The Trump administration is changing how students qualify for federal loans by tying eligibility to the financial outcomes of the college programs they attend.

Under the new framework, the Department of Education will examine the earnings of graduates from individual programs. Programs whose graduates fail to meet specified federal earnings benchmarks can lose access to federal Direct Loans for future students.

The policy is part of a broader overhaul of the federal student loan system enacted through the Working Families Tax Cuts Act. The administration has argued that taxpayers should not continue financing programs that leave students with substantial debt but provide relatively weak earnings after graduation.

The changes shift some of the focus from the overall eligibility of a college or university to the performance of individual degree programs. If a program repeatedly fails the applicable earnings test, students enrolling in that program could lose access to federal Direct Loans.

The administration has presented the policy as an effort to increase accountability in higher education and encourage colleges to provide programs that lead to stronger employment and earnings outcomes. Federal officials have also argued that colleges should have greater responsibility for the economic results associated with the programs they offer.

The new earnings requirements come alongside separate limits on how much students can borrow through the federal government. Graduate students face new annual and lifetime borrowing limits, while the Grad PLUS program has been eliminated for most new borrowers.

The changes have raised concerns among educators and students, particularly in fields where graduates may have lower starting salaries but still provide services viewed as important to communities. Critics of the earnings-based approach have questioned whether income alone provides a complete measure of the value of a degree program.

Under the new system, a program's ability to provide access to federal loans will be more closely connected to the earnings of its graduates.

The policy represents a significant change in the federal government's approach to college financing. Instead of treating federal loan access as largely separate from a program's financial outcomes, the Trump administration is using graduate earnings as a factor in determining whether students can continue borrowing through the federal loan system.