Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Education on Thursday released final regulations excluding graduate education programs from its definition of "professional degrees," making them ineligible for higher federal student loan caps. Consequently, borrowing for these programs will be capped at $100,000.
- The final rule sticks with a limited and contested definition of “professional students” who can borrow up to $200,000 in federal loans for their programs.
- In response, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education in a Thursday statement called for Congress to step in and establish a student loan eligibility policy that would help sustain the educator pipeline.
Dive Insight:
When the Education Department in January proposed a definition of “professional student” that included just 11 fields, it drew tens of thousands of comments.
The distinction has significant financial implications for students seeking education degrees, among other fields excluded from the list. Professional students under the rule can borrow up to $50,000 annually and $200,000 in aggregate for their graduate programs. Meanwhile, the total cap for all other graduate students is half that amount, and the annual cap is $20,500.
Professionals, educators and associations from a wide range of fields — from nursing and physical therapy to landscape architecture and accounting — protested their exclusion. Many argued their fields require graduate-level degrees and licensure, and can be costly to attain.
Ultimately, despite the pushback, the department’s final rules included the original 11 areas it outlined: pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, theology and clinical psychology.
Because advanced education degrees are not required to enter a specific profession or to obtain licensure, the department said they do not meet the test to be considered professional degrees.
While some states "ultimately require teachers to obtain a master’s degree to maintain a license, no State requires an M.Ed. or similar master’s degree to begin work as a teacher, and an Ed.D. may offer career advancement but is not required for entrance into a specific profession or as a prerequisite for licensure in a field," the final rule said.
The rule noted that many schools may require advanced degrees for progressing through school administration careers but added that "these jobs do not require licensure nor is there a specific pathway that must be followed in order to become a school administrator."
Commenters told the department that impacted degree programs include master of arts in teaching, master of education, education specialist, master of library sciences, and doctor of education. These programs are often tied to certification, licensure advancement, specialization or leadership roles in the education field, they said.
The department’s final rule said the agency received many public comments calling for including education as a professional degree or to otherwise allow higher borrowing levels for students pursuing advanced education degrees.
In their arguments, commenters cited teacher shortages and the importance of graduate programs for licensure advancement, specialization and leadership roles in education. Additionally, commenters noted that career changers who want to enter the profession pursue master’s degrees in education for certification, especially in high-need areas.
The Education Department said it disagreed with commenters who said the proposed rule focused "too narrowly on entry into classroom teaching" and didn't "adequately account for school leadership, specialized instructional support, certain administrative roles, or master’s level initial certification pathways for career changers.”
In its final rules, filed with the Federal Register on Thursday morning to be published Friday, the department acknowledged concerns over the excluded fields, but argued that it was bound by a reference in last year’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” to an existing regulatory definition of professional programs.
That regulation states that professional degrees signify “completion of academic requirements for beginning practice in a given profession and a level of professional skill beyond that normally required for a bachelor's degree” and also typically require licensure.
AACTE President and CEO Cheryl Holcomb-McCoy said in the Thursday statement that the association is “strongly dismayed” by the decision to restrict access to federal student loans for those pursuing education degrees.
“The nation continues to face persistent educator shortages, and this decision is likely to reduce the pipeline of qualified teachers, school counselors, principals, and other education professionals,” Holcomb-McCoy said. “When students cannot access financing, enrollment declines, and school systems across the country are affected.”
