Christian schools raise alarm over Education Department’s “Do no harm” rule

When asked why he became a pastor, Danny Garcia credits his brother, who helped lead Garcia to Christ and later encouraged him to pursue a career in ministry. He told Garcia he had the right heart to be a pastor. But not everyone in Garcia’s life offered the same support.

Some people told Garcia he’d be broke working as a pastor and would never experience luxury. Yet Garcia said he wanted his life to be shaped by God and His view on money, not the world’s perspective.

“I definitely didn’t go into capital energy to make big bucks,” said Garcia, who now works as a campus pastor at his alma mater, Grace Christian University in Grand Rapids, Mich. “I knew that I was going to go into ministry and at times have to sacrifice some things or just be OK with being comfortable and OK with wherever God has me in those seasons.”

But earlier this month, a U.S. Department of Education provision went into effect that views Garcia’s degree through a monetary lens. It evaluates the success of higher education programs, like his pastoral degree, based on the income Garcia earns in the years after graduation. Christian schools across the country, including Grace, are raising the alarm about the rule, dubbed the “Do no harm” provision. They argue that the rule as written would cut off some forms of federal financial aid to schools and ministerial degree programs.

When Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, it included several changes to Title IV of the Higher Education Act. One of these was the “Do no harm” provision, which evaluates undergraduate and graduate programs through an earnings test to determine their eligibility for federal loans.

The test requires undergraduate programs to demonstrate that their graduates earn more than the typical high school diploma holder, while graduate programs will have to show that their graduates earn more than the typical bachelor’s degree holder.

According to the department, the test will compare graduates’ earnings to the median salary of 25- to 34-year-olds from either the state the institution is located in or nationwide, depending on the institution’s enrollment makeup. The “Do no harm” test relies on data from the U.S. Census and the Internal Revenue Service. Program earnings will be calculated four years after a graduate completes school, the Department of Education said.

The rule aims to combat postsecondary programs that have left their graduates financially “worse off than if they had never gone to college,” the department said in a statement. “Programs must now show that graduates are earning more than if they had never enrolled in the program.”

If a program’s graduates fall below the benchmark for two out of three consecutive years, the program loses access to Title IV federal Direct Loans. The school’s program will also be deemed a “low-earning outcome” program, and the college would have to disclose that the program was considered “failing.”

Philip Dearborn, president of the Association for Biblical Higher Education, said ministry work is not a salary-driven career.

“It was never about money,” Dearborn said. “If you measured my salary four years after graduation from a Bible college, it was low. It was low. But look where I am in life now, right? God used all kinds of circumstances, and I was never in need.”

Dearborn, whose organization represents 165 institutions of biblical higher education, voiced concerns during the rule’s drafting that it would disproportionately affect religious and biblical programs.

In the Department of Education’s preliminary data on nearly 62,000 programs, it found that around 6% of all programs would fail the earnings test. But it said that 53% of bachelor’s degrees for religion and religious studies would be considered “failing” under the metric—a number that jumped to 89% for master’s degrees.

Yet the department’s latest data said that only 9% of undergraduate religious studies programs and 6% of graduate ones would fail the test.

“It’s hard to get our hands around which set of statistics are right,” Dearborn said. “It feels like we’re flying blind in some respects.” If the first statistics are right, however, it could lead to one of the largest defundings of religious higher education in America, he added.

Dearborn said the test has unintended consequences for Christian schools. Even if a school has many programs that aren’t failing, recruiting new students while navigating one failing program could be difficult. He would like to see the test weigh other factors besides income generation, such as an institution’s actual default rates, cost of attendance, or the amount students borrow. Instead, it applies a “one-size-fits-all metric across an extraordinarily diverse higher education landscape,” he said.

Todd Williams, president of Cairn University in Langhorne, Pa., pointed out that students at his school have a low default rate. He said the earnings test approach is “just a disaster,” arguing it accounts for no nuances, such as whether students are actually earning their income in the same field they studied.

Ken Kemper, president of Grace Christian University, added that religious degrees are not just an investment in a future salary but rather an investment in the future of a student and the person’s ability to pour back into family and society. Kemper said that about 150 students received religious degrees at Grace last fall. He hoped all can say, “Grace invested in me, and they personally mentored me, taught me so that I’m more effective than I ever was before I went to college.”

Christian schools aren’t alone in raising the alarm. Cosmetology schools and massage therapy schools, among other institutions, have said the test doesn’t reflect how their industries work. In the Education Department’s preliminary and later data, a large percentage of mental health services and teachers’ associate degree programs also faced high failure rates.

The earnings test doesn’t seem to value individuals who seek to contribute to society, whether that’s teachers or pastors, said Timothy Eaton, president of the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, which oversees more than 100 institutions. He called the department’s metrics shortsighted.

“Typically, people in the arts, clergy, education … start at minimum wages,” Eaton said. “I think the evidence is that long-term, there is value to the degree.”

After the department opened the comment period for the rule in April, it garnered nearly 9,000 comments. The final rule seemed to acknowledge some of the concerns the earnings test would have on religious programs, as it adjusted one of its penalties involving the Pell Grant programs.

The department’s regulation still says that “failing” programs may lose access to Pell grants, work study programs, and other forms of the Higher Education Act’s Title IV assistance, explained Greg Baylor, an attorney at Alliance Defending Freedom. But the department updated the rule to remove this threat from programs that haven’t participated in the Direct Loan program for the last five years, he said.

“Many institutions with religious missions do not participate in the Direct Loan program, and the Department’s estimates show that this provision will likely reduce the regulation’s impact on undergraduate students attending such institutions and programs,” department officials wrote in the final rule. It said that around 600 fewer religious programs will be exempt from the earnings test because of this change.

But Baylor said this is not the big victory or concession that the department portrays. “The majority of religious studies programs at religious institutions do participate in the Direct Loan program,” Baylor said. “The modest revision to the new ‘administrative capability’ requirement does nothing for these programs if they want to continue participating in the Direct Loan program.”

Baylor said the test burdens the religious rights of these institutions and their students. “What’s at stake is the capability of students to follow God’s calling to pursue degrees in ministry, and to follow their calling into their vocations,” he said. “It threatens not only programs at religious institutions for ministry training, but also the viability of institutions themselves.”

If Congress doesn’t take action to undo the earnings test through either a free-standing piece of legislation or an appropriations process, Baylor said schools could file a lawsuit to pursue a legal remedy.

The suit could argue that the department’s regulation violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which says that the government has to take the least restrictive route to burdening religious rights. The Education Department could have carved out a religious exemption for the earnings test, Baylor said, as it did for certain programs educating the disabled. If these programs received an exemption, it raises the question of why it didn’t offer religious programs the same thing, he added.

But the department made light of the viewpoint that its test infringes on religious rights. In its final rule, officials insisted the test “will not prevent students who are [motivated] by religious belief to enter into religious programs from doing so.”

The department noted that programs won’t fail the earnings test because of their religious nature, saying those that fail do so in the “same way as a secular program.”

WORLD reached out to the Department of Education for further comment but did not hear back prior to publication.

Dearborn said his organization is helping to educate institutions about this policy and figure out how to leave the loan program if they choose to. While some might move toward private funds from denominations or elsewhere, he wants to fight back against this test.

“We’re gonna figure this out,” Dearborn said. “We serve a bigger God than our federal government. And God’s plan will continue to work through.”

Garcia, who graduated in 2022, said his job is about much more than finances. He also noted that many graduates with pastoral degrees don’t find full-time roles right after college. Many will graduate to work in part-time positions or stipend roles, he said, perhaps supplementing with other, nonministerial jobs or with support from the church community.

“The government is using sort of a corporate yardstick to measure what is ultimately a spiritual calling on somebody’s life,” Garcia said. “When it comes down to somebody’s calling in their lives, something that is deep and meaningful, I would not want something as fickle as money to prevent them from following the calling on their lives.”