Three Years of Changing How America Thinks About College Value
By Michael Itzkowitz
March 26, 2026
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
This month, The HEA Group marks its third anniversary. When we formally launched our organization, higher education leaders were still largely resistant to using post-graduation earnings data as a tool for continuous improvement and for holding institutions accountable for their students' outcomes. Today, that data is reshaping federal law, state policy, accreditation oversight, and how millions of students and families choose where to enroll. We’re proud to have played a role in that shift.
Here’s a look at some of the impact we’ve had along the way:
Research That Changed the Conversation
Ensuring a Living Wage Through Higher Education
Featured in the New York Times, our analysis of nearly 4,000 institutions found that more than 1,000 colleges left most graduates earning less than a typical high school grad. This work helped reframe the national accountability debate and laid the groundwork for federal earnings thresholds that have since become law.
Graduate School Debt Analysis
Our finding that one-third of graduate programs leave students with growing loan balances, even five years after entering repayment, helped shift national attention toward graduate-level accountability and laid the groundwork for stronger oversight of these programs.
Program-Level ROI
By analyzing outcomes for roughly 36,000 college programs across the United States, our work showed that the program a student chooses matters as much as the institution, giving students, families, and policymakers a more precise tool for evaluating the earnings that higher education programs produce for their graduates.
California Mobility Index
The HEA Group and College Futures Foundation launched a first-of-its-kind ratings system for California’s four-year institutions that measures economic mobility rather than prestige. It was covered by the Los Angeles Times and offered a new model for how states can define and reward higher-education success.
New Earnings Data Puts College Programs at Risk
When the Education Department released new data on program-level earnings eligibility, our analysis gave policymakers and institutions an early, actionable picture of how the new earnings test would play out in practice. We were among the first to analyze all undergraduate programs, finding that 2,463 are at risk of losing access to federal student loans under the new federal accountability standards.
Policy Wins That Protect Students
Federal Accountability Frameworks
Our analyses helped shape Congress’s earnings transparency push and provided a framework for the “do no harm” provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and Gainful Employment regulation.
WSCUC and ACCJC Dashboard Integration
When the two main college accreditors in California incorporated ROI metrics into their student achievement dashboards, it marked the first time major regional accreditors used earnings outcomes as a standard transparency tool, a model we hope others will follow.
Lower Earnings Designations
The Education Department’s first-ever public list of lower-earnings institutions on the FAFSA validated years of advocacy for greater transparency on student outcomes. Our work helped frame why these designations make for a more targeted use of taxpayer dollars and provide students with critical information before they enroll.
State Legislation
Our research directly contributed to the introduction of the Missouri Senate Bill 1617 and has informed how multiple states are developing frameworks to evaluate the economic value of public college programs.
Reaching Millions
None of this work has an impact if it stays in a research report. Over three years, our findings have reached students, families, and policymakers through the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, CBS News, NPR, USA Today, Forbes, The Economist, CNBC, Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Hill, and dozens more, ensuring that the case for accountability is part of the national conversation.
The Field Is Listening
The movement we’ve seen from leaders across the country reinforces why the HEA Group wakes up and focuses on strengthening postsecondary outcomes every day: colleges that once denied, resisted, or bargained against ROI data are increasingly accepting it and using it to redesign programs, target student advising, and better align education with economic opportunity. That shift from resistance to action is exactly what we set out to accelerate.
Looking Ahead
The stakes have never been higher or the opportunity greater. Federal accountability is being rewritten in real time. States are hungry for tools to assess and improve their higher education systems. Accreditors are integrating outcomes into their everyday work. And students and families are demanding better information than ever before.
In the years ahead, the HEA Group will continue to push for a higher education system that delivers on its promise: expanding our research into new states and sectors, deepening our partnerships with state systems committed to meaningful change, and ensuring that all students get a strong return on their investment. We believe the next chapter of higher education transformation and improvement is just beginning, and we intend to help write it.
Thank you to everyone who has been part of this journey: partners, funders, practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and advocates alike. We could not have done this without you.
With gratitude and optimism,
Michael Itzkowitz
Founder and President, The HEA Group
Michael Itzkowitz is founder and president of the HEA Group, a national policy organization focused on college access, value, and economic mobility. He previously served as the director of the College Scorecard at the U.S. Department of Education.
