The job hasn't changed, but the degree required to get it has. Over the past three decades, one profession after another has raised its educational entry price: a bachelor's became a master's...a master's became a doctorate...a short training course became a year of mandatory classes.
These new requirements are adding years of tuition and borrowing for careers that pay roughly what they paid before the new requirements were added. The labor market simply doesn't pay more because you got more education.
Economists call it degree inflation, and the most surprising part isn't the cost. It's who decides "what's required". In many licensed fields, the degree you must "buy" isn't set by Congress or your state legislature. It's set by private organizations most Americans have never heard of: accrediting agencies.
And because of how the higher education system is wired, a single change by one of these groups can raise the required degree standards for an entire profession in all 50 states at once, with no election, no hearing in your statehouse, and no vote by anyone you can vote out.
That system is now squarely in Washington's crosshairs. The Department of Education's negotiated rulemaking committee reached consensus on May 21, 2026, on new regulations that would put a stop to this practice. The Department had named "credential inflation" as an explicit target when it launched the committee in January.
To understand why that matters for your family's college costs, you first have to understand a system that almost nobody outside higher education knows exists.