On Nov. 6 the U.S. Department of Education announced that, under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), it is performing an overhaul of the current graduate student loan programs. The Grad PLUS program, which is a government loan intended to fill financial aid gaps up to the cost of attendance for graduate students, is being eliminated, while Parent PLUS loans are capped. A new federal loan payment plan, called the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), will start on July 1, 2026. This new payment plan replaces the income-based repayment plan SAVE, which was officially discontinued on Tuesday, and is expected to result in low-income loan owners owing significantly more money. In addition to this, the scope of professional programs was redefined, with many healthcare programs being removed from the category, halving the limit of federal loans available to these students. Graduate students pursuing “professional degrees” have a borrowing limit of $200,000 ($50,000 per year), while all other graduate students have a limit of $100,000 ($20,500 per year). Programs that have been removed from the professional degree category include nursing, physician assistant, nurse practitioner, physical therapy and audiology. This is possible because of an amendment made to Title 34 Subtitle B of the United States Code, which contains the laws regarding the Department of Education. The definitions for professional students and professional degrees were revised, as required by OBBBA. Now, professional degrees are defined as programs that “Signif(y) 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.” They are generally Doctoral programs that take 6 or more years to complete, generally requires professional licensure to practice and “includes a four-digit program CIP code, as assigned by the institution or determined by the Secretary, in the same intermediate group as the fields listed,” with the fields mentioned including Pharmacy, Dentistry, Law, and Medicine, to name a few. This change was made with the intent of protecting nursing students from borrowing excessively and to force institutions to lower their tuition rates, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s press release: “Myth vs. Fact: The Definition of Professional Degrees.”