Students enrolled in Pasadena City College's cosmetology program could lose access to federal student loans under a new federal law that took effect in July, with the earliest possible cutoff date of July 1, 2029.

The "Do No Harm" earnings test, part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed July 4, 2025, requires every college and certificate program in the country to prove its graduates earn at least the median wage of a state resident with only a high school diploma. In California, that threshold is $36,000 a year. Programs that fail the test for two out of three consecutive years will see their students cut off from federal loans.

The U.S. Department of Education published the final rule on July 1, 2026.

PCC's exposure

PCC lists cosmetology as an Associate in Science degree in its current academic catalog. Nationally, the Education Department expects more than 90% of undergraduate cosmetology certificate programs to fail the earnings test, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis published July 22. Cosmetology and tip-based programs received an extra compliance year; students in those programs could lose loan access no earlier than July 1, 2029.

PCC has not disclosed how many students are enrolled in the program, and the college has not publicly responded to the new rule. PCC also offers programs in medical assisting and dental assisting, fields that appear among the roughly 300 California programs that failed the threshold statewide, according to an analysis by Michael Itzkowitz, president of the HEA Group.

Statewide picture

Of nearly 3,000 California programs evaluated, about 300 failed, concentrated in cosmetology, medical assisting, arts, and theater, Itzkowitz found. Theater and fine arts programs at eight Cal State campuses and three UC campuses also fell short. Most failing programs are at for-profit schools, where about 33% of programs are expected to miss the mark, compared with roughly 3% at public and nonprofit four-year institutions.

"We've been playing regulatory ping pong," Itzkowitz told CalMatters on Wednesday, July 16. "This has more teeth now because it's actually written by Congress and put into law."

According to Itzkowitz, the law marks the first time Congress has written a college accountability standard into statute, giving it more durability than Obama- and Biden-era rules reversed by subsequent administrations.

ArtCenter and Caltech likely unaffected

ArtCenter College of Design graduates earn a median of roughly $71,958 ten years after enrollment, according to federal College Scorecard data. That's nearly double the $36,000 floor. But the institution-level figure has not been broken down by specific program, and some fine arts bachelor's programs at other California schools have failed the test. ArtCenter did not respond to CalMatters' outreach about the law.

Caltech faces no risk. Its graduates earn a median of $132,140 six years after entry, per College Scorecard data updated December 2025.

Timeline for Pasadena families

The Education Department will begin calculating program-level graduate earnings in early 2027 and plans to release initial pass/fail data that year. Programs outside cosmetology that fail could see students lose loan eligibility starting in the 2028-2029 aid year. Cosmetology programs have until July 1, 2029.

The earnings data used for the test comes from 2022 and 2023 IRS tax returns for graduates from the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 school years.