On Monday, Vox‘s Abdallah Fayyad declared Donald Trump’s campily-named Big Beautiful Bill “bad news” for, among other things, tinkering with student loan programs. Its provisions will “put a college education further out of reach for many Americans.”

How so? Well, for one thing, Pell Grant eligibility is getting an overhaul. In order to receive the maximum Pell Grant, “students would have to take 30 credit hours each year, up from 24.” This might be considered unduly onerous if you didn’t know that college students must take at least 15 credits per semester (30 per year) if they intend to graduate with a four-year degree in four years.

“Students who take 12 credits a semester not only will require an additional year to meet degree requirements, but are also less likely to graduate as compared with students who take 15 credits a semester,” one resource for student-loan borrowers observed. Indeed, students who take fewer than 15 credits per semester are “only considered to be full-time for financial aid purposes.”

So, on that score at least, Trump’s signature legislation synthesizes an incongruity that exists only because the law did not comport with academic realities. Surely, there are worse things.