When Congress passed the Working Families Tax Cuts bill last year, our goal was to establish a framework for student borrowing that recognized the need to lower the cost of skyrocketing college tuition, both for undergraduates and those in post-graduate programs.
This framework further differentiates loan structures for professional students. Those pursuing degrees that can require advanced training, clinical hours, and professional licensure would have access to higher loan limits than traditional graduate students. It was a reasonable distinction, and many institutions and advocates across the political spectrum understood it that way.
Then, the Department of Education stepped in and made a decision that defies both common sense and congressional intent.
In finalizing its rule on which programs qualify as “professional,” the Department settled on just 11: pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, theology, and clinical psychology. Students in those programs can borrow up to $50,000 per year and $200,000 in total.
Everyone else, including students of nursing, physical therapy, and social work, is capped at $20,500 per year and $100,000 in total.
That gap isn’t a technicality. For some students, it can be the difference between joining the health care workforce and not.
A definition that doesn’t match reality
The Department’s own regulatory definition describes a professional degree program as “one that signifies completion of academic requirements for beginning practice in a given profession, represents a level of skill beyond that normally required for a bachelor’s degree, and commonly requires professional licensure after graduation
Nursing meets that test. Physical and Occupational therapy both meet it. Physician assistant programs, audiology, social work, and public health all meet that test, too.
Yet, the Department’s final rule ignored this three-part test entirely, opting instead for a fixed list that Congress never meant to be the last word.
The Department’s own data shows that roughly 429,000 borrowers in 2023–24 took out more than the new annual loan limit. If these limits had been in effect, every one of those students would have needed a private lender to cover the gap, and many couldn’t qualify for one.
The American Council on Education has documented that 39 percent of students in master’s-level health programs borrow an average of $28,500 more per year than the new limits allow, and 67 percent of doctoral-level health students exceed the cap by an average of $26,700. This is normal for the professions our health care system depends on most.
I understand the efforts to limit loans as one way to drive down runaway tuition. But it doesn’t mirror how many of these programs work. Nursing education is expensive because simulation labs, clinical placements, and specialized faculty are expensive. Those costs don’t disappear because the federal loan limit drops.
What disappears is access, particularly for first-generation students and those from low-income backgrounds who can’t bridge the gap through private borrowing. As a result, many of whom are critical to hospitals, health centers, and other healthcare facilities are unable to provide care.
The Professional Student Degree Act
That’s why I introduced H.R. 6718, the bipartisan Professional Student Degree Act, which has earned support from the American Council on Education and dozens of higher education and professional organizations nationwide.
The bill is targeted. It doesn’t change the loan cap structure Congress established. It simply does what the Department should have done: correctly identifies the programs that meet the regulatory definition of professional degree and puts that list in statute so it can’t be changed on a whim by future administrations.
Students in nursing, physical therapy, occupational therapy, physician assistant programs, audiology, social work, public health, architecture, education, and other qualifying fields would have access to professional loan limits because they are, by any reasonable standard, professional programs.
A deadline is approaching
The new loan limits take effect July 1, applying to students making enrollment decisions right now. Every week without a legislative solution is a week in which prospective nurses, therapists, and educators are recalculating whether they can afford the careers they’ve prepared for.
If your institution trains any of the professionals who have been wrongly classified under this rule, you should communicate that to them, and they to their elected officials, as my constituents have. We, as lawmakers, can’t fix an issue we don’t know is a problem in the first place.
What’s at stake here is a deficit in the workforce that saves lives and delivers care to the communities we live and serve in at a time when qualified practitioners are needed most.
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