When Outcomes Become the Only Outcome

If earnings become the primary measure of outcomes, what happens to programs built around calling instead of compensation? 

I'm sure you've heard, but the U.S. Department of Education is pushing colleges to take more responsibility for what happens to students after they graduate. Specifically, whether their degree leads to earnings that justify the cost.

I have thoughts. (Those of you that know me...are likely not surprised.) 😆

The underlying idea is simple: if students are taking on debt, their education should lead to financial stability. That is a defensible goal, and one most enrollment leaders I talk to actually support.

But it opens a much harder question. How does this framework account for fields that are essential and consistently underpaid?

Social work. Ministry. Teaching. Nonprofit leadership. Early childhood and special education. Community public health. Service-driven careers that communities rely on, but that have never been about high earnings.

If earnings become the primary measure of outcomes, what happens to programs built around calling instead of compensation?

What we measure and what we miss

Accountability in higher education matters. Students and families deserve transparency about cost, debt and what happens after graduation. Institutions should think hard about outcomes and be honest when something is not working. I will never argue that.

The question is not whether outcomes should be measured. (They should, for the record.) It is which outcomes get prioritized, who decides it and what disappears from view when we stop looking at the rest.

Fields like social work, education, ministry and nonprofit leadership have always operated on a different equation. They are necessary. They are, almost by design, not high-paying. (And that’s a whole different issue, in my mind.) A community without teachers, counselors, pastors and case workers is not a community in any recognizable sense. But a spreadsheet does not capture that.

And if policy or public pressure leans too hard on salary metrics:

• Schools may reduce or eliminate these programs

• Students may avoid them entirely

• Society ends up with fewer people doing the exact work it depends on

I relate to this.

Since eighth grade, all I wanted to do was become a journalist. I worked for free at my local community newspaper for six years, through high school and into college. I worked until 1am interning without pay while a full-time college student. I am a believer in the impact of true, unbiased journalism and the public good it can provide.

But, I knew going in it would not be a high-paying career. I remember looking it up when I was in high school once. My expected starting salary out of college? $26,000.

I still chose it.

Because salary was not the point.

What mattered to me was the public benefits of true, traditional journalism: accountability. The role real journalists play in providing transparent, unbiased information to the people who need it. That is value. Does it show up in an earnings report? Probably not. But does it have an impact? Absolutely. (Just ask Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.)

If I were making that choice today under a framework focused primarily on earnings, I am not sure how the path would be viewed. I am not sure what the program page would even be allowed to say about it. (Which I have major concerns about on it's own.)

And I think about the students sitting in front of that decision right now. That's a lot of pressure.

When metrics shift, behavior follows

This is where it gets real for enrollment and marketing teams. When certain programs consistently appear at risk based on earnings data, institutions feel pressure to respond. That pressure lands on your team specifically.

It shows up in small ways at first:

• Program pages get rewritten to emphasize salary ranges over the work itself

• Certain majors get pulled from the viewbook or pushed to the back

• Recruitment travel stops prioritizing programs without strong earnings data

• Yield campaigns quietly shift toward programs that test better on ROI messaging

• Program chairs start hearing that their major needs to justify its existence

None of that is malicious. It is a reasonable response to the signals institutions are being sent. But the cumulative effect is real. Over time, what we choose to market shapes what students choose to study. And what students choose to study shapes what the next generation of professionals looks like.

That is not a small thing to hand over to a single metric.

A different kind of value

For many institutions, success looks different.

• It looks like graduates serving their communities.

• Leaders in nonprofits and ministries. Educators shaping future generations.

• Counselors in schools that could not afford a full roster otherwise.

Professionals choosing impact over income and building careers that would not exist without someone saying yes to a path no spreadsheet would recommend.

Those outcomes are harder to quantify. They do not fit neatly into a report. Some of them do not show up for a decade.

That does not make them less important. It makes them less legible to the systems we are building right now.

The real question

Do I have the answer? No. (Sorry if you were looking for one.) But I feel confident our legislators don't either -- nor have they likely even considered the potential negative outcomes this type of legislation could create.

And that's why having this conversation now is important.

This is not an argument against accountability. It is a question about who gets to define it and how it is defined.

If enrollment and marketing leaders do not push back on a single earnings-based definition of success, that definition will get handed to us. It will show up in compliance language, in federal reporting, in the questions board members start asking. And the programs that lose visibility first will be the ones whose value has always been harder to price.

That pushback does not have to be loud.

It can look like program pages that lead with the work itself, not the salary band.

It can look like earnings context that explains why a sector pays what it pays.

It can look like yield campaigns that do not quietly abandon the students called to the hardest, most necessary jobs.

Not every outcome is meant to be high-paying. Not every program is designed with earnings as the goal. If we start evaluating them as if they are, we risk losing something much bigger than a metric.

We risk losing the programs, and the people, committed to serving others.

The measurement problem is already here. The question is how we respond to it.