STATS Federal Earnings Test
Program Look-Up Dashboard

HOW CAN HIGHER ED LEADERS NAVIGATE FEDERAL EARNINGS ACCOUNTABILITY?

Gray DI’s Federal Earnings Test Dashboard provides higher education leaders with program-level regulatory risk modeling, state benchmark comparisons, and graduate earnings evaluations. Explore verified workforce outcomes and actionable data matching to identify at-risk credentials, protect Title IV aid eligibility, and safeguard critical career training pipelines.

Clear answers to complex higher education accountability decisions.

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About STATS Federal Earnings Test
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

The Federal Earnings Test is a regulatory standard administered by the U.S. Department of Education under Gainful Employment (GE) and Financial Value Transparency (FVT) rules. It requires academic and career training programs to prove that their graduates’ median annual earnings exceed the median annual earnings of working adults aged 25 to 34 who hold only a high school diploma.

The federal government matches student-level Title IV financial aid recipient records directly against federal tax returns maintained by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The IRS calculates the actual median taxable income (including W-2 wages and self-employment earnings) for that specific completer cohort approximately three years after graduation.

Third-party sources (like BLS OEWS or Census ACS) rely on general occupational surveys that lump together workers of all ages, experience levels, and colleges. The federal earnings test uses actual IRS tax filings from the specific graduates of a specific institution and program.

If a Gainful Employment program fails the earnings test in two out of three consecutive years, it loses federal Title IV financial aid eligibility. Non-GE degree programs that fail are required to distribute official earnings warnings and collect signed acknowledgments from prospective students prior to enrollment.

The most vulnerable fields are allied health certificates (such as Medical Assisting and Phlebotomy), Early Childhood Education, Cosmetology, and Commercial Arts, where entry-level starting pay often struggles to surpass rising high school benchmark wages.