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A push by Congress and the Trump administration to limit public borrowing by graduate students is raising hackles among educators who train millions of nurses, physical therapists, specialized teachers and others.

At issue: a working list of “professional” programs that require advanced degrees and licenses. Circulated online last month, it amounts to just 11 fields, including doctors, dentists and attorneys, among others.

Left out are virtually all other professions that, in many cases, require advanced degrees and licenses.

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The proposed change is part of a GOP effort to trim not just student debt and federal spending but college costs broadly.

In practical terms, enrolling in a “professional” program would give students the ability to borrow up to $50,000 per year in federal loans, or $200,000 over the course of their graduate school career. By contrast, programs that don’t fall into one of the 11 fields would give students access to just $20,500 a year, or $100,000 total. That often doesn’t cover the cost of a graduate education, advocates say, leaving students to rely on families or expensive private loans.

“It is a bad situation for a lot of professions,” said Jonathan Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations at the American Council on Educationwhich represents college presidents. The council has raised concerns over the list, saying the U.S. Department of Education should broaden it to include, among others, nurses, social workers and many kinds of teachers.

In a statementthe American Association of Colleges of Nursing said it was “deeply concerned” by the department’s proposed definition, saying it “excludes nursing and significantly limits student loan access.”

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In a statement, Education Department spokeswoman Ellen Keast blamed social media “misinformation” about the rule-making process for confusion about the administration’s moves. Much of the uproar has spread via videos on sites like

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Keast said the plans are still in development, and that reducing lending limits will reduce students’ costs. “We expect that institutions charging tuition rates well above market prices will consider lowering tuition thanks to these historic reforms,” she said.

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Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told The 74 the student debt crisis “will not be solved by making arbitrary judgements about which professions ‘deserve’ support. Lifetime and annual borrowing caps hit career-changers and graduate students hardest, especially as the cost of higher education continues to rise.”

AFT also represents nurses, librarians, higher education faculty and graduate students who teach and do research.

Dina Kastner, public policy and advocacy manager for the National Association of Social Workers, said federal loan limits “will really have an impact” on social work students.

“For people who are going to graduate school — particularly in a profession like social work, where a graduate degree is needed for a lot of the work that social workers do — it’s definitely a problem,” she said in an interview.

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The association has been hearing “consistently” from members since details about the changes began trickling out, she said.

A consensus or a ‘stranglehold’?

While the effort is part of a broader one by Congress in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act to limit the burden of graduate student debt and cap federal borrowing, details of the two categories actually took shape as the Education Department initiated the rule-making process, said ACE’s Fansmith.

Department representatives proposed that instead of trying to figure out all of the programs that fit under the “professional” category, they would rely on a list of 10 professions originally cited as “examples” — and declared that those are the only ones eligible for the higher borrowing limits.

“You would think it’s an oversight, because the actual statutory language says these 10 are ‘examples,’” Fansmith said. “Essentially, what they said was, ‘We are going to do the minimum possible,’ in part because they’re really trying to limit how much students can borrow.” That, despite the fact that in several fields, such as education and nursing, employers are facing huge demands for highly trained workers, he said.

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After two weeks of talks, Fansmith said, negotiators agreed to add an 11th category to the “professional” list: clinical psychology.

He called the process “completely crazy” and not what Congress intended for the lending program. “This administration is kind of shooting ourselves in the foot and doing something that’s going to have really lasting harm until it’s overturned.”

In its statement, the department did not directly address the process it followed, but in a “Myth vs. Fact” press releaseissued Nov. 24, it called the proposed limits on lending “commonsense” and said a negotiating committee offered “a consensus definition” for the two categories — one that it says is now being bent out of shape by fear-mongering “progressive voices.”

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The department said federal data indicates that 95% of nursing students borrow below the annual $100,000 loan limit “and therefore are not affected by the new caps.”

It also noted that it “has not prejudged the rulemaking process and may make changes in response to public comments” over the next few months.

That hasn’t stopped professional groups from protesting in advance. The nurses’ association said that, as of 2022, than one in four RNs planned to leave nursing or retire over the next five years. One in five holds a master’s degree or higher, it said, and demand for nurses with advanced degrees — in clinical specialties, teaching and research — “far outstrips the supply.”

‘Drowning in debt’

The move to limit lending comes, in part, from a conservative belief that expanding financial aid via big federal loans not only creates a debt problem for students — it also allows universities to quietly inflate costs as many students borrow the entire amount needed to attend.

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The idea is sometimes called The Bennett Hypothesisafter former U.S. Education Secretary William Bennett. In 1987, he wrote that increases in federal aid had “enabled colleges and universities blithely to raise their tuitions, confident that Federal loan subsidies would help cushion the increase.”

Nearly 40 years later, the idea lives on: In 2023 when Republicans in Congress unveiled a plan to lower college costs, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said, “Our federal higher education financing system contributes to the problem than the solution. Colleges and universities using the availability of federal loans to increase their tuitions have left too many students drowning in debt without a path for success.”

Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, in October said Congress’s budget bill, which will phase out Grad PLUS loans as of July 2026, has already helped bring costs down. As an example, he said Santa Clara University School of Law next fall will give incoming full-time students a guaranteed $16,000 tuition scholarship, renewable for up to three years, the duration of the program. That amounts to an effective $16,000 cut in net tuition, he said.

The relationship between credit availability and tuition rates is difficult to track directly, but a few studies have found a connection. In 2015, economist David O. Lucca and colleagues found that changes in subsidized loan maximums had an effect on tuition, especially for “ expensive degrees, those offered by private institutions, and for two-year or vocational programs.” Other studies have found the effect pronounced in for-profit colleges.

By contrast, in 2017, Robert Kelchenwho studies college costs at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, examined law school tuition rates and found “far less evidence for the Bennett Hypothesis than I expected to see.”

He offered several explanations, among them that law schools that raise tuition by than competitors may see declines in applicants and revenue, and that greater availability of federal loans simply shifts students’ debt out of private banks and into the public system: In 2003, he noted, 36% of law students took out private loans. By 2011, five years after Grad PLUS loans debuted, it was just 5%.

Kastner of the social workers’ association said limiting how much graduate students can borrow, combined with the phasing-out of Grad PLUS loans, is “a double whammy” for students. As a result, many will be forced to rely once again on private banks, which demand higher interest rates and offer fewer protections if they can’t pay loans back.

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Asked if she had sympathy for the effort to lower students’ debt burden by restricting graduate borrowing, Kastner replied, “I don’t see it that way. I think it’s just making things difficult for students.”

Kastner herself struggled to get her degree in the mid-1990s. By the time she began her social work career in Chicago in 1997, her debt amounted to about $40,000. Her monthly payment: $600, the equivalent one semi-monthly paycheck.

She eventually got help from her parents to pay back her loans, but said squeezing new professionals will present “a real challenge,” especially for first-generation students “who may not have the family resources to really help them bridge that gap.”

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ACE’s Fansmith said the department should be considering policies, such as income- based repayment and long-term loan forgiveness, that could actually address budgetary and student debt problems “without simply saying, ‘You can’t access the education.’”

He noted that the final rules, slated to take effect in July, won’t be written until early next year. In the meantime, he anticipates heated public comments from nurses, social workers, educators and other professions.

“It wouldn’t be shocking to see Congress step in,” said Fansmith. “Nurses are, understandably and appropriately, a really sympathetic group.” And everyone sees the need for of them, he said. “So these kinds of decisions that are really harmful for our country, honestly, might get re-evaluated.”

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