Overview
- The Education Department’s proposal would treat only medicine, law, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry and theology as professional degrees.
- Students in those professional fields could borrow up to $50,000 per year and $200,000 total, while those in nursing, physical therapy, public health and other excluded programs would be limited to $20,500 per year and $100,000 overall.
- A coalition of nursing and health organizations urged reversal, warning of deeper staffing shortages, greater reliance on costlier private loans and risks to patient care, with the AACN calling the potential impact devastating.
- The change, tied to the Big Beautiful Bill, is justified by the administration as a way to pressure high‑tuition programs to lower prices and is grounded in a restrictive reading of a 1965 student aid law.
- Education officials say about 95% of nursing students are in programs below the proposed threshold and that current enrollees keep existing loan limits, with some details still being finalized through rulemaking.