The business model of nearly all American colleges and universities involves luring in as many students as possible with glittering ideas about the great careers that await them if they enroll and graduate. The officials behind this know that graduates in many of their degree programs will have only a slight chance of ever landing a good job unless they go on for many more years of education. It’s like a basketball clinic getting lots of paying customers by telling kids that stars in the NBA earn millions.

In today’s Martin Center article, accounting professor James Andrews calls out this operation:

When a program survives on enrollment rather than outcomes, the incentive is clear: Sell the degree, not the result. Advising becomes marketing. Of course the psychology professor or counselor says the student is a great fit. The bartender thinks he needs a drink. The barber says he needs a haircut.

And students make high-stakes decisions based on incomplete — and often self-serving — information.

Right. If other businesses used the deceptive tactics colleges do, they’d find themselves in legal hot water. But because the country was suckered into believing the “college is a great investment” hype, colleges get away with it.

There is, however, a bright spot. Andrews notes:

In 2025, Congress took a step toward closing the gap between college marketing and labor-market reality. Section 84001 of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” authorized the Department of Education to cut off federal aid to programs where most graduates earn less than the median high-school graduate. It’s a low standard, but some programs will fail to meet it.

For the first time, institutions must now consider not just what they teach but where it leads. Programs that consistently leave students underemployed and underpaid now risk losing access to federal student aid — the financial lifeblood of most colleges.

Ah, yes — federal student aid. That’s the root of the problem. Unfortunately, getting out of that seems to be politically impossible — for now anyway.

Andrews concludes: “We don’t need new tools. We need to use the ones we have. Stop selling dreams. Start reporting outcomes. That’s how markets work. That’s how trust gets rebuilt.”