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What degrees are no longer classified as professional by trump's new law
Executive summary
The Department of Education, implementing provisions of President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” has narrowed which fields qualify as “professional” degrees for higher loan caps — explicitly excluding nursing and recognizing roughly 10–11 specific fields such as medicine, law, pharmacy and (in some drafts) clinical psychology [1] [2] [3]. The change matters because the law creates tighter borrowing caps — e.g., professional students eligible for a higher lifetime cap ($200,000) and annual/professional limits discussed in negotiated rulemaking — but precise program lists and final regulatory text remain in flux [3] [4].
1. What the Department of Education changed — a tightened list, nursing dropped
The Department of Education’s draft implementation limits “professional” programs to a short list of fields and has expressly excluded nursing from that list in public reporting, meaning many nursing programs will no longer be treated as professional degrees for the purpose of the new borrowing rules [1] [5] [6]. Multiple outlets summarize the department’s list as including medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, optometry, law, veterinary medicine, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, chiropractic, theology and clinical psychology [1] [5] [3].
2. Which degrees remain classified as “professional” in the draft
Reporting from the negotiated-rulemaking process and advocacy groups identifies 10–11 core fields that negotiators proposed counting as professional: pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine (including osteopathic/podiatric variants), optometry, podiatry, theology, and clinical psychology as the newly added field in some versions [2] [3]. Business Insider’s summary of the department’s draft lists the ten programs; the Association of American Universities notes an 11-field construct when clinical psychology was added [2] [3].
3. What this means for borrowing limits and Grad PLUS
The statutory package and department negotiations fold into a new borrowing framework: the law eliminates Grad PLUS and consolidates income-driven repayment, while imposing lower annual borrowing limits for graduate students and higher-but-capped amounts for “professional” students — described in reporting as $20,500 per year/ $100,000 lifetime for graduate students and $50,000 per year/ $200,000 lifetime for professional students in the negotiated plans [3] [4] [7]. Because nursing would no longer be classed as “professional,” many nursing students may face these lower graduate caps or lose access to the larger professional limits previously available [1] [7].
4. Scale of the impact — hundreds of thousands of nursing students cited
Newsweek, Blavity and others cite American Nurses Association figures noting over 260,000 students in entry-level BSN programs and roughly 42,000 in associate-degree nursing tracks; those numbers are used to underscore that excluding nursing could affect hundreds of thousands of current and future students’ financing options [1] [5] [8]. The reporting frames the change as potentially constraining access to funding at a time when nursing workforce shortages are already a policy concern [1] [6].
5. Where the debate and disagreement lie
Advocates for the caps argue the limits prevent “insurmountable debt to finance degrees that do not pay off,” a rationale reflected in department statements and some negotiators’ positions [4]. Critics — including university associations and nursing groups — say narrowing the professional definition will artificially cut off financing for fields that require costly training and are essential to public health and research; the Association of American Universities warned the rule “threatens access” to professional programs and documented concerns about the new 11-field limit [3]. Both sides frame the policy around affordability versus access.
6. Regulatory status and timeline — still being finalized
Reporting emphasizes the changes came out of negotiated rulemaking that reached consensus in early November, but the Education Department still needs to draft and publish formal rules for public comment; implementation dates in reporting point to July 2026 for many provisions [4] [9]. That means the exact legal definitions and any carve-outs could shift before final rulemaking [4] [9].
7. What the sources do not say
Available sources do not provide the final regulatory text, the department’s full legal rationale, nor detailed guidance on how state licensure-driven programs or hybrid degree structures will be treated; they also do not list every CIP code the department will use beyond noting the 4-digit CIP approach discussed in briefs [9]. Nor do the sources present a formal cost-model showing net borrower outcomes across professions beyond high-level caps and advocacy reaction [3] [4].
Bottom line: current reporting shows nursing explicitly removed from the department’s short list of “professional” degree programs for enhanced borrowing caps while medicine, law, pharmacy and related fields remain included in the draft; the policy is part of a broader overhaul that eliminates Grad PLUS and imposes new annual and lifetime caps, but the final regulatory text and implementation details remain subject to rulemaking and public comment [1] [3] [4].