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Unlimited student loans lead to ‘taxpayer risk and student debt burdens,’ researcher says
A federal bill called the Professional Student Degree Act aims to expand the definition of the “professional degree” to allow for a higher federal loan limit for a wider variety of graduate programs.
Supporters say the legislation will improve access to graduate programs and address workforce shortages. However, a critic who spoke with The College Fix raised questions about the use of federal funds and mounting student debt.
U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican from New York, introduced H.R. 6718 on Dec 15. The bill would expand the definition of the professional degree to include advanced nursing, social work, business administration, accounting, architecture, secondary education, and others, and allow students in those programs to receive larger federal loans.
The legislation comes in response to the One Big Beautiful Bill, which enacts loan limits for graduate students beginning July 1. The limits are $100,000 for general graduate degrees, and $200,000 for anything defined as a professional degree.
Additionally, a proposed Department of Education rule regarding the loan caps defines professional degrees to only include 11 fields: pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, theology, and clinical psychology.
A researcher who studies student loans and higher education reform expressed concerns about the bill’s expansion of the category.
“Professional loans are supposed to be for extremely high-cost programs with very high returns, such as medicine and dentistry,” Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told The College Fix in a recent email.
“Other professions such as teaching and social work simply do not pay enough to justify $200,000 loans,” Cooper said.
Social work is one such example of a graduate program that the bill looks to include in its definition of professional. In 2024, the average salary of a social worker was $61,330, compared to a doctor’s $239,200, according to Bureau of Labor statistics.
“Unlimited graduate student loans … have maxed out on access while ignoring taxpayer risk and student debt burdens,” Cooper told The Fix.
“… the loan limits are projected to save $7 billion a year when fully phased in, so passing the Professional Student Degree Act would likely erase a good portion if not most of those savings,” he said.
However, Rep. Lawler and other supporters pointed to the shortages in “workforce-critical” fields that the bill is expanding professional status to.
“If a degree requires advanced training and licensure to serve the public, it should qualify as a professional degree,” Lawler stated in a Feb. 10 news release.
“Nurses, teachers, therapists, social workers, and other essential professionals are being treated differently from doctors and lawyers. That makes no sense, and it neglects Congressional intent,” the lawmaker said.
The Fix contacted Lawler’s office via email and phone twice over the past two weeks, asking about the bill’s goals, taxation, and student impact. The office did not respond.
Meanwhile, Dr. Valerie Fuller, president of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, spoke recently about the impact that the student loan caps could have on the nursing shortage. Her organization supports Lawler’s bill.
Restricting loans for advanced nursing degrees “is going to reduce the number of NPs that are able to enter practice, but we’re also going to see patients lose access if we can’t replace them quickly enough,” Fuller said on a January episode of the American Council on Education’s dotEDU podcast.
The council referred The Fix to the podcast and a statement via news release when contacted for comment.
The council, which also supports Lawler’s bill, believes that the legislation will “ensure that students in numerous academic programs that prepare them for highly-skilled, in-demand professions have the federal financial aid they need to earn their degrees,” according to the news release.
The office of U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican and co-sponsor of the bill, referred The Fix to Lawler’s office when contacted for comment.
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