The Trump administration has expanded its list of graduate degrees it considers “professional” for federal student-loan purposes in response to a court order issued last week. But the list still lacks graduate-level teaching and education leadership degrees, meaning students pursuing them will still be subject to lower borrowing caps.
In addition, the administration warns that the list, issued weeks before the start of the fall semester, may not be final.
The updated list of 29 “professional” graduate degrees the U.S. Department of Education released late Monday—up from the 11 included on its original list—marks the latest twist in the Trump administration’s implementation of the first-ever caps on how much graduate students can borrow in federal student loans.
Those caps, included in last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Donald Trump signed into law, are among a slew of student borrowing changes taking effect at the start of this month. Proponents have said the policy will drive down graduate program costs and reduce student debt.
The borrowing limits are higher for degrees deemed “professional” ($50,000 annually or $200,000 total) than for other graduate degrees ($20,500 annually or $100,000 total). Part-time graduate students can borrow a prorated portion of those maximum amounts.
But Congress didn’t explicitly define a “professional” degree when it wrote the law. So when the Education Department developed regulations this year to implement the new borrowing caps, it limited the definition of professional degree to 11 fields, excluding education, nursing, and others.
That definition of professional degree became the subject of four legal challenges from professional groups representing educators, physician associates, nurse practitioners, and nurses, as well as a coalition of more than 20 Democratic-led states.
In response to two of those lawsuits, a judge ruled last week that the Education Department didn’t have the authority to narrow the professional degree definition to those 11 mostly doctoral-level degrees, including for pharmacy, dentistry, podiatry, theology, and law. She ordered the Education Department to develop a new list, applying criteria from a 2007 regulation that defined a professional degree as a graduate degree needed to start out in a profession that generally requires a license.
With 29 degrees, the new list more than doubles the number of professional degrees. But it still doesn’t include education leadership degrees often pursued by current and aspiring administrators, graduate-level teaching degrees, nor degrees related to special education administration or school counseling. It does include a handful of degrees not on the original list for professions that work in schools, such as school psychologists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists.
Outside of education, changes include the addition of advanced nursing degrees, physician associate, physical therapy, and athletic trainer.
“This list does not go far enough,” said Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy, the president and CEO of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. “The field of education encompasses a wide and growing range of professional roles that depend on graduate education to prepare people to do their jobs well.”
She recommended the Education Department recognize all graduate-level education degrees, including master’s degrees in teaching, as professional.
Organizations involved in challenging the professional degree definition in court didn’t say whether they plan to challenge the Education Department’s updated list.
Historically, the professional degree definition has been narrow—though, until now, there were no borrowing caps riding on the definition, said Preston Cooper, a senior fellow focused on student borrowing and higher education reform at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
There are risks to broadening the definition too much, he said.
“Classifying certain programs as professional when you know students are not going to be able to support that debt with the expected salaries from their fields of study could be hugely damaging for the students who’d be buried in debt and also for taxpayers who would probably be left holding the bag if students don’t pay back those loans,” he said.
But Cooper doesn’t anticipate a huge effect for education degree seekers because education schools are, by and large, cheaper than most institutions offering professional degrees that made it onto the Education Department’s list. And when educators pursue graduate degrees part-time while working, they should be able to keep their borrowing within the new limits, he said.
Students at a small segment of education schools could run up against the borrowing limits, Cooper said.
“We’re talking about a very narrow slice of elite and expensive institutions,” he said, “not really the broad pipeline for training teachers and principals.”
For its part, the Education Department stood by its original list of professional degrees when it released the updated set of degrees that qualify, calling it “lawful” and saying it would continue to defend it in court. As a result, the list could continue to change as litigation continues, agency officials wrote in a post on the Federal Student Aid website.
In establishing its original list of 11 professional degrees, the Education Department said it didn’t include education because no states require master’s degrees for teachers or others starting out in the field.
Cooper hopes Congress eventually steps in to establish a clear definition of professional degree. While legal challenges continue, he urged graduate students pursuing degrees that may not permanently qualify as professional to keep their borrowing within the lower loan caps.
“We don’t want people to get caught in a situation where they’re borrowing a lot of money, and then they suddenly run out of borrowing capacity because the definition was changed,” he said.
