Two critical sets of federal regulations, AHEAD and AIM, signal a profound and existential shift in higher education policy that threatens the comprehensive mission of community colleges. Both of these regulations establish new punitive accountability metrics that judge institutions strictly by workforce-aligned return on investment (ROI) across all academic programs, not just Career and Technical Education (CTE). For faculty, these metrics are not abstract policy debates; they are a direct threat to job security, academic freedom, and the survival of programs that serve our communities' most vulnerable populations.

The weight of these regulations cannot be overstated. The AHEAD regulations rely on an inflexible "earnings premium" metric that will likely force the closure of programs in essential but chronically underpaid fields, specifically early childhood education, human services, and the visual and performing arts. Recent data from American University indicates that students in traditional transfer-oriented degree programs, specifically liberal arts and general studies, are also highly concentrated in the set of programs at risk of losing federal loan eligibility under these tests. Meanwhile, the upcoming AIM regulations will weaponize and fundamentally disrupt the accreditation process as we know it, stripping away historical peer evaluation models and mandating that accreditors enforce these same narrow ROI and program-level workforce outcomes.

Below is an updated guide to these regulations, their statutory origins, implementation timelines, and how to most effectively target your advocacy during the currently open public comment period for AHEAD.

AHEAD Regulations: Public Comment Now Open, Due May 20, 2026

The Department of Education (DOE) recently released the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the Accountability in Higher Education and Access through Demand-driven Workforce Pell (AHEAD) framework. These regulations stem from the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" (H.R. 1), a budget reconciliation law signed on July 4, 2025. The AHEAD regulations are scheduled to be implemented on July 1, 2026.

Importance of the Regulations: The AHEAD regulations overhaul the accountability framework by replacing the previous debt-to-earnings metric with a strict "earnings premium" measure. If an academic program (defined under these rules as a specific degree or certificate, not a broad academic discipline) fails the earnings premium measure in two out of three consecutive years, meaning its graduates do not out-earn a comparison group of working adults with only a high school diploma, that program will lose its eligibility for Federal Direct Loan Programs.

How to Target Your Comments: To make your public comments as impactful as possible, it is important to distinguish between what the DOE must do by law and the aggressive regulatory choices they elected to make.

What is fixed in the H.R. 1 statute (Do not focus your comments here):

• Regional Benchmarks: The statute strictly requires the use of statewide or national median earnings and intentionally omits any regional price-parity adjustments.

• Four-Year Measurement Timeline: Earnings must be measured exactly in the fourth tax year after program completion.

• Federal Aid Recipients Only: The earnings calculation is legally restricted to only include students who received federal Title IV financial aid.

• Strict Comparison Groups: The law explicitly mandates comparing program earnings with census data for working adults aged 25-34 who have either only a high school diploma (for undergraduate programs) or only a bachelor's degree (for graduate programs).

• Loss of Direct Loans: Programs failing the earnings metric in two out of three consecutive years will automatically lose Federal Direct Loan Program eligibility for a minimum of two years.

Where you CAN and SHOULD push back (Focus your comments here): Faculty should heavily criticize the following regulatory overreaches proposed by the DOE:

• The Unauthorized Inclusion of Undergraduate Certificates: The H.R. 1 statute explicitly carved out undergraduate certificate programs, exempting them from the new earnings accountability standards. However, the DOE is using its existing "Gainful Employment" authority to rope these certificates into the same punitive testing framework anyway. (As a reminder, these accountability metrics target specific certificate and degree programs, not general academic disciplines.) . Faculty should object to this circumvention of Congressional intent, noting that applying these metrics to certificates will devastate chronically underpaid yet essential fields such as early childhood education and allied health. For a deeper dive into the data, faculty can read American University’s recent brief, How Do College Programs Measure Up Against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s New Accountability Standard?, which details how these specific, essential, public-serving programs face disproportionate risk and severe failure rates under the new metrics

• The "Backdoor" Revocation of Pell Grants: H.R. 1 specifies that failing programs lose access to Direct Loans, not Pell Grants. However, the DOE has proposed a new "administrative capability" rule (34 CFR § 668.16(t)). Under this rule, if more than 50% of a college's Title IV recipients or funds are in failing programs, the entire institution is placed on provisional status, and those programs lose access to all Title IV eligibility, including Pell Grants. Faculty should strongly oppose this as a backdoor attempt to strip Pell Grants from our most vulnerable students.

• Demand Accurate "Fields of Study" and "Earnings" Data: The DOE is seeking public feedback on how to define a program's comparison group. (As a reminder, these accountability metrics target specific certificate and degree programs, not general academic disciplines.) Faculty must urge the DOE to use highly specific 4-digit CIP codes rather than broad 2-digit CIP codes to ensure programs are compared to their actual occupational peers. For example, under a broad 2-digit code for Health Professions (CIP 51), essential but lower-paying entry-level programs like medical assisting could be unfairly judged against an artificially inflated average that includes highly lucrative professions like registered nursing or healthcare administration. Additionally, while the DOE has pushed back on adjusting earnings for unreported tip income (e.g., cosmetology), it is vital to keep this issue on the public record. Faculty should suggest concrete, broadly applicable data that the DOE could use to accurately capture this hidden compensation.

• The Highly Restrictive Appeals Process: Under the draft regulations, the DOE strictly limits institutional appeals to cases involving mathematical errors in calculating the earnings premium measure. The DOE explicitly rejected allowing institutions to appeal on the basis of alternative state wage data, graduate surveys, or evidence of a program's societal value. Faculty should demand a comprehensive appeals process that accounts for regional economic realities and the immense civic benefit of lower-paying fields that serve the public good.

• Defending the Comprehensive Mission of Higher Education: While the statute mandates an economic metric, faculty should vehemently object to the DOE’s philosophical shift toward narrow vocationalism. Higher education has historically served a comprehensive mission beyond mere workforce training: to develop the whole person and cultivate critical thinkers, engaged community members, and a generally educated citizenry ready to participate in a diverse democracy. By reducing the value of a college education to a single short-term wage metric, the DOE is signaling an abandonment of fields that serve the public good, such as the arts, humanities, and social services. Faculty should demand that the DOE acknowledge this civic imperative by formally allowing institutions to introduce evidence of a program's societal value and civic benefit during the appeals process.

• The Elimination of Alternative Language Warnings: The DOE has proposed eliminating the requirement for institutions to provide high-stakes warnings in alternative languages to students with limited English proficiency, arguing that students can simply use free online translation tools. Faculty should strongly object to this removal, as it disproportionately harms diverse community college populations and prevents our most vulnerable students from fully understanding critical warnings about their financial aid and educational future.

How and Where to Submit

• Submission Deadline: The DOE must receive your comments by May 20, 2026.

• Submission Portal: All comments must be submitted online through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov.

• No Email or Fax: The DOE will not accept comments submitted by fax or email.

• Docket ID: You must include the specific Docket ID, ED-2026-OPE-0100, at the top of your comments.

AIM Regulations: On the Horizon

In addition to AHEAD, we want to ensure you are aware of the Accreditation, Innovation, and Modernization (AIM) regulations, which will become effective on July 1, 2027. These accreditation changes are driven by Executive Order 14279, "Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education," issued on April 23, 2025.

Importance and Repercussions of the Regulations: The AIM regulations will fundamentally disrupt the accreditation process as we know it, transforming accreditors from collaborative peer-review partners into strict enforcers of federal economic metrics. The proposed changes will have severe repercussions for community colleges in three major ways:

• Weaponizing Accreditation for ROI: The regulations mandate that accreditors evaluate institutions based on program-level student outcomes, specifically requiring them to set minimum expectations for the ROI of tuition, program completion rates, and post-completion placement rates. This forces accreditors to judge educational quality through a narrow, wage-based lens, directly threatening the survival of programs in chronically underpaid yet essential fields such as human services, early childhood education, and the arts. We are already seeing the leading edge of this shift.. Over the past year, the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) launched new Student Achievement Dashboards that evaluate programs using a Price-to-Earnings Premium (PEP) ROI metric, and just this January, they released a white paper urging colleges to assess high-ROI versus at-risk programs. The AIM regulations will cement and accelerate these outcomes-based expectations.

• Loss of Curricular Autonomy: To reduce costs for students, the AIM rules will mandate a "presumption of transferability" for credits earned at other accredited institutions toward general education requirements or electives. This effectively strips faculty and institutions of their historical autonomy to evaluate the rigor and equivalency of outside coursework, requiring a detailed written rationale to deny any transfer credit.

• Upending the Accreditation Landscape: The rules actively seek to increase market competition among accrediting agencies by removing geographic constraints and discouraging regional scope. Additionally, the rules will ease restrictions on institutions that wish to change accreditors or hold multiple accreditations simultaneously, while also eliminating the 'two-year rule' for accrediting agencies, which will flood the market with new, less-experienced accreditors.

• Overhauling Commission Composition and Expertise: The AIM regulations propose strict new rules that will change who can serve on an accreditor's decision-making body (the commissioners). The rules redefine "representatives of the public" on these boards, explicitly banning anyone who is currently or previously a "supplier of higher education services". The mandate requires conflict-of-interest controls that prevent members from participating in or voting on standards that even indirectly affect their own institutions. These changes threaten to sideline experienced educators and institutional leaders from serving in key accreditation roles, further diluting the commission's collaborative, peer-review nature.

Upcoming Committee Sessions and Public Comment: Please note that the public comment period for the AIM regulations is not yet available. However, the DOE’s AIM negotiated rulemaking committee is currently holding sessions to develop these rules. The committee is scheduled to meet for two weeklong sessions: April 13-17 and May 18-22, 2026, daily from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. EDT.

Faculty and interested parties can register to watch these negotiated rulemaking sessions online. The ACCJC is actively monitoring these negotiations. It has created an AIM Negotiated Rulemaking Committee FAQ webpage to provide updates as more information becomes available. We will notify you as soon as the public comment period officially opens.

Call to Action: These dual policies, AHEAD and AIM, represent a highly aggressive shift toward positioning program-level ROI as the primary tool for public accountability. We strongly encourage you to submit your comments on the currently open AHEAD regulations to ensure that our comprehensive educational mission is protected and that faculty expertise shapes these metrics before the AIM regulations take effect.

 FACCC blog posts are written independently by FACCC members and reflect their experiences and recommendations. FACCC neither condemns nor endorses the recommendations herein and has not taken a position on the proposed revision discussed in this post.