The One Big Beautiful Bill Act of July 4, 2025 enacted sweeping cuts to federal student loan programs.

The bill phased the Grad PLUS loans program out as of July 1, 2026 as well as new graduate unsubsidized direct loan limits, which aid in lowering the cost of graduate school and the amount of debt students accrue.

Under these caps, professional programs are limited to $50,000 per year with a lifetime borrowing limit of $200,000. Other graduate programs were also limited to $20,500 per year with a $100,000 lifetime borrowing limit. There are currently no changes to undergraduate loans. However, undergraduate loans will be subject to the new lifetime limits. 

The bill’s list of “Professional” programs has also raised questions from graduate institutions, specifically nurses and medical students, whose professions are no longer listed as “professional” by the Department of Education. According to Harvard financial aid, “the definition remains vague, with phrases like “not limited to” and “generally requires licensure. In the months ahead, ED will need to confirm which programs qualify for the higher $50,000/year and $200,000/lifetime borrowing cap.” 

The demotion of nursing to a non-professional career under the OBBB has caused national uproar, as nursing shortages rage throughout the country. 

Evan Wendel, a third-year student who volunteers with Walla Walla Fire as an EMT, commented on changes from the bill which now list paramedics as professional and nurses as non-professional careers.

“Paramedics are already classified as non-professional, even though they do go to a lot of school and are sometimes compared to [Registered Nurses, RNs] in terms of the amount of school they get,” Wendel said. “So it was kind of interesting that they made the change to call RNs as non-professional instead of the other way around and paramedics to the professional classification.”

The newly imposed student loan caps for graduate school are also causing concern for healthcare professionals across the country. Some fear detrimental effects like potential shortages, a decrease in diversity in healthcare and the inability to access healthcare education as loan options change under the bill. 

The Department of Education’s “Myth vs. Fact: The Definition of Professional Degrees” press release addressed these concerns in a statement on their website. The statement accuses “progressive voices” of fear mongering and perpetuating misinformation and that they will “set the record straight.”

Alexzandria Harrison, an RN at St. Francis Hospital in Federal Way, WA, shared her anticipatory concerns for staffing shortages. 

“I think the biggest gap is going to be with [Primary Care Providers, PCPs]. One of the biggest advantages to having midlevel providers was to fill that gap for primary care, which tends to have less interest in medical school due to the long hours and lower pay compared to higher paying specialties,” Harrison said. “With loans capped it’s going to create a bigger obstacle for nurses who want to go back to school. You have to either come from money or take out huge private loans.”

Potential impacts on the diversity of medical students and professionals remains a concern for medical institutions, like the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine. According to an NPR interview with the University’s Vice Dean of Education, Vineet Arora, “most medical students already come from the upper 40% of family income.”

Arora claimed that the discrepancy in minorities in the medical field is already felt and that the new caps on loans would exacerbate the issue.  

Christopher Schaller, a Radiographer, CT Technologist and Physician Assistant specializing in Surgery and Interventional Radiology, shared his concerns about new loan caps’ impact on diversity in a written statement to The Wire.

“I don’t really know for sure if disadvantaged, low income students will stop going to college altogether. I assume they’ll just be stuck with worse loans and the workforce won’t be significantly impacted,” Schaller said. 

Schaller predicts only a slight change in workforce immediately following the new loan caps, while others project drastic shifts in who can attend medical school or become a medical professional. Wendel echoed a need for diverse experiences in medical professions on a practical level. 

“I think patients feel a lot more comfortable when someone who has lived a lot of experiences or at least understands a lot of their experiences is treating them,” Wendel said. 

In his experience, treating patients requires empathy that can emerge from shared backgrounds between a medical provider and the people they treat.  

“I’ve worked with a lot of Hispanic patients, especially [many of whom are] immigrants and there are a lot of differences in the cultural expectations with healthcare in what they come to seek care for and the different challenges navigating the American healthcare system compared to a healthcare system in their home country. And so having physicians that are from those backgrounds is really important to helping those patients,” Wendel said. 

As the July 2026 implementation fast approaches, the future of healthcare education and professional education more generally hangs in the balance. The potential consequences of the One Big Beautiful Bill’s loan caps and professions statuses are yet to come.