A new federal law that took effect July 1, requires every college program in the country to prove its graduates earn at least $36,000 a year or eventually lose eligibility for federal student loans.

No program will face penalties before the 2028-2029 academic year at the earliest, but the rule raises pointed questions for arts and humanities programs at Saint Mary's College in Moraga.

The law, enacted as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Trump, compares graduates' earnings four years after completion to the median wage of someone in their state with only a high school diploma. In California, that benchmark is roughly $36,000 annually. Programs that fail the test in two out of three consecutive years will lose federal loan access.

For families paying Saint Mary's $59,769 annual tuition, the stakes are real. About 51% of graduating students carry loan debt averaging $30,918, according to U.S. News & World Report. The college is designated a Hispanic Serving Institution, with more than 25% of students identifying as Hispanic or Latino, and nearly a quarter of incoming students in fall 2024 were first-generation college students.

Saint Mary's offers two Master of Fine Arts degrees, in Creative Writing and Dance, along with undergraduate programs in performing arts, English, and art history. Education Department projections reported by NPR on July 9 estimate that nearly half of graduate art programs nationwide would fail the earnings test, and about 14% of bachelor's music programs are predicted to fall short. Those are the categories where Saint Mary's programs sit.

The college's overall graduate earnings look healthy on paper. Six years after graduation, the median salary for Saint Mary's graduates is $60,388, according to U.S. News. But that figure is pulled upward by the most popular major, business, where graduates earn a median starting salary of $95,040. Psychology graduates start at $50,583.

No program-specific earnings data for Saint Mary's has been released. The Education Department will publish its first calculations in early 2027, and the earliest any program could be designated "low-earning" is the 2028-2029 award year.

Nicholas Kent, the U.S. Under Secretary of Education, said in a July 9 statement that if a program "cannot show that it leaves its graduates financially better off than if they had never enrolled, it should not be underwritten by federal taxpayers."

Arts education advocates have pushed back. Lee Ann Scotto Adams, executive director of the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project, told NPR on July 9 that early-career earnings data misses the full arc of arts graduates' careers, noting that most report satisfaction with their career paths.

Nationally, advocates worry colleges may preemptively cut low-earning creative programs before any formal sanction is imposed. Sarah Wilbur, director of Duke University's MFA in Dance program, wrote in a July 1 email to the Duke Chronicle that the rule's "practical effect would be to transform an already competitive professional degree into one accessible primarily to the affluent."

Saint Mary's has not issued a public statement about the law. A religious exemption in the rule, which shields programs that have not received federal loans for five years, does not apply to the college because it participates in the federal loan program.

The Education Department plans to release program-level earnings data on the College Scorecard in 2027. That release will show for the first time whether specific Saint Mary's programs clear the $36,000 floor.