Kaitlyn Hughes | news editor

As a health sciences major, Jermaine Taylor is worried about his future when it comes to federal loan caps.

“If I can’t afford grad school, that’s going to derail my plans,” Taylor said.

In November, the U.S. Department of Education concluded a negotiation rulemaking session and agreed on the federal student loan-related changes within President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was passed in July.

Trump’ s bill will cap annual loans for graduate students at $20,500, and there is a lifetime limit of $100,000. For students who are in “professional” degree programs, the bill caps annual loans at $50,000, and there is a lifetime limit of $200,000. The changes will go into effect in July 2026.

Before this, graduate students could borrow up to the cost of attendance.

The Department of Education said that degrees such as pharmacy, dentistry doctorate, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, podiatry, theology and clinical psychology meet the requirements to be considered professional.

Not included on the list are degrees such as nursing, physician assistant, physical therapists, audiologists, architects, accountants, educators and social workers.

A professional degree marks the academic requirements for beginning practice in a given profession and a level of professional skill beyond that normally required for bachelor’s degree, according to the department.

The use of the term “professional student” is to help the department consider programs that qualify for higher loan limits and is “not a value judgment about the importance of programs,” the department said.

The department has not published a proposed or final rule defining professional students and may make changes in response to public comments.

The rulemaking from the Department of Education will eliminate the Grad PLUS program, cap Parent PLUS loans and create a new Repayment Assistance Plan.

Mary Ellen Smith Glasgow, dean of the School of Nursing, said that many people have interpreted the exclusion of nursing from the list of professional degrees as a “swipe at the profession at a time when we are already facing critical shortages in nursing and nursing faculty.”

Peter Hinrichs, an economist studying education policy, said the use of the term “professional” makes it sounds like there are certain careers that are of higher value than others.

He said that it would be beneficial if there was clearer criteria for what qualifies as a professional degree.

“It can say, ‘we wish we could give higher loan limits in this degree program, but as it turns out the data show that people in that profession don’t earn quite as much. And so they didn’t meet the threshold. And thus, we’re going to give a lower loan limit,’” he said.

Impacts on careers, students and universities

Hinrichs said that some universities may lower tuition for the programs not on the list.

“If that happens, then there might not be as many students displaced from those programs as we might expect,” he said.

Hinrichs said that the impact of the loan caps on certain fields will depend on if there are ways to enter a profession without a graduate degree.

But Hinrichs said the loan caps still may cause difficulty.

“If the government made certain programs more difficult to borrow for, then we’d probably see less people entering those programs,” he said.

Joel Bauman, senior vice president of enrollment management, said that federal graduate loan programs are recent developments, and for years students have successfully financed their educations through private loans, savings, employer tuition assistance and scholarship.

“While proposed federal borrowing caps may change how students finance graduate education, we’re confident that most will continue to pursue these vital careers,” he said.

The Department of Education said in a statement that 95% of nursing students borrow below the annual loan limit and are not affected by the new caps. The statement said placing a cap on loans will push the remaining graduate nursing programs to reduce their program costs, ensuring that nurses will not be saddled with unmanageable student loan debt.

Glasgow said the median annual wages for these advanced nursing roles range from approximately $120,000 to more than $200,000.

“They have the capacity to pay off their student loan debt,” she said.

Hinrichs said that it is not as clear how this borrowing cap will affect professions and students, but it is clear that the restriction will have a negative effect on universities.

“I think universities would probably prefer that students could borrow as much as they wanted to to attend the university,” he said.

Hinrichs said that universities are most likely going to see either lower enrollment or lower revenue per student, or both as a result of the borrowing cap. If universities have to lower their tuition, then they might not be able to spend as much on their students or they have to get the money from somewhere else such as an endowment fund.

But Hinrichs said that the move to cap loans may be beneficial to students if tuition decreases.

Olga Yakusheva, an economist and professor of nursing at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said that the economic consequences of the loan caps could be severe.

“Student loans are a significant help for people who want to get a graduate degree and want to get it quickly without an interruption in their professional career or significant interruption in their family life,” Yakusheva said. “Without having access to that it becomes a more challenging decision, so you would expect fewer getting those graduate degrees.”

She said that a graduate degree is required to fill a nurse practitioner role, and these people usually take jobs where there is a physician shortage.

“If there are fewer nurse practitioners available in the workforce … we will see rising costs of primary care, specifically in those socio economically disadvantaged and marginalized communities,” she said.

Yakusheva said that this decision is already affecting the morale within the nursing profession.

“I think the majority of the nursing profession is just aghast at this decision,” she said. “I can see how harmful and upsetting it is to my nursing colleagues.”

Kaitlyn Hughes can be reached at hughesk10@duq.edu