An article fromDive Brief ‘Professional degree’ list is expanded. But education still didn’t make the cut.

The designation comes with an increased federal student loan cap of $200,000 for graduate programs.

Published July 2, 2026Anna Merod Reporter

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• Education graduate degree programs remain excluded from the U.S. Department of Education's “professional” designation, despite the agency recently adding to the fields considered as such. That expansion came in response to a recent court order that temporarily blocked new regulations on the “professional” definition, which impacts federal student loan caps.
• The Education Department’s regulations determine which graduate degree programs are considered “professional” that receive up to $200,000 in federal student loans under limits created by Congress last year. However, other programs that don’t fall under that definition — including education —  are capped at $100,000 in federal student loans.
• Some of the graduate programs added to the department’s list of “professional” degrees, as of June 29, include nursing, physical therapy, athletic training and occupational therapy. 

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The Education Department said in its June 29 update that its list of designated professional degrees “may change as litigation in the case proceeds.” Still, the department said it’s “confident” the regulation’s professional degree definition is lawful, and the agency “will continue to defend it.”

When the department finalized the rule in late April, K-12 advocates expressed concern over how the degree designation would worsen schools' already struggling ability to recruit and retain administrators, teachers and counselors.  

The Education Department’s rule went into effect July 1. Under the June 24 court order, however, a federal judge temporarily called for the department to stick with the existing definition set by Congress when establishing the loan caps last year in the “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” At the same time, the judge denied the plaintiffs’ request to halt the department from implementing the loan caps until it creates a new rule.

The congressionally approved definition said that professional degrees signify “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” and also typically require licensure.

In the department’s final rule, the agency cited the existing regulatory definition of professional programs when acknowledging pushback on the excluded fields. 

Of education’s exclusion from being a professional degree, the department’s final rule said the field doesn’t meet the test to be considered as such because advanced education degrees are not required to enter a specific program or receive licensure. 

Though 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.

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