H.R. 6718: Professional Student Degree Act

The 2025 budget reconciliation law rebuilt federal borrowing for graduate school. For students who start borrowing on or after July 1, 2026, Grad PLUS loans are gone, and federal Direct Loans are capped in two tiers: $20,500 a year and $100,000 total for graduate students, and $50,000 a year and $200,000 total for professional students.

Which tier you land in depends on whether your program leads to a "professional degree." Current law answers that by pointing to an existing Education Department regulation, whose examples are traditional fields like medicine, law, dentistry, pharmacy and theology. Degrees outside that list default to the lower graduate cap.

H.R. 6718, the Professional Student Degree Act, replaces that regulation reference with a definition written into the statute itself. A professional degree must mark the academic requirements for starting practice in a field where a license is commonly required, and reflect skill beyond a bachelor's degree, as the Secretary of Education determines. The bill then names 24 degree fields that automatically qualify, adding nursing, physician assistant, physical and occupational therapy, audiology, social work, public health, business, accounting, architecture and education to the traditional list.

The difference is concrete. A professional student can borrow $29,500 more per year than a graduate student, and twice as much over a career. On a two-year M.S.W. or M.B.A. costing $45,000 a year, the graduate cap leaves a $49,000 gap to fill from savings, family or a private lender. Under the professional cap, federal loans could cover the full $90,000.

A final catch-all lets the Secretary recognize any other degree that meets the two-part test, so the list can grow without another act of Congress.