From the US Department of Education Website: 

The Higher Education Act requires that certificate programs at all institutions and degree programs at private for-profit colleges must provide training that prepares students for gainful employment in a recognized occupation. 

The regulations propose that programs covered by this requirement would have to meet certain performance standards on two measures to maintain access to Federal financial aid. 

Specifically, programs would have to show that:

• Graduates can afford their yearly debt payments. In particular, the share of their annual earnings needed to devote to paying their debt (i.e., their "debt-to-earnings ratio") must be equal to or less than 8 percent, or equal to or less than 20 percent of their discretionary earnings (i.e., their annual earnings above 150 percent of the Federal poverty guideline).
• At least half of graduates have higher earnings than a typical high school graduate in their State's labor force who never pursued a postsecondary education.

Programs would be assessed separately on each metric. Programs that fail at least one metric would need to warn students that the program is at risk of losing access to Federal aid. Those that fail to meet the standards on the same metric twice in a three-year period would lose access to Federal aid.

We should be hearing more about the Higher Education Act in November 2023.