Date of Award

Summer 8-22-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D. in Business

Organizational Unit

Daniels College of Business

First Advisor

Jack Strauss

Second Advisor

Ali Besharat

Third Advisor

Kellie Keeling

Fourth Advisor

Marc Guerrero

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Keywords

Debt service coverage ratio, Federal student loans, Higher education finance, Information assymetry, Repayment distress, Student loan affordability

Abstract

The federal student loan system disburses more than $100 billion annually on the premise that higher education expands economic opportunity. That premise depends on a condition the system never verifies. Do the programs that students borrow for, to attend generate enough earnings, net of taxes and the cost of living, to cover both basic living costs and loan repayment. This dissertation examines that condition empirically and traces its policy consequences through two complementary papers.

Paper 1, Borrowed Blind: Program-Level Information Asymmetry in Federal Student Lending, provides the empirical foundation. The analysis evaluates 10,602 bachelor's degree programs across eleven states using two coverage-based metrics, the 10-Year Coverage Ratio (CR₁₀) and the Residual Income Remainder (RIR). Both metrics are calibrated to the commercial Debt Service Coverage Ratio (DSCR) threshold of 1.20. The solvency threshold used throughout this analysis is a CR₁₀ of 1.20, the same minimum coverage ratio commercial and mortgage lenders require before approving a loan. Among programs whose graduates fall below this threshold at repayment onset, 73.6% never recover within the standard ten-year federal repayment window. As an example, a K-12 Education graduate begins loan repayment unable to cover basic living costs and monthly loan payments combined. Despite ten years of payments, most never close that gap. This is not because they borrowed too much, but because their degree does not pay enough for where they live.

Distress is concentrated in Non-STEM programs (87.8% Year 1 distress rate), for-profit institutions (83.8%), and high-cost states. A median gross-to-net income gap of $8,404 annually explains why 31.9% of programs are classified differently under gross-versus net-income metrics.

Paper 2, The Disclosure Gap, takes these findings to Congress. It presents a legislative framework prepared for the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, translating the empirical evidence into specific policy recommendations. The paper identifies three mechanisms of persistent distress, being income trajectory, geographic cost of living, and total debt burden, and evaluates four policy alternatives. It recommends a two-track legislative strategy. Recommendations include two legislative actions. First, a standalone bill requiring colleges to disclose program-level earnings to students before enrollment and second, a longer-term reauthorization provision replacing the current gross earnings benchmark with a residual income standard that accounts for taxes and cost of living.

Together, the two papers establish that the student debt crisis is not primarily a borrowing problem but an information problem. With better information up front, students may make different decisions. The data needed to evaluate whether a degree program is financially viable already exists in federal systems. It is never assembled, never translated, and never placed in a student’s hands before the borrowing decision is made. This dissertation documents the scope of that gap, identifies its structural causes, and proposes the legislative architecture required to close it.

Copyright Date

8-2026

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Cody Teets

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

English (eng)

Extent

184 pgs

File Size

2.6 MB

Download

Available for download on Friday, September 24, 2027



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