Trump is changing student-loan eligibility for professional degrees. Here's what you need to know.NEWS | 28 November 2025This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.
This year, there's a new topic to argue about at the Thanksgiving table: What is a professional degree?
It's a question that President Donald Trump's Department of Education recently addressed in its overhaul of student-loan repayment. That's led to criticism from groups that are not included in the department's narrower degree definition.
The crux of the issue is new borrowing limits. Trump's "big beautiful" spending legislation that he signed into law in July included new borrowing caps on professional and graduate student loans, aiming to curb excessive borrowing: $20,500 a year for graduate students or $100,000 over a lifetime, and $50,000 a year for professional students or $200,000 over a lifetime.
In addition to the caps, the department also reclassified what constitutes a professional degree, narrowing it down to 10 programs, including dentistry, medicine, and law.
Some advocates said the department's professional degree definition could strain student-loan borrowing access to those in the healthcare profession seeking post-graduate training, like nurses, although the changes won't affect undergraduate borrowing.
"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," Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, president of the American Nurses Association, said in a statement.
The Department of Education said that the new definitions only reflect which programs qualify for higher loan limits and are "not a value judgement about the importance of programs. It has no bearing on whether a program is professional in nature or not."
How will the changes to student-loan borrowing caps and professional degrees impact you? Share your story with this reporter at asheffey@businessinsider.com.
Student-loan changes to professional degree programs
The Department of Education said 10 post-graduate programs will be counted as professional degrees and will be eligible for the higher student-loan cap: pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, and theology.
Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the conservative think-tank the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in a Monday blog post that Congress "legislated only broad guidelines as to how graduate programs should be classified," and the distinction between professional and non-professional programs was left to the discretion of the Education Department.
When it comes to nursing programs, Cooper said that the "new caps will affect only a small number of programs charging exorbitant prices."
The Department of Education said that, based on its data, 95% of nursing students borrow below the new student-loan cap. The average cost of a master's degree in nursing in 2020 ranged from $15,030 to nearly $43,000, per the National Center for Education Statistics.
The borrowing caps could strain other professions and cause some students to either forgo their advanced degrees or turn to the riskier, private lending market. For example, the Association of American Medical Colleges found that the median cost for four years of public medical school was $286,454 for the class of 2024. For law school, the average total cost was just over $217,000. The $200,000 lifetime cap would be insufficient to cover those tuition amounts.
While negotiations on the changes have concluded, the public will have an opportunity to comment on the proposals early next year before the department moves toward final implementation. The department said that it "may make changes in response to public comments."Author: Never Miss A Story. Ayelet Sheffey. Enter Your Email. Follow Authors. Source
