More Earnings Test Data
CIP 51.33 Meltdown
I recently posted about Department of Education slides showing 98% of Alt Med Master’s degrees students are in programs likely to fail the Earnings Test. A recent OPB article about Oregon programs clued me into another data source, a spreadsheet of a recent data release by Dr. Robert Kelchen, an academic who studies higher education accountability.
Not all programs have median earnings data to compare with the Bachelor’s degree median earnings threshold, but many do. I narrowed the data down to just the CIP 51.33 Alternative Medicine graduate programs with earnings data and a pass/fail designation.
Here’s the table (link):
You can see only 2 out of the 32 programs are likely to pass the July 2027 Earnings Test: a first professional degree at Sonoran and the Master of Arts in Holistic Health Studies at St Catherine. I think this is the same dataset that produced the 98% fail prediction for Alt Med Master’s degree students, but this presentation is more granular.
The 30 programs listed above will likely fail the July 2027 Earnings Test, and similar programs are likely to fail as well. When a program fails, all current and prospective students are notified. There will likely be an option for the school to choose a voluntary program teach out in order to preserve loan access for students who have already enrolled. Failing two out of any three consecutive years means the program becomes ineligible for federal loans. Small programs within larger universities must still pass the Earnings Test.
Even if ND and Acupuncture schools can manage the July 2026 loan caps, the July 2027 Earnings Test is an even greater challenge.



Why is Yo San not listed? Is it because they still have not released the data yet?