Overview
- Effective Sunday, the FAFSA now displays a yellow “lower earnings” notice for any listed college whose median pay four years after graduation does not exceed comparable high-school earnings.
- The designation relies on College Scorecard outcomes and compares each college to state high-school medians, or to the national median for schools with mostly out-of-state students.
- The Department published a dataset of nearly 1,000 flagged institutions, largely small private and trade programs, with 132 in California and 70 in New York.
- Flagged colleges received about $4 billion in Pell Grants and undergraduate federal loans in 2024–25, approximately 5% of total undergraduate federal aid.
- The warning is informational only, does not change federal-aid eligibility, and allows applicants to review earnings data and adjust their college lists if they wish.