OPINION
David Randall | Minding the Campus
Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia recently ruled that the U.S. Department of Education must use a broader definition of “professional degrees” when determining eligibility for federal student loans. Practically, this means that students in a broad array of professions will have looser loan limits: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (2025) limited “graduate students” to borrowing $20,500 per annum, or a total of $100,000, while “professional students” may borrow $50,000 per annum, or a total of $200,000. Pending an appeal from the ED to a higher court, far larger numbers of Americans will be able to go into debt for their education.
Proponents and opponents of this reform speak with starkly different presumptions of its effect. Education reformers wish to limit education loans partly to limit would-be students from making unwise choices, partly at taxpayer expense, to saddle themselves with ruinous levels of debt. Most importantly, however, they want to change the incentives for educational institutions—to encourage them to undertake reforms that will lower the tuition they charge to students. Education reformers rightly believe that the vast majority of education loan money is scooped up by colleges and universities, with little or no benefit to students. Reducing education loans is intended, above all, to lower tuition levels.
The opponents of this reform argue as if federal loan money is the only variable at issue, and that it affords students the ability to receive graduate/professional education. They appear to believe that colleges and universities are incapable of changing what they charge. So far as I can tell from a survey of responses to Howell’s decision, various opponents don’t even acknowledge the possibility.
Which may be natural. Most people aren’t experts on anything outside their own specialty, so there is no reason for most Americans to be experts in education finance. Colleges and universities are beneficiaries of human nature, which aligns more naturally with I would like to be able to borrow more money and get a good job than to let me contemplate the perverse economic incentives of federal student loan policy.
“Most Americans,” alas, presumably includes most judges who will be ruling on education policy. The real cost of law school tuition has doubled since 1980, and the vast majority of law students now take out loans. Judges may skew toward the more financially successful law school graduates, but their social world presumably consists of lawyers who generally took out substantial loans for law school, a significant portion of whom struggle financially with their debts. Education reformers face an underappreciated burden: a generation of judges who themselves took out substantial student loans, and who likely sympathize, viscerally, with the proposition that students should be able to borrow more money.
This is a surmountable challenge. In effect, education reformers need to leave as little room as possible for judicial interpretation in future education reform bills. But it does suggest that education reformers should pay special attention to lowering the cost of law school. Lawyers and judges are a core component of our ruling classes, and they should not be professionally prejudiced to sympathize with debtors to the government fisc—and thereby serve the interest of the smiling university loan-sharks who benefit from this weaponized sympathy.
I have argued elsewhere for transforming legal education from a graduate to an undergraduate degree and for universalizing legal apprenticeships. These would be good reforms for their own sakes. But they will also be good for keeping judges from unconsciously slipping into the role of debtors’ attorney as they interpret the law.
We can expect to hear, Brother, can you spare a dime? from the attorneys of law schools. We should work to make sure we don’t hear our judges humming along from the bench.
This article was originally published on July 1, 2026 by Minding the Campus.
