How the public responded to the “Do No Harm” earnings rule.
Across 8,796 public comments, 72% opposed the rule and 27% supported it. Only 1.5% came from organized form-letter campaigns. The rest are 8,668 original submissions from colleges, aid administrators, students, and individuals.
Executive summary
Public response to the proposed “Do No Harm” earnings-accountability rule, which ties Title IV federal aid eligibility to graduates' earnings, skews predominantly negative, with 72% (6,352 comments) opposing it and 27% (2,395 comments) supporting it. The dominant themes among opponents include concerns over access to education and the impact on financial aid, with both themes featuring fear as the primary emotion and a high polarization level.
Major concerns focus on the potential loss of financial aid, negative impacts on students and specific industries like cosmetology, and broader economic impacts. Supporters emphasize the importance of financial aid in providing educational access and choice, with 63.4% of related comments expressing hope. Private and for-profit institutions of higher education largely oppose the rule (81.8%), while stakeholders like financial aid administrators and students show some support at around 40%.
Recommendations for policymakers include maintaining financial aid programs, considering industry-specific impacts, and potentially delaying implementation to avoid disruptive consequences. Emerging topics highlight a late surge in concerns about educational access and the role of financial aid, demanding a nuanced response from policymakers.
The verdict
Who showed up
What they argued about
Coordinated campaigns
In their own words
“Program-level information is essential for students navigating their postsecondary education options, where costs and outcomes can vary substantially across programs and institutions.”
“These rules are clearly designed around traditional medical employment models and completely ignore the reality that many chiropractors, acupuncturists, and massage therapists build independent practices from the ground up.”
“I was taught in aesthetic school like I was in nursing school to do no harm.”
“Access to education should not be determined by a one-size-fits-all formula that fails to account for industry realities.”
“With this proposed rule you would be jeopardizing the future of our industry, and many would not be able to afford to do this.”
“Cosmetology is a trade that can truly change your future.”
“Preserving funding for massage and wellness education is not only an investment in students, it is an investment in public health, workforce readiness, and economic growth.”
“Any fair standard must account for the self-employment realities of our workforce, adopt a longer earnings window that reflects how beauty careers actually develop, and recognize the immense social and economic value these programs deliver.”
“When you remove realistic, attainable career options, you REINFORCE poverty, rather than reducing it.”
“The current formula is producing deeply flawed and unfair outcomes that threaten high-quality, state-licensed training programs and the thousands of professionals who serve our communities every day.”
“This would not yield stronger programs or better outcomes, but rather it would take away freedom from students like me who decide to pursue doctoral studies.”
“This industry changed my life, and I've watched it do the same for so many students who just needed access and a chance.”
“Hair Academy is not just education. It is survival. It is a sanctuary.”
“This legislation would DECIMATE our industry.”
“92.5% of cosmetology programs would fail the Earnings Premium measure as currently designed.”
“If programs lose eligibility for financial aid, students don't just lose funding, they lose opportunity.”
“Removing financial aid from these programs does not eliminate the demand for these careers, it simply restricts who is able to pursue them.”
“Education is the key to upward mobility. Why would you ever want to limit that?”
Arguments & evidence
The shape of participation
Consensus & division
Emotional register
Concerns & asks
Regulatory flashpoints
RFRA / Do No Harm religious-exercise challenge. Multiple letter clusters argue the Do No Harm provision, applied to faith-based institutions training students for religious vocations, creates a substantial burden on religious exercise without meeting RFRA's least-restrictive-means standard. 26 letters frame the argument in those terms. Expect a religious-exemption carveout or a narrowly-tailored implementation timeline.
Cosmetology and beauty-industry challenge. Volume-driven, not legal. 122 comments mention impact on the beauty industry; 425 are tagged Cosmetology Education. Named-organization concentration (Milan, Praxis, Qnity, Augusta School of Massage, American Institute of Beauty) makes the political pressure visible. Most plausible outcome: a longer measurement window or a self-employment-aware earnings adjustment.
Administrative-capability scope challenge. 26 letters argue ED's expansion of the administrative-capability standard exceeds the statutory grant in OBBBA. This is the cluster most likely to surface in litigation. The Department will need a clean administrative record showing the connection to a specific statutory provision.
The three changes most likely to land
What this means for your February 2027 prep
Here is the uncomfortable part for IR and IE leaders. None of these comments change your deadline.
Whatever survives into the final rule, the Department still intends to publish the first official Earnings Premium results at the 6-digit CIP level in February 2027, built on cohorts who have already graduated. The methodology may soften at the margins. The timeline will not.
So the comments are not a reason to wait. They are a map of which of your programs are about to be in the conversation. Short-term credentials, lower-wage workforce fields, anything adjacent to the cosmetology cluster, and any faith-based program with a religious-vocation track. The program-level exposure-map playbook is the operational companion to this read; the 50% institutional trigger is the rollup the cabinet will ask about next; and the FVT/GE final reporting year guide covers what to do with the October 1, 2026 submission in transition.
The institutions that look at their own exposure first will be the ones with options. The rest will be reacting to a press release.
The language of the comments
See your exposure the same way we read the docket
Clema's STATS AI Agent reads the program-level data directly and answers in plain English. Which of our programs fail the earnings-premium test, and by how much. The same structured analysis we used to read 8,796 comments, pointed at your own program portfolio.
Try the STATS AI AgentAbout this analysis
Every public comment on docket ED-2026-OPE-0100-0001 was collected via the regulations.gov API, including attached PDF and image letters (image scans transcribed with OCR). Each unique submission was analyzed by an LLM for stance, themes, arguments, and tone. Near-identical submissions were grouped by embedding similarity and a single representative was analyzed per cluster. 8,796 comments enriched. AI classification is imperfect. Treat figures as well-grounded estimates, not exact counts.
Primary sources: STATS NPRM on regulations.gov · sample public comment · AIR Program Accountability Reporting resource center · FSA FVT/GE knowledge center.