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The changes, authorized through Republicans' recent budget reconciliation legislation, would impose new federal student loan caps beginning July 1, 2026. Under the proposal, students pursuing degrees designated as "professional" could borrow up to $50,000 annually with a $200,000 lifetime limit. However, graduate programs excluded from the professional category would face sharply lower caps—$20,500 per year and $100,000 over a lifetime.
The proposed rule defines professional degrees as those "signifying both completion of academic requirements for beginning practice in a given profession and a level of professional skill beyond that normally required for a bachelor's degree." Programs meeting this definition include medicine, law, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry and theology.
Notably absent from the list are nursing, education, physical therapy, physician assistant programs, audiology, architecture, social work and accounting—omissions that have drawn sharp criticism from professional organizations and university leaders.
Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, president of the American Nurses Association, called nursing's exclusion inexplicable.
"It makes no sense," she said, expressing hope the Education Department will revise the proposal before it undergoes public comment.
University of Maryland, Baltimore President Bruce E. Jarrell and Provost Roger J. Ward issued a joint statement expressing bitter disappointment with the proposal.
