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In today’s issue: What’s inside the Big Beautiful Bill for higher ed; why calculus matters so much; and the ROI of education degrees.

EVENT

🗓️ Monday, July 14 | Noon ET / 9 AM PT

📚 Exclusive for Dream School Pre-Order Readers

From College to Career, the Right Way

College isn’t just about getting a degree—it’s about building the skills that prepare students for life after graduation. In this exclusive virtual event, I’ll explore how students can intentionally develop career readiness throughout college.

We’ll cover what employers actually want, a year-by-year career development roadmap, and how to spot colleges that embed career support into the student experience.

My guests:

• Lindsey Pollak | Author, Getting from College to Career: Your Essential Guide to Succeeding in the Real World
• Matt Sigelman | President, Burning Glass Institute and Senior Advisor, The Harvard Project on the Workforce
• Andy Chan | Vice President, Personal & Career Development, Wake Forest University

👉 To join this webinar (or get a recording afterwards), all you need to do is pre-order Dream School from any bookseller by July 14, then enter your proof of purchase on my website: jeffselingo.com/dreamschool 

👍 If you already pre-ordered, thank you and consider yourself registered for this webinar with more information to come the week before. 

THE LEAD

As colleges and universities try to game out what might happen to their 60-year pact with the federal government, the gulf between higher ed and official Washington has never been wider.

In recent weeks, I’ve hosted three salon dinners—two with college leaders in Pittsburgh and Providence, and one at Arizona State’s Washington Center with a mix of higher ed officials, congressional staffers, and Trump appointees from the Education Department.

I promise Chatham House rules at these gatherings, so no direct quotes. While the D.C. dinner was framed explicitly around what’s happening in Washington, we focused on other topics in Pittsburgh and Providence—like building sustainable business models and designing academic programs for a changing job market—but inevitably, even in those cities, the conversation drifted back to the political moment we’re in.

How could it not?

The federal role in higher education hasn’t been this up for grabs since 1965 and the passage of the original Higher Education Act. Back then, it was about more federal dollars with modest oversight. Today, it’s potentially about much less money with the elimination of entire programs—and, paradoxically, perhaps more strings attached with those that remain.

“They’re going to put us out of business,” a president told me in Pittsburgh. “We don’t have that money.”

The money in question? A so-called risk-sharing proposal in the sweeping “Big Beautiful Bill” making its way through Congress. Among many higher ed provisions (see chart below), one that’s already passed the House would require colleges to repay a portion of their graduates’ defaulted federal loans. 

For campuses that enroll students with fewer academic or financial advantages—students more likely to struggle to graduate or secure high-paying jobs—this could mean millions in penalties. Ohio University’s president, Lori Stewart Gonzalez, told me during a recent visit that the institution has estimated a $6 million annual hit to its bottom line.

To see how risk sharing might work in practice, Phil Hill provided an excellent analysis in his newsletter of what would be the largest risk-sharing payments from institutions by program.

Across master’s programs nationwide:

• Social Work
• Clinical, Counseling, and Applied Psychology
• Mental and Social Health Services and Allied Professions

Across bachelor’s degrees: 

• Drama / Theater Arts
• Film / Video and Photographic Arts
• Music
• Fine and Studio Arts

And yet the same president in Pittsburgh—who worried about survival—also admitted that higher ed needs to improve. When more than 40% of students at four-year colleges don’t earn a degree after six years, something is clearly broken. The reasons students don’t finish are complicated, and often overlapping, but a few colleges—Georgia State, chief among them—have figured out how to move the needle on outcomes.

The question now is whether the feds should extend a carrot or a stick to remake higher ed.

From what I heard in D.C., the prevailing view in both the Education Department and Congress is that the system created back in 1965 is no longer working. Rather than offering incentives, officials want to use a stick—to break what they see as a ineffective model. They believe colleges must be held accountable for poor outcomes and decades of unchecked tuition growth—made possible, in part, by the very federal dollars now on the chopping block.

One moment during the D.C. dinner captured this shift perfectly: a federal official pulled up College Scorecard data showing the earnings of graduates from a specific major at one of the universities represented at the table. They asked the president at the dinner whether those outcomes justified the debt students took on. 

Caught off guard—this president, like many, rarely know earnings data for specific programs at their institution—the leader pushed back, emphasizing that colleges aren’t just pipelines to high-paying jobs. 

“We need teachers and social workers as much as we need finance and tech,” the president said.

The exchange stuck with me. It underscored how transactional higher ed has become. College is no longer a public good—it’s a product. We expect it to deliver, like a well-reviewed restaurant or a reliable car. And we want the outcome to match the price.

(For more on the transactional shift in higher ed, see the New York magazine piece I flagged in the last issue of Next about Syracuse University’s financial aid wheeling and dealing.)

When Congress passed the Higher Education Act six decades ago, there was broad consensus: college access was essential to national progress. That consensus is gone. Indeed, today, many Americans believe a high school diploma—or a GED—is enough.

At a time when people need more education, not less, we’ve lost our collective belief in its value. That doesn’t mean everyone needs a four-year degree. But it does mean postsecondary education must be:

1. Less expensive
2. More flexible, with more off-ramps to work and short-term credentials that stack into degrees
3. More accountable, with faculty and institutions invested not just in getting students to commencement, but beyond it

Designing that kind of system requires real listening and robust debate—the kind Congress used to engage in every five years during reauthorizations of the Higher Education Act. As Michael Horn and I discussed recently on Future U. with experts from both the Right and the Left, the Higher Education Act hasn’t been reauthorized since 2008.

An entire generation of students is now entering college under a federal policy framework built for a different era. And instead of reforming it, we’re layering on piecemeal legislation that rewrites the rules without ever resetting the game.

What’s the Deal With Calculus

On a recent Next Office Hour, I asked Chris Gruber, dean of admission at Davidson College, why so many colleges seem fixated on whether applicants take calculus — even when students plan to major in English or psychology. 

Why it matters: Math is one of the few subjects with a nationally recognizable sequence. That makes it a consistent signal of academic preparation across wildly different high schools.

What Gruber said:

• It’s about “where you land.” Admissions officers look at how far students go in math — ideally pre-calc or calc by senior year — and whether they’re still pushing themselves.
  
  
• Calculus is common, but not required. At Davidson, most admitted students take it — not because it’s mandatory, but because it’s where strong applicants typically end up.
  
  
• It’s not just for STEM majors. Schools like Davidson require math for all students, so admissions officers want to know you can handle the coursework, even if you major in philosophy.
  
  
• Why math stands out: Gruber called it a “ladder” — one of the few subjects where admissions officers can clearly see a student’s academic progression.

📺 Watch the full webinar here.

• The webinar included a conversation with Shalinee Sharma, author of Math Mind: The Simple Path to Loving Math, and cofounder of Zearn. I’ll have a Q&A with Shalinee in the next issue of the newsletter.
• The full conversation with Gruber starts around the 42-minute mark.

SUPPLEMENTS

🎓 Don’t Be Caesar. In his recent commencement address at Drew University, Range author David Epstein urged graduates not to rush their path — borrowing from Alice in Wonderland and Julius Caesar to make the case for pacing yourself: “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday—not to other people who aren’t you.” (David Epstein) 

📉 Education majors = low ROI. A new analysis by Preston Cooper for NextSteps finds that education majors consistently deliver some of the weakest returns on investment. Engineering, computer science, and even English often outperform education. “If what you want is to teach,” Cooper writes, “you’d be better off majoring in science, math, or English — even if you want to teach.” (NextSteps)

💸 Here’s What a Research Freeze Looks Like. A funding clampdown from the Trump administration has halted nearly $800 million in federal research grants to Northwestern University — stalling life-saving clinical trials and leaving faculty scrambling. “The university is totally keeping us on life support,” said one researcher. The freeze, linked to political backlash over campus protests, threatens a university R&D model built over eight decades. (Wall Street Journal; subscription required)