As Trump Redefines Professional Degrees, Folks Want to Know What It Means to Have One

After the news was announced that the Department of Education was reclassifying what is considered to be a professional degree, people are wondering what it actually means.

According to USA Today, the new classifications have left graduate students wondering about how they will pay for their college education. Pharmacy, medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and law are some of the programs being affected. So, what does it mean to have a professional degree?

A professional degree is defined by a law written in 1965 as a degree that "signifies 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."

The new classifications reportedly omit nursing as a graduate program under the list for professional degrees.

The Trump administration passed the "Big, Beautiful Bill" in July of 2025, and the bill placed caps on financial aid and loans for many professional degrees. With the new loan caps, students studying for certain professional degrees will no longer be able to access the funds for their education. Several organizations are speaking against the loan and financial aid caps, including the American Nurses Association.

President Jennifer Mensik Kennedy wrote a letter in Nursing World and noted that excluding the profession from the list is going to restrict access to funding for the students.

"Nurses make up the largest segment of the healthcare workforce and the backbone of our nation’s health system," she wrote. "At a time when healthcare in our country faces a historic nurse shortage and rising demands, limiting nurses’ access to funding for graduate education threatens the very foundation of patient care."

She went on to note that the impact on rural and underserved communities will be "unavailable."

"In many communities across the country, particularly in rural and underserved areas, advanced practice registered nurses ensure access to essential, high-quality care that would otherwise be unavailable," she added. "We urge the Department of Education to recognize nursing as the essential profession it is and ensure access to loan programs that make advanced nursing education possible."

Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" eliminates the loan program for Grad PLUS, a program that has assisted students in pursuing law degrees as well as medicine and other careers with extensive training. The bill also limits students on the Parent PLUS program to borrowing $20,000 per year and borrowing $65,000 in total.

Students in graduate school who are studying for professional degrees now on the list can borrow up to $50,000 per year and up to $200,000 total.

According to Newsweek, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing also released a statement noting the complications of the new classifications.

"Excluding nursing from the definition of professional degree programs disregards decades of progress toward parity across the health professions and contradicts the Department’s own acknowledgment that professional programs are those leading to licensure and direct practice," she wrote.

"AACN recognizes that explicitly including postbaccalaureate nursing education as professional is essential for strengthening the nation’s health care workforce, supporting the next generation of nurses, and ultimately supporting the health care of patients in communities across the country," she added.

The changes are expected to go into effect on July 1, 2026.