I never thought I’d see the day, but I think I just might agree with Donald Trump’s administration. But only on one thing.
On Wednesday July 1, the US Department of Education published a final rule that ties federal student loans to what graduates earn. Four years after they finish, an undergraduate programme’s graduates must out-earn the typical high school leaver in their state.
Master’s graduates must beat the typical bachelor’s degree holder.
A programme that fails in two out of three consecutive years loses access to federal direct loans, with the first cut-offs due in the 2028/29 academic year.
Most programmes will pass.
Yet more than 800,000 US students attend programmes the department’s own data flags as likely to fail, NPR reported on Tuesday June 30.
Washington’s logic is blunt.
“If postsecondary education programs do not leave graduates better off, taxpayers should not subsidize them,” under secretary of education Nicholas Kent said in April.
In two weeks, on Tuesday October 13, the matric class of 2026 starts its final exams.
Many will then spend public money, family savings or borrowed rands on the next qualification. We should ask Washington’s question before anyone pays a fee, and government should help families answer it.
The Eastern Cape can least afford to skip it.
Our official unemployment rate reached 47.5% in the second quarter of 2026, the highest of any province, according to Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey.
The national rate stood at 33.6%. Close to one in two people here who are looking for work can’t find it.
This year the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) approved funding for more than 1.24 million students.
Each of those bursaries is a public bet that a qualification will provide a return.
Education still pays, and the same survey shows it.
Graduates face an unemployment rate of 12.4%, against 36% for people with matric and 39.2% for those without it. A degree remains a sound bet. The wrong degree may be a poor one.
Full disclosure: I have no children of my own, but I spent more than a decade teaching, training and facilitating in Gangnam, one of the most financially well-off districts in Seoul, South Korea.
I often asked the men in my executive sessions why they had come.
The answers barely varied: a promotion, a better job, more money, a family to support.
Education should sharpen the mind. It must also put food on the table.
So before you pay for any degree, diploma or short course, it should run four checks.
First, fit. Does the student have a real aptitude for the field, and will the interest last once the novelty fades?
Second, demand. Will anyone pay for this skill? Name the employers or clients waiting at the other end. If nobody can, that’s the answer.
Third, the full route. For example, to register as a psychologist with the Health Professions Council of South Africa, an honours degree won’t do.
The Professional Board for Psychology requires a master’s degree, a 12-month internship and a national exam.
A family budgeting for three years of study may be looking at six or more.
Fourth, the return. Weigh the salary gap a qualification opens against its full cost, including the income a student gives up while studying.
A qualification that opens no earnings gap is an expense.
Scarcity can widen that gap. Just 1% of South Africans aged 25 to 34 hold a master’s degree, against an average of 16% across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
That’s from the OECD’s Education at a Glance 2025 report. Across OECD countries, adults with a master’s or doctorate earn on average 83% more than those who stopped at upper secondary school.
Rare skills carry pricing power.
Prestige can also blind us to the trades.
PayScale puts the typical SA electrician’s pay at about R226,000 a year.
Experienced electricians earn closer to R340,000. Neither figure requires a university degree, and nobody can outsource a rewire in Walmer to another continent.
Parents rightly want their children to outdo them.
For a generation, that meant medicine, law or accounting. Those paths still work.
A title means little, though, if the payslip never follows.
The Department of Higher Education and Training holds the tools to help.
It should publish what the graduates of each programme at each institution earn, and NSFAS should set those figures beside every funding decision.
Before a matric picks a course this summer, which will likely determine their livelihood, someone must ask who will pay for it.
The department should hand every family the numbers to ensure they are able to make an informed decision.
Delon le Roux is the founder of The G.O.A.T Group in Gqeberha. He holds an EMBA from a Washington-based business school and spent over a decade teaching and training executives in Seoul, South Korea
