Pursuing a doctoral degree in the social justice for education program at the University of San Diego was an opportunity that second-year student Reyan Warren long thought would never be afforded to her.
So when Warren — who also currently teaches high school English in a rural school community in Adelanto, California — heard that the U.S. Department of Education is proposing the omission of education from programs considered to be a “professional degree,” she said the proposal made her feel sad.
A negotiating committee convened by the Education Department agreed to a proposal this month that excludes education — among other programs — from being considered a “professional degree,” according to the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
A lowered cap on federal student loans available to certain graduate students was approved in the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which established the term “professional degrees” to be used internally by the agency to distinguish programs that qualify for higher student loan limits, according to an Education Department fact sheet released Nov. 24. The law also directed the Education Department to identify “professional degree” programs that will be eligible for the higher federal lending limits.
The definition as it applies to those federal loan limits is not final and will be open for discussion and public comment when a proposed rule is published in the Federal Register as the agency finalizes the regulation early next year, according to the department.
Only graduate and doctoral students pursuing professions under this proposed definition — such as medicine, dentistry or law — would be eligible for higher federal lending limits capped at $200,000. Students outside of those defined professions would be capped at $100,000 in federal loans for their graduate or doctoral programs.
The new limits will begin in July 2026 for new borrowers, with an annual cap at $20,500 for graduate students and $50,000 for professional students.
Undergraduate students would “generally” not be affected by these new lending limits, the Education Department said in its fact sheet.
How this could impact the K-12 pipeline
During the 2022-23 school year, there were 90,710 bachelor’s degrees in education conferred nationwide compared to 143,669 master’s degrees, according to an analysis of federal data by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.
A separate AACTE analysis of the most recent federal data from 2019-20 found that doctoral students in education are the most likely to borrow near or over the proposed $100,000 federal loan cap. Doctoral students in the 75th percentile of borrowers typically took out about $89,000 in cumulative loans, while the 90th percentile took out $115,000.
For those pursuing education master’s degrees in 2019-20, students in the 75th percentile borrowed nearly $39,000 in total graduate school loans, compared to $61,500 in the 90th percentile, according to AACTE.
Still, the median amount borrowed five years ago was well below the new $100,000 limit for all graduate and doctoral students in the 50th percentile of borrowers, AACTE found.
The proposed exclusion of education from being considered a professional degree could jeopardize the pipeline for high-quality teachers as well as school and district leaders, said Jacqueline King, consultant for research, policy and advocacy at AACTE.
Warren agreed with that concern and said the proposed loan limits could also lead to “fewer candidates, fewer future leaders, fewer diverse voices, fewer doctoral students, fewer highly educated and highly prepared educators in our classrooms.” Warren added that her incurred loans since graduate school alone are also encroaching on a total of roughly $100,000.
Data from the Education Department also shows that 90% of education graduate students borrow below the annual loan limit and would not be affected by the caps, the agency told K-12 Dive on Tuesday.
However, for the remaining 10% of graduate students over the loan limit, the Education Department said it expects “that institutions charging tuition rates well above market prices will consider lowering tuition” as a result of reforms in the “One Big, Beautiful Bill.”
It’s worth noting that the federal data the Education Department and AACTE are referring to is from over five years ago, Warren said. The proposed lowering of these federal loan caps does not “reflect the current economic realities” that graduate students are facing, including an increase in tuition and the overall cost of living, she said.
“Graduate students today are already borrowing more than what they were borrowing five years ago,” Warren said, adding that the proposed loan limits would “place additional burdens on students who are already stretched so thin.”
Along with education, nursing was also excluded from the Education Department’s drafted definition of “professional degrees.” This “could restrict access to the advanced education many school nurses rely on for licensure, certification, and leadership roles,” the National Association of School Nurses said in a Tuesday statement.
NASN added that this proposed definition goes beyond loan limits for graduate students. It’s also about “professional identity,” the association said.
Because of this, the proposal risks “sending a message that advanced nursing preparation is somehow ‘less than’ — when in fact, school nursing requires sophisticated clinical judgment, public-health competency, care coordination, and systems leadership,” NASN said.