Michigan needs more behavioral health professionals.

LifeWays, a Michigan behavioral health agency, argues that a new federal earnings-accountability rule could cut off graduate social work programs from federal student loans because the rule measures graduate-level earners against a bachelor's-degree benchmark. Programs that fail the test two years out of three can lose access to federal Direct Loans for at least two years. Separately, the Department of Education declined to classify social work degrees as professional degrees eligible for higher federal loan limits, despite extensive public comment arguing they should be.

The piece notes Michigan has an estimated 530 annual job openings for mental health and substance use social workers, even as the state invests in training more of them. The author frames the federal changes as working against that state effort, potentially narrowing the pipeline of people able to afford the degree needed to do the job.

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