The Fundamental Flaw of Earnings Premium
Phil Hill
July 1, 2025
Insights from the Gainful Employment lawsuit on the fundamental problems with Earnings Premium that is embedded in the Senate’s institutional accountability
By this past weekend, it was obvious that for institutional accountability, the US Congress had abandoned the House Risk-Sharing approach and was going for broke with the Senate’s Gainful Employment for All approach, which they are now calling the Do No Harm approach. As of today, this bill passed the Senate and is going back to the House for final vote before potentially being signed into law by July 4th.
The only changes to the metrics behind the Senate’s Do No Harm approach since last week’s negotiations were to:
Remove non-completers from the earnings cohort; and
Change the earnings timeframe to measure graduate programs to 4 years after completion.
In this post I’d like to highlight the major opportunity and major flaw of the Senate bill.
