Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' could drastically impact seminaries and Christian colleges, school leaders warn

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Friday, May 08, 2026

Christian college and seminary presidents are speaking out against a provision in President Donald Trump’s most significant domestic policy legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that will have consequences for students pursuing degrees in ministry and religious studies.

The Association for Biblical Higher Education, which oversees 165 institutions with a combined 86,639 students, invited nearly two dozen presidents of schools in its association to lobby Congress to exempt their students from Section 84001 of the Big Beautiful Bill, also known as H.R. 1.

The provision amends the Higher Education Act of 1965 to restrict federally subsidized student loans for students pursuing degrees in “low-earning outcome programs.”

ABHE President Philip Dearborn told The Christian Post that the “Do No Harm” provision is the federal government’s attempt to provide “accountability for colleges addressing the high cost of higher education, the escalating cost of higher education and the amount of loans that were being taken out.”

However, the bill's broad characterization of higher education is “one of the missteps with this legislation," he said. The department intends to “pull data from the IRS four years after a student graduates in that particular program” to “come up with an average salary” for “that cohort at that institution," Dearborn said. 

“And if that salary is not higher than the average salary of 24- to 32-year-olds in that state at that point, if it’s not higher than it, then the department deems it a failing program,” he said. “If a program fails two consecutive years, then students can no longer apply for financial loans to that program. Then the department added another provision to it in the rulemaking process that said if 50% of an institution’s programs are considered failing programs, then the institution is not eligible for any Title IV participation, which is a pretty broad stroke.”

Data shared with The Christian Post based on a preliminary analysis from the U.S. Department of Education shows that 53.3% of Title IV students in bachelor’s degree programs in religion and religious studies would be enrolled in failing programs, along with 89.4% of Title IV students in master’s degree programs in the same fields.

Title IV refers to the program that administers federal financial assistance for postsecondary education.

Acknowledging that the goal of the “Do No Harm” provision is to determine whether colleges prepare students for “high-paying” occupations, Dearborn stressed that “our concern within biblical higher education, specifically Christian higher education, a little bit more generally, is that students aren’t attending our institutions with the exclusive singular goal of getting a high-paying job.” 

“They’re responding to God’s call in their life," he said.

“Often times, people are responding to God’s call to be a pastor, to be a youth pastor, to be a missionary and they’re not in it to make money,” Dearborn added. “Obviously, the legislation did not intentionally disproportionately impact religious higher education. That was something that the department figured out after the legislation was passed, and it’s very clear that it disproportionately impacts our institutions.”

Dearborn first became aware of the impact of the Big Beautiful Bill on the institutions he oversees in recent months after the legislation’s passage last summer.

He invited 21 presidents of schools in his network to Washington, D.C., last week to meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. He encouraged the school leaders to request meetings with the two U.S. senators representing the states where their institutions are located, as well as the member of Congress whose district includes the school.

Dearborn estimated that between 50 and 60 meetings took place last week with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

“Everyone that we met with was sympathetic and didn’t know or didn’t realize that this … provision of Do No Harm had this disproportionate impact on religious higher education,” he recalled. “So it was really a good education time to inform our elected officials of ‘Hey, this is a problem.’ And we suggested some legislative fixes that they could do.”

The main solutions suggested by Dearborn would involve using the budget reconciliation process to exempt religious institutions from the “Do No Harm” provision or providing an exemption for all students studying religion, religious studies or similar fields. He clarified that the U.S. Department of Education would also have the authority to make the changes.

“We’re activating what we can to get this fixed for our institutions because if this goes through as it is written, according to the rules that the Department of Education put through, this could have a never-before-seen impact on federal loan funding and potentially Pell funding for religious higher education,” he warned.

Dearborn told CP that the department must inform institutions of any failing programs by Jan. 1, 2027.

“If it fails for a second year, then that’s when loans would stop if a program fails for two consecutive years,” he noted.