Inspecting claim Education Department stopped counting nursing, other programs as ‘professional degrees’

Claim:

In late 2025, the Department of Education said it would no longer classify these credentials as professional degrees: education (including teaching master’s degrees), nursing (MSN, DNP), social work (MSW, DSW), public health (MPH, DrPH), physician assistant, occupational therapy, physical therapy, audiology, speech-language pathology and counseling and therapy degrees.

Rating:

What’s True

The Department of Education has proposed excluding a wide range of college programs from the definition of “professional degrees” specifically in relation to eligibility for student loans.

What’s False

As of this writing, the proposal has not yet passed. Some counseling degrees would also be classified as “professional degrees” under the Department of Education’s plan.

What’s Undetermined

It was unclear if this decision that specifically would affect student loan borrowing limits indicated a more widespread change in Department of Education policy and practice.

In late November 2025, a rumor spread online that the Department of Education had reclassified nursing programs and other college credentials to exclude them from the definition of a “professional degree.”

The allegation spread on X, Instagram, Facebook and Threads. News media outlets ran stories with headlines “Nursing Is No Longer Counted as a ‘Professional Degree’ by Trump Admin.” Many posts included lists of supposed college credentials the Department of Education purportedly planned to reclassify. Snopes readers sent in examples of a popular list circulating online and asked us to verify whether the federal education agency will “no longer recognize these as professional degrees.” Some asked if this meant the degrees would not qualify for student loans.

The Department of Education had, in fact, proposed excluding a wide range of college programs from the definition of “professional degrees” specifically in relation to eligibility for student loans. The Nov. 6 proposal, if passed, would result in a more restrictive cap on federal loans for students attending graduate programs in varying professions. The post above provided a largely accurate list of some of the excluded degrees.

As of this writing, the proposal had not been finalized. It was unclear whether this policy that specifically affected student loans indicated a broader shift in the Department of Education’s attitudes toward different graduate degree programs. As such, we have rated this claim a mixture of truth, falsehood and undetermined information.

In an emailed statement, Ellen Keast, a Department of Education spokesperson, said the agency is using the same definition of what constitutes a professional degree that it has used for decades and the language of its proposed rules “aligns with this historical precedent.”

“We’re not surprised that some institutions are crying wolf over regulations that never existed because their unlimited tuition ride on the taxpayer dime is over,” Keast said.

The Department of Education said it expects to release final rules in spring 2026 at the latest (see Page 56).

How did we get here? 

U.S. President Donald Trump’s July 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminated a program that allowed graduate students to borrow up to the full cost of their attendance and placed caps on how much students could borrow (see Section 81001).

Under the new law, students in “professional degree” programs, defined as “professional students,” can borrow the highest amount at an annual limit of $50,000 with a lifetime cap of $200,000. Students in other graduate programs can borrow $20,500 annually, with a lifetime cap of $100,000. The new policies on student loans go into effect on July 1, 2026.

In response to this law, the Department of Education began what’s known as a “rulemaking” process to implement the legislation. Part of that rulemaking, in this case, involved determining what counts as a “professional degree” under the legislation.

As such, in order to determine who qualifies for the higher cap on student loans, the Department of Education has proposed a narrow interpretation for the definition of “professional degree” first described in a 1965 regulation. Here’s the original definition:

Professional degree: 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. Professional licensure is also generally required. Examples of a professional degree include but are not limited to Pharmacy (Pharm.D.), Dentistry (D.D.S. or D.M.D.), Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M.), Chiropractic (D.C. or D.C.M.), Law (L.L.B. or J.D.), Medicine (M.D.), Optometry (O.D.), Osteopathic Medicine (D.O.), Podiatry (D.P.M., D.P., or Pod.D.), and Theology (M.Div., or M.H.L.).

The Trump administration’s interpretation would define “professional degrees” as those that have the same four-digit CIP code as the listed examples above, as well as clinical psychology (Psy.D. or Ph.D.). CIP, or Classification of Instructional Programs, was developed by the federal government to classify programs to identify courses taught throughout the United States. Schools often use different program names and descriptions for similar courses of study — CIP codes allow the government and other organizations to map those programs across a shared set of codes. 

What is a professional degree under the proposal? 

Here’s an example of how this would work. The four-digit CIP code for “Pharmacy” is 51.20, which, as of this writing, included fields such as clinical and industrial drug development, pharmaceutical sciences and pharmaceutical marketing and management. Thus, these fields would be classified as a professional degree — and students studying in these fields would be allowed to borrow more money — because “Pharmacy (Pharm.D.)” is on the list of eligible degrees. 

Based on a Snopes review of CIP codes, every degree on the list circulating online would not be counted as a professional degree, with the exception of a few counseling degrees that fell under CIP code 42.28 for “Clinical, Counseling and Applied Psychology.”

The list in social media posts may simply be outdated, as the Trump administration’s previous plan involved offering the “professional degree” student loan cap only to the 10 original examples from the 1965 law (see Page 13). An updated proposal from Nov. 6, which the Department of Education moved forward for further consideration, added clinical psychology and the CIP designations to the “professional degree” definition.

Here’s the language from that proposal, as published on Page 7 by the National Association of Student Aid Administrators (emphasis ours):

Professional student: A student enrolled in a program of study that awards a professional degree upon completion of the program;

(1) A professional degree is a degree that: 

(i) 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;

(ii) Is generally at the doctoral level, and that requires at least six academic years of postsecondary education coursework for completion, including at least two years of post-baccalaureate level coursework;

(iii) Generally requires professional licensure to begin practice;

and (iv) 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 in paragraph (2)(i) of this definition. 

(2) A professional degree may be awarded in the following fields: 

(i) Pharmacy (Pharm.D.), Dentistry (D.D.S. or D.M.D.), Veterinary Medicine (D.V.M.), Chiropractic (D.C. or D.C.M.), Law (L.L.B. or J.D.), Medicine (M.D.), Optometry (O.D.), Osteopathic Medicine (D.O.), Podiatry (D.P.M., D.P., or Pod.D.), Theology (M.Div., or M.H.L.), and Clinical Psychology (Psy.D. or Ph.D.). 

(3) A professional student under this definition:

(i) May not receive title IV aid as an undergraduate student for the same period of enrollment; and

(ii) Must be enrolled in a program leading to a professional degree under paragraph (2) of this definition.

In sum …

It is true that the Department of Education has proposed excluding a wide range of graduate programs from the definition of a “professional degree” when determining eligibility for student loan programs. It is not true that the agency has “reclassified” these programs or said that they were “no longer professional degrees,” as of this writing, because the proposal has not yet passed. The Department of Education also argued that it is using the same definition of a professional degree first outlined in federal regulations in 1965, although the agency’s interpretation of that definition is, in truth, a narrow one.