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Over two dozen states sued the U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday over the agency’s decision to exclude graduate nursing and other major fields from its regulatory definition of professional degrees.
Under new loan caps taking effect July 1, most graduate students will be limited to taking out $100,000 in federal student loans. However, students in programs classified as professional degrees will be able to borrow up to $200,000.
The states and the District of Columbia are urging a federal judge to strike down the Education Department’s definition of professional degrees, arguing the agency imposed requirements not found in statute that unlawfully limit access to federal borrowing.
The states, co-led by Maryland, New York, Colorado and Nevada, argue that the Education Department’s definition of professional programs will lead to fewer students opting into critical healthcare fields and worsen workforce shortages.
“By capping loan amounts, the Trump Administration will force Marylanders who want to be nurses, physician assistants, or physical therapists to decide between taking on more expensive private loans, or walking away from their chosen career,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said in a statement Tuesday. “We will not allow this Administration to price our future healthcare professionals out of the workforce.”
The definition will also hurt the revenue of public colleges, they contend. The lawsuit gives the example of the University of Maryland’s master of science in nursing program, whose annual tuition and fees top $77,000.
Students will only be able to borrow $20,500 annually under the Education Department’s regulations, nearly $30,000 less than what they could if the program was deemed a professional degree, the lawsuit points out. The university will likely take a revenue hit if its students can’t find alternative funding sources.
In a statement Wednesday, Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent said the loan caps were pushing colleges to lower tuition. “Clearly, these Democratic governors and attorneys general are more concerned about institutions’ bottom-line rather than American students and families’ ability to access affordable postsecondary education,” Kent said.
In an email, the Education Department pointed to a handful of examples of colleges cutting costs, including Neumann University’s decision to reduce tuition for three graduate programs, including two in nursing, between 15% and 29% due to the loan limits. Likewise, University of California at Irvine lowered tuition by about a quarter for two MBA programs.
How did the Education Department define professional students?
In the major spending package passed last year by Republicans, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, lawmakers moved to phase out Grad PLUS loans, which allow students to borrow up to the cost of attendance for graduate programs, and established new lifetime borrowing limits.
OBBBA pointed to an existing regulatory definition of professional student when describing which students would qualify for the higher loan cap of $200,000.
Under that definition, a professional degree is considered one “that signifies both completion of the academic requirements for beginning practice in a given profession and a level of professional skill beyond that normally required for a bachelor’s degree.” It also says these programs prepare students for fields that generally require professional licensure.
It provides 10 degrees as examples — including dentistry, law, and medicine — though it says professional programs aren’t limited to the ones listed.
However, when the Education Department released final regulations earlier this month, it included only those 10 programs, plus clinical psychology — leaving out all other fields. That has unlawfully excluded many healthcare and other in-demand fields, according to the complaint.
“Indeed, the Rule concedes that many programs meet the three-part statutory test for a ‘professional degree’ and yet are nonetheless excluded by the new regulatory definition,” the states wrote in their lawsuit.
In the final regulations, the Education Department added new requirements to which programs qualify as professional degrees that aren’t found in statute, the states allege. For instance, the regulations say that professional programs should be “generally at the doctoral level” and that they must share a four-digit CIP code — numbers used by the department to categorize academic offerings — with one of its 11 listed degrees.
The Education Department, for instance, excluded master’s of science in nursing from its definition of professional degrees, in part because it doesn’t meet the agency’s new requirement to be at the doctoral level.
“But the statutory definition nowhere states that a professional degree must generally be at the doctoral level,” the states contend. In fact, they point out, three of the programs in the original regulatory definition aren’t doctoral degrees.
Further, the Education Department excluded doctorate in nursing programs from its definition of professional degrees, because graduates of those programs are “subject to career-long supervision.” In defense of this move, the agency argued that the 10 fields in the original regulatory definition of professional degrees don’t require permanent supervision.
Yet the states argue that this position, which it called the department’s “lack-of-supervision requirement,” isn’t found in the statute.
“And the Department has pointed to nothing that suggests Congress intended it to consider this factor in defining ‘professional degree,’” the lawsuit contends.
Will colleges lower their costs in response to loan caps?
Some Republican lawmakers have pushed back against the Education Department’s definition of professional student, as well. In response, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has argued that the borrowing caps will force colleges to lower tuition prices for their programs.
However, Tuesday’s lawsuit argues that colleges won’t be able to lower prices for certain healthcare programs, including nursing fields, due to the high costs of running them.
For instance, nurse practitioner programs must maintain a 1:8 faculty-to-student ratio in clinical courses to meet national standards, according to the lawsuit.
“The cost of attendance for many programs cannot be brought below the loan caps without compromising the quality of instruction or running afoul of accreditation standards,” the lawsuit argues.
