Which specific degrees (JD, MD, DDS, DPT, PharmD) would be impacted by a Dept. of Education reclassification?
Executive summary
The Department of Education’s recent proposal would sharply narrow which graduate programs count as “professional degrees” for federal loan purposes, cutting the list from roughly 2,000 programs to fewer than 600 and concentrating “professional” status in about a dozen fields (medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, law, etc.) [1] [2]. Multiple trade groups and news outlets report that a wide set of health and helping professions — including advanced nursing (MSN, DNP), physician assistant, physical/occupational therapy, public health (MPH, DrPH), audiology, social work, and counseling — would lose “professional” designation under the draft rule, which would reduce graduate borrowing limits for students in those programs [3] [4] [5].
1. What “reclassification” actually targets: loan definitions, not job titles
The change under discussion is a regulatory redefinition used to set federal borrowing caps and program eligibility; it does not change professional licensing or the occupations themselves, according to reporting that the DOE is applying an older, narrower regulatory definition for loan purposes [6] [1]. That means degrees could be treated as “graduate” rather than “professional” for student-aid calculations even while employers and licensing boards continue to treat them as clinical or professional credentials [6].
2. Which degrees are reported as losing “professional” status
Multiple sources list advanced nursing degrees (MSN, DNP), physician assistant programs, occupational and physical therapy, audiology, speech-language pathology, social work (MSW/DSW), public health degrees (MPH, DrPH), counseling/therapy programs, and several education degrees among those that would be excluded from the narrower “professional” list [3] [4] [5]. News summaries and organizational responses place nursing, physician assistant, physical therapy and audiology explicitly among the affected health fields [7] [8].
3. Degrees that likely retain professional status in the DOE draft
Reporting and advocacy summaries show the draft rule would concentrate “professional” status on a small set of traditional professional schools — repeatedly named across sources as medicine, pharmacy and dentistry — and in some accounts also law, optometry, veterinary and certain other narrowly defined fields [2] [1]. Exact lists vary across coverage, but the shared signal is a far smaller, more exclusive set of qualifying professions [2].
4. Practical impact: borrowing caps and pipeline concerns
If a program shifts from “professional” to “graduate” status, federal borrowing limits cited in coverage would drop substantially for new borrowers: examples in the reporting compare about $50,000 annual and $200,000 lifetime caps for narrowly defined professional students versus $20,500 annual and $100,000 lifetime caps for most graduate students under the One Big Beautiful Bill framework — changes that groups warn could make some programs unaffordable for many students [2] [5] [6].
5. Who’s pushing back — and why their objections differ
Professional associations in nursing, public health, social work and higher education warn the change will worsen workforce shortages and reduce equity in access to essential fields; the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health, the American Nurses Association and the Council on Social Work Education are all cited expressing concern [4] [9] [1]. Some commentators stress the policy’s fiscal aim to reduce borrowing and limit loan exposure, while others emphasize symbolic and pipeline harms for predominantly female and public-interest professions [7] [2].
6. What the DOE and skeptics say about precedent and legality
Fact-check and legal-context reporting notes the Department claims it is reverting to a definition found in older federal regulations (34 CFR 668.2) and that the draft rule is implementing H.R.1 / the One Big Beautiful Bill regulatory framework rather than inventing new criteria out of whole cloth [3] [1]. Snopes and other reviews stress that as of their write-ups the proposal had not yet been finalized and the DOE’s interpretation is narrower than longstanding practice [3].
7. Reporting disagreements and limits of available coverage
Coverage converges on which fields are most likely affected, but exact lists and the final legal outcome differ across outlets; some pieces list about eleven retained professions, others emphasize “roughly 600” remaining programs without identical enumerations [2] [1]. Available sources do not mention an exhaustive, final DOE list that definitively names JD, MD, DDS, DPT, or PharmD exactly as retained or excluded — though MD and DDS (medicine and dentistry) appear among fields likely to remain professional, and pharmacy is repeatedly named as retained [2] [1] [6]. Specific degree acronyms such as DPT (physical therapy doctorate) are repeatedly described as at risk in reporting but not universally listed as definitively excluded in a final rule [3] [8].
8. Bottom line for the degrees you asked about (JD, MD, DDS, DPT, PharmD)
- MD and DDS (medicine and dentistry) are repeatedly identified in coverage as likely to keep “professional” status under the draft DOE rule [2] [1].
- PharmD (pharmacy) is also listed among degrees likely to retain the “professional” designation [2] [1].
- JD (law) appears in several summaries of retained professions, though lists vary slightly by source [2] [1].
- DPT (physical therapy) is frequently cited among health professions that would be reclassified as graduate rather than professional, placing it at risk of losing the higher loan caps in the draft [3] [8].
Limitations: these findings summarize draft proposals and reporting; the rulemaking process and final DOE lists may change, and available sources do not provide a single official final enumeration of every affected degree [3] [1].