The Reclassification of Professional Degree Programs
As the first year of Trump’s second term in office nears its end, we have watched as our own lives and the lives of those around us are turned upside down. Now, new changes enacted by the U.S. Department of Education are bringing even more life altering news.
The definition of “professional degree” program has been updated to exclude several important professions. This is just one of the many shifts that has come alongside the implementation of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
To define what will count as a professional program, the administration is looking to a 1965 federal law that governs student financial aid. The law includes examples of professional degrees, but mentions it isn’t an exhaustive list. By contrast, the Trump administration’s proposal has clarified that only the degrees written in the new regulation will count as a professional degree.
The stricken professions include nursing, education, social work, physician assistance, physical therapy, audiology, architecture, accounting, and more. It has been reported that engineering, a business master’s, counseling or therapy, and speech pathology will also no longer be considered “professional.”
Many of the mentioned professions’ demographics are largely made up of women and minorities. Nursing, education, social work, physician assistance, physical therapy, audiology, and accounting specifically are often considered as female dominated fields.
The professions considered as professional include pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, and theology.
This reclassification of what a “professional degree” program is will mainly affect students enrolled in related university programs. Students in degree programs newly considered as “non-professional” will be limited to borrowing $20,500 a year and up to $100,000 total, while students in degree programs considered “professional” can borrow $50,000 a year and up to $200,000 in total. These restrictions will take effect in July of next year.
The U.S Department Of Education recently published a press release stating that they believe these limits will push many universities to look at lowering higher-than-average tuition rates and effectively lower student debt.
The federal fact sheet also included the clarification of the changes as an internal definition meant “to distinguish among programs that qualify for higher loan limits” and is “not a value judgement about the importance of programs… it has no bearing on whether a program is professional in nature or not.”
Serious backlash is particularly seen coming from nurses and healthcare organizations. The U.S. is currently experiencing a nursing shortage and the reclassification of nursing will be directly contributing to this shortage by impacting application and graduation rates for related programs due to changes in graduate student access to federal loans and loan forgiveness programs.
“At a time when healthcare in our country faces a historic nurse shortage and rising demands, limiting nurses' access to funding for graduate education threatens the very foundation of patient care,” said Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, American Nurses Association President. “In many communities across the country, particularly in rural and underserved areas, advanced practice registered nurses ensure access to essential, high-quality care that would otherwise be unavailable."
This decreased guarantee of needed financial aid coverage could deter students from pursuing the graduate degrees required for teaching and specialized patient care, and limit the amount of student diversity seen in these programs.
“Severely restrict access to critical funding for graduate nursing education, undermining efforts to grow and sustain the nursing workforce,” Mensik Kennedy said.
The reclassification affecting student loans will be a leading, discouraging factor in students' decision on whether or not to advance their education. It will also take pursuing advanced education and training-intensive career related programs completely off of the table for several others.
The fact that several of the professions excluded from the list of those that are considered professional are largely female staffed, is also not lost on the public. This change will put a larger financial burden on incredibly essential professions that often offer lower pay to its predominantly female occupied workforces, making this bill proportionately affect more women than men.
