Two U.S. senators have introduced legislation seeking to address a Department of Education regulation that opponents say carries the potential to restrict loan access for students enrolled in faith-based programs. Senators James Lankford and Ted Cruz are credited with sponsoring the Religious Education Fairness Act, a measure designed to maintain federal loan, grant, and other financial access for students pursuing theological training and ministry careers.
The legislation emerged in part from a provision embedded within the One Big Beautiful Bill Act put forward by President Donald Trump, which included a standard under which federal student loan access would be tied to whether a given degree program demonstrably lifts graduates' earnings above what they would have made without completing that credential.
Representatives of faith-based organizations formally notified legislators that Department of Education rules issued in April — swapping a debt-to-earnings gauge for an earnings premium measure, broadening data disclosure requirements, and tightening oversight of institutions — stand to put theology and religious studies programs at a structural disadvantage. That concern is grounded in Department of Education projections showing 53 percent of bachelor's degrees and 89 percent of master's degrees in those disciplines would fall below the threshold at which programs lose Direct Loan eligibility after two failing assessments across three consecutive years. The representatives contended the standard fails to account for degree fields where financial return is not the primary aim of the training provided.
Figures released by American University in October put the share of enrolled students whose programs faced potential adverse effects from the change at roughly 1.8 percent.
Senator Lankford argued that students pursuing pastoral or missionary vocations should not face a loss of federal financial aid on account of the modest income those paths typically yield. He stated that the Religious Education Fairness Act — a proposed amendment to the Higher Education Act of 1965 that would extend Title IV protections to theology, religious vocations, philosophy, and religious studies programs — was crafted with those students in mind, given that an earnings-based assessment framework was not constructed to account for ministry as a career, and that financial reward is not, by and large, what draws people toward that work.
Greg Baylor, a senior attorney at Alliance Defending Freedom, argued that students who choose a religious path should not face government penalties simply because that path may not meet an official income threshold. Baylor also expressed the organisation's appreciation for the senators involved.
Separately, faculty members at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine raised concerns in 2024 that an institutional focus on diversity criteria in admissions had contributed to a pattern in which more than half of students across several cohorts enrolled from 2020 onward did not pass standardized assessments covering foundational medical knowledge in areas including emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics.
