by the Capital One Venture X card. VentureX offers the premium benefits you expect, like a $300 annual Capital One travel credit for less than you expect. Elevate your earn with unlimited double miles on every purchase, bringing you one step closer to your next dream destination. Plus, enjoy access to over 1000 airport lounges worldwide. The Capital One Venture X card what's in your wallet? Terms apply. Lounge access is subject to change. See capitalone.com for details. This podcast is supported by American Beverage. When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know facts are the first ingredient. That's why America's beverage companies are sharing clear information about the ingredients in their beverages. @goodtonowfacts.org for over 140 ingredients, you can find common uses, alternative names and safety assessments from food safety authorities around the world. GoodToNowFacts.org is meant to be a first stop to learn more about your favorite beverages. No spin, no judgment, just facts. Visit goodtonofacts.org across the country, UnitedHealth Group

[Ron Lieber]

is working with local partners to build healthier communities every day. That includes helping partners like The Goodacre provide 45,000 meals and lower A1C in the Twin Cities and helping hello Family doulas deliver 44% fewer underweight births in Spartanburg. Because building healthier communities starts by giving people access to the care and services they need to live healthier lives. Learn [e-mail] commitment so Ron, we're at

[Rachel Abrams]

the moment in the story where the federal government has tried and failed with some kind of guardrails around education lending. But as you said, the problem kept getting worse. What's going on?

[Ron Lieber]

So a couple of things are happening first of all, the schools and their strategy consultants are realizing that master's degree programs can be pretty profitable. Right. If there are no labs involved or, you know, any expensive infrastructure on behalf of the schools, you can charge a lot of money if you can persuade students that their earnings will go up at the conclusion.

[Rachel Abrams]

And we're very excited to introduce the Master of Science in Medical, Cannabis, Science and Therapeutics.

[Ron Lieber]

Master's degree programs grow, and they grow a lot. We are launching an exciting new one year master's program. The Master's in Communication and Media Industry.

[Capital One Announcer]

The Master of Professional Studies in User

[Ron Lieber]

Experience Design Online Master's of Science and Engineering in Artificial Intelligence.

[Rachel Abrams]

Our Master's program in Environment and Sustainability

[Ron Lieber]

Management, the world's first master's degree in Happiness Studies. So Robert Kelchin, you know, he's one of the most respected higher education researchers out there, he took a look at this and realized that there were 14,000 new master's degree programs that had been created in the last, last two decades leading up to the middle of this decade.

[Rachel Abrams]

So the schools are really leaning into this, and it sounds like it is turning into quite a gravy train for them.

[Ron Lieber]

Exactly right. And if people feel like these programs, and the vast majority of them were almost certainly marketed this way, if people feel like these programs are going to help them advance in their career, they're going to be enough people who are willing to borrow a bunch of money from the federal government and essentially take the risk that their earnings are going to go up after they're done.

[Rachel Abrams]

And do we have any sense of how much this growth in master's programs was actually benefiting students? Like, were these programs actually helping to supercharge what they would earn once they graduated, for example?

[Ron Lieber]

Yeah. So the data back then wasn't as granular or widespread as what we have today. But there was definitely suspicion that at least some and maybe a growing number of those master's programs weren't really doing the job of helping people, people increase their financial and earnings prospects. But even for those programs that may not have been supercharging people's earnings, the universities started to find what became kind of a workaround for them. And that was the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. So that was created in the 2000s. And in that program, if you go to work for a nonprofit or the government, what happens there is that if you do that job for 10 years, the federal government will waive the rest of your student loan balance entirely. Once that period is over, they forgive it, it cancels that loan balance Altogether. And so schools, they kind of start to get wise to this. And you start to see examples of those schools really encouraging students to make use of that public service loan forgiveness program. And that encourages people to sort of compartmentalize how much they're taking out. Right. What the dollar amount will actually end up being at the end, because the debt just gets canceled in 10 years. Right. But it's worth noting here that it does not always go well for those students. Sometimes they figure out years down the road that they actually didn't understand how the program worked or they were doing it wrong because they got bad advice. Maybe their job did not qualify, or they didn't do the certification process correctly. There's a lot of paperwork here. Or maybe they go into some kind of public service job and they hate it, and they're either stuck staying there in some kind of job that qualifies for 10 years in order to cancel the debt, or they don't do that, they go take a different job that doesn't qualify, and then they're stuck paying back a whole bunch of money. And while borrowers are not blameless, we have a systemic problem here with helping people understand the complexity that exists in America around money. So it's not really leading to great outcomes.

[Rachel Abrams]

I wonder if you could give us an example or two of an individual person that stands out to you who has run into some kind of trouble like what we are talking about.

[Ron Lieber]

So the person I've written about more than anyone else in the pages of the New York Times is a guy named Jed Shaffer, who we refer to internally as sort of the patron saint of lost student loan causes.

[Rachel Abrams]

Oh, God.

[Ron Lieber]

This is a guy who works with high school dropouts, some of them homeless, and sets them up in a program where they learn life skills and get their ged.

[Rachel Abrams]

So the exact type of job that might qualify for one of these public service loan forgiveness programs.

[Ron Lieber]

Right. So Jed got a master's degree so that he could do this work. He borrowed a bunch of money and he thought he was doing the repayment correctly in order to get to the point where the loans would be wiped away through one of these federal programs. And it turns out it was a whole mess. Now, eventually he got it sorted out, but if he had not, he would still be making large payments each month, I think, to this day, and he'd be making those large payments at the same time that he was getting ready to send his own kids to college. I don't think that's what anybody had in mind. 30 or 40 years ago when we set all of these loan programs up in the first place.

[Rachel Abrams]

And so between the growth and master's programs and the schools basically encouraging teenagers, young people, to throw caution to the wind, take out these enormous loans, the problem has only gotten worse since the Obama administration tried to tackle it. Right. And that brings us to this moment that we are currently in, where the Trump administration is trying something new with these caps on loans and the earnings tests for these different programs.

[Ron Lieber]

That's right.

[Rachel Abrams]

Ron, you talk to university administrators all the time for your reporting about the cost of college tuition, specifically, et cetera, et cetera. And I am curious what you are hearing from them in this moment, because I would imagine that they are not happy about some of these new changes coming from the administration.

[Ron Lieber]

Nobody wants constraints on the market and the pool of available tuition dollars. And in fact, some of the professional schools in particular have pushed back and made equity arguments. Right? They're saying that people with low incomes who are confronted with loan caps and are sort of foisted into other marketplaces for, you know, private student loans from a bank or Sallie Mae or whatever, maybe they won't qualify, depending on their program or depending on their credit or depending on their age. And we may lose a whole bunch of people who we would have actually really liked to be clinical psychologists or doctors or lawyers. And that's one of the risks here.

[Rachel Abrams]

But what do they say about the question about how much responsibility they bear for their alumni who might not be doctors or might not be clinical psychologists, for people that maybe don't have the obvious earning potential of those types of professional degrees? What do they say they view as their responsibility to be tethered to a student's earning potential? And frankly, the outside world, they try

[Ron Lieber]

to say as little as possible. And when backed into a corner, they say, look, we don't force people to take on debt. The federal student loan program is available for a reason. This is a matter of public policy. And we are making this education available to them at the price that we think is appropriate.

[Rachel Abrams]

I do want to ask, Ron, because you said earlier that the goal of all of these new efforts is to try to rein in the cost of college. Right. And also to make sure that college actually provides a return on this enormous investment that some people are making. Given the history that you've laid out here, and also given how long standing and complicated and intractable some of these problems have been, do you think there's any chance that these new policies being implemented by the administration could fix those problems?

[Ron Lieber]

It depends on how things play out because there are many things that might happen here, right? Schools could just cut tuition right away. They could offer more in the way of financial aid so, you know, grants or scholarships that are really just coupons and, you know, that brings the net cost down to the student, but it doesn't lower the list price necessarily. Some schools might rely on the private student loan market. They might even get into bed with one of these lenders and say, hey, we'll guarantee the loans on the back end because we think our students are amazing credit risks. More people might just go to cheaper schools, right? And then there is the unintended consequence potentially, right, which is that a not small number of people just give up, throw up their hands and they say, I'm not going to go at all.

[Rachel Abrams]

I do wonder if there's another way of looking at this though, which is as a long overdue course correction, like shuttering programs or schools or departments or whatever that might only exist because there was money there to fuel them and not necessarily because they serve the students or civic society. It could also maybe redirect some students who might be better served by not going to school. So I just kind of wonder like how you are weighing all of this and how you are thinking about sort of the net benefits and the net consequences.

[Ron Lieber]

I am rooting for people to become way more informed about the data that exists now around what you'll earn if you get a particular major or what you'll earn if you go to particular graduate degree program. I'm not saying that we need to put all the PhD programs in history out of business, or that private universities should stop offering expensive master's degrees in social work. But what I am saying is that everybody who's shopping for higher education deserves way better answers and way more data when they come to the institutions with questions about why this costs more than that competing institution down the street by 20 or $30,000 a year, or why this master's degree that did not exist 5 years ago actually offers me something that will make me smarter, that will build my network, and that will advance my career. When there's a change in public policy that alters the marketplace, it's an opportunity for consumers to pause and say, huh, there's a change that's happened here. It's supposed to be for my benefit. What questions am I not asking that could make me more informed?

[Rachel Abrams]

You are rooting for more transparency and for people to be having more honest conversations about what the value of going to school is.

[Ron Lieber]

Yes, please. Talk more. Ask better questions. We are entitled to better answers to these questions from the institutions.

[Rachel Abrams]

Ron Lieber thank you so much.

[Ron Lieber]

Thank you.

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We'll be right back. This podcast is supported by the Capital One venture X card. VentureX offers the premium benefits you expect, like a $300 annual Capital One travel credit for less than you expect. Elevate your earn with unlimited double miles on every purchase, bringing you one step closer to your next dream destination. Plus, enjoy access to over 1,000 airport lounges worldwide. The Capital One Venture X Card what's in your wallet Terms apply. Lounge access is subject to change. See capitalone.com for details. This podcast is supported by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. What if cancer could be treated without surgery, radiation or chemotherapy? At MSK, it's already happening. In a small, groundbreaking clinical trial, 100% of participants saw their cancer completely vanish using immunotherapy alone. This MSK Giving Day, your gift will be triple matched to make the seemingly impossible breakthrough possible. Bring hope to people impacted by cancer. Give [e-mail] thedaily I'm Wina Liu.

[Ron Lieber]

I write the game Connections, one of the puzzles from New York Times Games, and I love horror movies, I love my dog, and I love trying to trick you.

[Rachel Abrams]

I'm Tracy Bennett.

[Capital One Announcer]

I get to pick the wordle word every day, which is not as easy as it sounds.

[Rachel Abrams]

A fun fact about me is that I am descended from a witch who was put on trial in Salem.

[Capital One Announcer]

New York Times games are made by people like the ones you just heard from. Go to nytimes.com games to start playing today.

[Rachel Abrams]

Here's what else you need to know today. In separate decisions on Tuesday, the Supreme Court dealt a blow to the Trump administration's attempt to end birthright citizenship and handed Republicans a victory in their fight against federal campaign spending limits. In the latter case, the court ruled the current federal limits on coordinated spending violated the First Amendment. In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the ruling effectively allowed a party to act as a candidate's, quote, checking account. In the birthright citizenship case, the court reaffirmed the long held principle that nearly all children who are born on US Soil are American citizens. The president had issued an executive order aimed at preventing babies born to undocumented immigrants and temporary foreign residents from automatically becoming citizens. But the court ruled that the order had violated the 14th Amendment. Today's episode was produced by Olivia Natt, Adrienne Hurst, Diana Wynne, and Ricky Novetsky. It was edited by Rob Zipko and Lisa Chow and contains music by Marianne Lozano and Diane Wong. Our theme music is by Wonderly, and this episode was engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for the Daily I'm Rachel Abrams. See you tomorrow.

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