CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 22, 2026--
The Earnings Test whitepaper from Validated Insights released today gives insight into which programs are at risk when the Department of Education (ED) evaluates programs for whether their graduates earn more than a high school graduate in the same state. Of the 209,321 programs examined, 49,860 have sufficient data to be evaluated under the test. The Earnings Test also identifies actions institutions can take to improve graduates’ earning outcomes and thus reduce the risk of failing ED’s earnings standards.
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“This effort to identify programs that currently fail or are near-misses is in part a wake-up call to institutions to analyze their programs now while there is time to take action to prevent failing the earnings test in 2027. The Earnings Test whitepaper also provides solutions, identifying seven levers that can move at-risk programs into a better position programmatically,” said Brady Colby, Head of Market Research at Validated Insights.
While individual program performance varies across institutions, degrees, and geographies, analysis in The Earnings Test whitepaper discovered several trends.
“However, most of higher education is not at risk. Nursing degrees have no failing programs at any level,” added Colby. “The exposure in nursing sits in nursing assistant certificates, where 81 of 105 programs sit below the line once the test runs at six digits. The professional degrees sit at zero, too: medicine, law, pharmacy, dentistry, physical therapy, and veterinary medicine, with chiropractic being the one exception. MBAs, HVAC certificates, electricians, welders, engineering, computing, business, criminal justice, psychology, and teacher-preparation programs fail at 1% or less."
Among those levers:
“The Department of Education’s first determination comes in early 2027 on students who completed in 2021 and the earliest that a program can lose loans is 2028-29 – after two failures in three years,” said Colby. “Now is the time to run program numbers and work on at-risk programs. Efforts to support job placement, improved completion rates, and moving students into laddered or increased credential choices can have a measurable effect. Programs are not powerless.”
Validated Insights is providing diagnostic reports for schools and institutions seeking to benchmark their programs against their state’s earnings reports. The 81-page report and accompanying report card plus case studies on psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, social work bachelor’s, medical assisting, liberal arts associate degrees, and nursing assistant certificates, is available to download.
How the Earnings Test Analysis Was Completed:
The Earnings Test whitepaper is a collaborative effort using custom code from Anthropic’s Claude with analysis parameters, research questions, and analyst oversight from Validated Insights. The following data sets were aggregated and analyzed: six Education Department PPD:26 files covering 209,321 programs, the BLS OEWS metropolitan and nonmetropolitan wage files, the Burning Glass Credential Value Index, Payscale Pay-By-Skill Data, the Philadelphia Fed's January 2026 study of graduate borrowing above the new loan caps, National Student Clearinghouse Transfer Data, IPEDS, CACREP, and the program-level debt fields in PPD:26.
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About Validated Insights
Validated Insights is an agile marketing agency specializing in helping higher education institutions achieve and exceed their goals. With a comprehensive suite of services, including digital marketing, paid search, paid social, and web strategy, Validated Insights delivers data-driven strategies and measurable results. The agency's agile testing approach enables short- and long-term growth through better creative, strategy, media execution and continuous brand building. Validated Insights is the only agency in the higher education space to offer a performance guarantee in KPIs in the first 60 days - and continuous growth beyond that.
Most fields hold or gain under the new rules; a few need a plan. Earnings-test exposure (horizontal) against the graduate loan caps or Workforce Pell (vertical), by field. Bubble size = students, 2024-25. Source: Validated Insights, The Earnings Test.
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Virginia state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, one of the state’s most powerful Democrats, was charged on Thursday in connection with what federal authorities alleged was a role leading a wide-ranging criminal enterprise that acquired and distributed large quantities of marijuana and laundered the proceeds.
Lucas, who has been in elected office for decades, used her political power to insulate the operation from scrutiny, according to an indictment charging her and six other defendants, including several of her relatives. She “put her own financial interests before the people she was elected to serve,” said U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, who spoke at a news conference with FBI Director Kash Patel.
Lucas surrendered, a Justice Department spokesperson said, and was expected to make an initial appearance in federal court on Thursday afternoon.
The charges, including drug trafficking and money laundering, came after the FBI searched Lucas' hometown office and a cannabis shop in which she has a stake in May. At the time of the search, Lucas — who has been a vocal critic of Republican President Donald Trump’s administration — characterized it as an attempt to intimidate her.
“This is the circus we always expected it to be, and we will wait for further details to have a more specific response,” said Brian Woolfolk, chief counsel for the L. Louise Lucas Legal Defense Fund.
A statement attributed to Lucas posted on her social media account did not directly address the substance of the charges but said Thursday's actions amounted to the federal government wielding its “full weight” against a great-grandmother.
“I will not be intimidated. I will not be bullied. And I will not back down,” Lucas said in the statement.
The brash 82-year-old lawmaker has spent decades ascending the ranks of Virginia politics and has served since 1992 in the state Senate, where she is the president pro tempore, overseeing the chamber in the lieutenant governor’s absence. More significantly, she leads the powerful Senate finance committee, through which all legislation with any budget impact must flow. She’s used the position to stop and ultimately kill legislation she opposes.
The indictment comes as Trump’s Justice Department has faced intense scrutiny over investigations and prosecutions against foes of the president that critics have called politically motivated.
Blanche rejected any suggestion that politics played a role in Lucas’ case, noting that the investigation began well before the second Trump administration started in January 2025.
“We don’t do political paybacks,” Blanche told reporters.
A person familiar with the May search told the AP at the time that the probe was opened during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.
Patel said in a statement that the charges allege “Lucas and a close-knit group of family members and associates orchestrated a multi-year scheme to enrich their own criminal marijuana enterprise, ‘the Lucas Enterprise’ — using Lucas’ position as Chairwoman of the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee to insulate the enterprise from criminal scrutiny and influencing legislation to financially benefit themselves.”
“No one is above the law," the statement said, "and this FBI will continue to follow the facts with our Justice Department and ensure those responsible for criminal conduct are held accountable.”
Lucas has been a leading voice in Democrats’ ultimately failed attempt to redistrict the state’s congressional map this year, a bid to hedge against Republican efforts in other states to redraw maps for their advantage in midterm elections.
A forceful advocate of legalizing marijuana, Lucas partnered in opening the shop, The Cannabis Outlet, in 2021, selling hemp and CBD products. While marijuana is legal to possess in Virginia, recreational retail sales of the drug are not yet underway, though shops across the state do sell other cannabis-derived products.
Lucas also runs a network of companies that provide residential, transportation and other services to adults with intellectual disabilities.
Court records related to the case for months have been sealed, though earlier this year the Department of Justice sent at least two rounds of letters notifying journalists, politicians and others in Lucas’ orbit that their communications with Lucas had been intercepted as part of a court-approved wiretap that ran for two one-month time spans.
At the time of the search, many Democrats spoke up to defend Lucas, expressing skepticism about the basis for the search, given the Department of Justice’s efforts to establish criminal conduct by perceived Trump opponents.
Lucas has publicly spoken about her ownership stake in the cannabis shop as recently as June, though her most recent financial disclosure forms do not list the business by name.
Lucas, who represents a state Senate district that includes her hometown of coastal Portsmouth, operates with a sometimes-profane, unapologetic style that’s drawn comparisons to Trump.
She amassed a six-figure following on X and national attention, using the social media platform to advocate forcefully for her priorities and to bash her critics, including former GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin. She’s also occasionally blasted members of her own party, including Gov. Abigail Spanberger, with whom she’s had disagreements.
Earlier this year, Lucas helped lead Democrats’ ultimately unsuccessful plan to gerrymander the blue-leaning state’s congressional districts into a map intended to elect 10 Democrats and only one Republican. Along the way, she posted quips about four GOP members the intended map sought to oust, joking that they soon would be working at McDonald’s. She and other Democrats defended the maps as a reasonable response to Trump-backed efforts to boost the GOP’s midterm advantage in other states.
Lucas has notched several historic firsts in her career. According to a biography from the state library, in 1971 she became the Norfolk Naval Shipyard’s first female shipfitter, a physically demanding job that involves working on metal assemblies for vessels.
She launched her political career in 1984, when, the biography said, she became the first Black woman elected to the Portsmouth city council.
In her decades in the state Senate, Lucas has been a staunch advocate for abortion rights and increased public school funding and a leading voice on issues of racial justice and civil rights.
In 2019, after Democrats flipped control of the chamber, her peers elected her to serve as president pro tempore. And in 2024, she was tapped to lead the chamber’s budget committee, gaining enormous sway over any legislation tied to the state budget. In that post, she played a leading role in killing Youngkin’s proposal to bring Washington’s NBA and NHL teams to a proposed $2 billion development in Virginia.
Rankin reported from Richmond. Associated Press reporter Eric Tucker contributed from Washington.
FBI Director Kash Patel, right, US Attorney General Todd Blanche, center, and Assistant US Attorney Theophani Stamos, during a press conference announcing the indictment of Virginia State Sen. Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, Thursday Oct. 22, 2026, in Norfolk, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
FILE - Virginia Senate President pro tempore Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, listens to debate on the Senate floor, Feb. 17, 2026, in Richmond, Va. (AP Photo/Ryan M. Kelly, File)
FILE - Virginia Senate President pro tempore Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, listens to debate on the Senate floor, Feb. 17, 2026, in Richmond, Va. (AP Photo/Ryan M. Kelly, File)
