Which professions lost or gained licensing advantages after removing 'professional degree' status?

1. Why the record is mixed: two different “licensing” stories in the results

The documents returned by your search split into two distinct conversations: one is a corporate pricing and contract change from Microsoft that removes long-standing volume discounts for Online Services starting November 1, 2025 (affecting Enterprise Agreements, OSPA, MPSA and related procurement) ^{[1] [2] [5]}. The other is the broader public-policy literature on occupational licensing — how states license professions, de‑licensing moves, and portability reforms — including historical analyses and advocacy pieces ^{[3] [4] [6]}. None of these items describes an administrative action that “removed ‘professional degree’ status” as a trigger for occupational-license winners or losers (not found in current reporting).

2. If you meant professional/occupational licensing: what the sources say about winners and losers

Academic and policy sources show de-licensing and portability reforms typically benefit workers and consumers in lower‑risk occupations by reducing barriers to entry (for example, reforms in Germany and U.S. state portability initiatives), while highly risk‑sensitive fields like medicine and dentistry generally retain licensure because of safety arguments ^{[3] [4] [6]}. The literature suggests winners from liberalization tend to be trades and lower-risk personal services (e.g., some crafts), and losers—if you view incumbents who profit from restricted supply as “losers”—would be fewer; but the sources do not enumerate specific professions that gained or lost because of a single “professional degree” status change ^{[3] [4]}.

3. If you meant “professional degree” within higher‑education credentialing: no evidence in these sources

Your phrase “professional degree status” commonly refers to academic credential classification (JD, MD, DDS, PharmD), but the available set contains no reporting that a regulatory body rescinded such status and thereby altered state licensing rules for entire professions. The occupational‑licensing sources discuss general trends and reforms, not a categorical removal of “professional degree” that changed licensing eligibility for named professions (not found in current reporting) ^{[3] [6]}.

4. Microsoft licensing change — an unrelated but concrete ‘who wins/loses’ example

If your question intended “which professions” as shorthand for customer types under enterprise contracts, Microsoft’s move removes volume discount bands for Online Services and thereby disadvantages large EA customers who previously relied on scale discounts; vendors and managed‑service partners position themselves as helping customers optimize and may gain new business ^{[1] [2] [5]}. Education, government, and on‑premises licensing are repeatedly noted as being treated differently or exempt from immediate effects in some reporting, so institutional customers in EDU/GOV may see lesser or delayed impact ^{[7] [8]}.

5. Competing perspectives and hidden agendas in the sources

Cloud‑licensing commentary (consultancies, MSPs, vendor blogs) frames Microsoft’s changes either as a cost spike for customers or as an opportunity to modernize and optimize procurement; these providers have a commercial interest in selling transition services ^{[9] [5]}. Policy pieces on occupational licensing often come from think tanks and professional associations that either favor deregulation (arguing for labor mobility and lower costs) or defend licensing (arguing public safety and standards); the National Society of Professional Engineers, for instance, actively lobbies on licensure-related bills ^{[10] [4]}. These motivations should be read alongside their factual claims ^{[10] [4]}.

6. Bottom line and next steps for a precise answer

Your current search results don’t document a specific policy that “removed professional degree status” and then produced a roster of professions that lost or gained licensing advantages — the claim is not supported by these sources (not found in current reporting). To answer definitively, I recommend you either (a) provide the exact jurisdiction and policy name where “professional degree status” was removed, or (b) permit a search focused on occupational‑licensing changes (state bills or federal rules) that explicitly alter credential requirements for named professions; with that, I can map which occupations the cited law or regulation helped or hurt using primary sources from those jurisdictions (not found in current reporting).