The Education Department yesterday made final regulations that limit how much students can borrow for graduate education and rework the repayment system. 

The rules put in place changes that Congress passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The majority of the provisions take effect on July 1.

The changes will push more people into default and make it harder for low-income borrowers to keep up with loan payments, Jessica Thompson, interim president and executive vice president at The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS), said in a statement yesterday. 

Here’s a look at some of the key provisions.

New students will only be able to borrow up to an aggregate limit of $100,000 for most graduate programs, according to the final rules.

The rules stick with designating just 11 programs as “professional” meaning students can access the highest amount of federal loans: $50,000 per year and $200,000 in total. 

The designation excludes programs such as nursing, physical therapy, and social work. The department faced significant pushback for the provision, which critics say could exacerbate healthcare worker shortages. The final rules make no changes to the designation. 

Alex Lundrigan, a policy and advocacy manager at Young Invincibles, called the designation “shortsighted.” 

“Reclassifying a wide range of degrees, including many critical health care careers, as non-professional degrees is an insult to health care workers and detrimental to the strength of our health care system,” Lundrigan said.

📚 Read more: Federal student loan limits could turn off prospective social workers from going to school, advocates say (via our partner WBEZ Chicago) 

The Department disagreed in the final rules, saying it “does not believe that our approach to defining professional student is too narrow nor do we believe it should be expanded.” 

The rules also phase out the Grad PLUS program, which helps graduate students cover attendance costs.  

The rules eliminate access to all existing income-based repayment plans and replace them with the Repayment Assistance Plan which extends the maximum repayment term to 30 years from the current 10-25 years. 

TICAS previously said the plan could “trap the lowest-income borrowers in debt for decades.” 

📚 Read more: Pay rent or pay loans? Student borrowers are forced to choose. (via Open Campus)

The department made no policy changes to the Repayment Assistance Plan in the final rules. It also pointed to provisions, like a flat reduction of $50 a month per dependent child, that aren’t found in other income-driven repayment plans. 

Commenters who argued that the Repayment Assistance Plan will increase defaults provided “no evidence” for the claim, the department said. “This plan has not yet been in existence, so the assertion is unfounded.” 

The plan will also be complicated for the Education Department to administer, TICAS said, particularly since Trump has reduced its staffing so significantly. 

📚 Read more: ‘Self-inflicted wounds’ at the Education Department (via Open Campus)

The department “now faces a daunting task to implement such significant changes with far reaching financial consequences,”  Thompson said yesterday. 

The new rules take effect the same day that anyone still enrolled in the Biden-era SAVE program will be told they must move to a new repayment plan.

The rules do include a change sought by legal groups that will make it easier for borrowers to get out of default and avoid it in the future, according to the National Consumer Law Center. Borrowers will be able to rehabilitate their loans using a new online process that lets them match their income data from tax data.

The rules also address a known problem: borrowers rehabilitating their loans only to re-default after being put into a more expensive plan. Borrowers will be able to request an income-driven repayment plan at the same time that they request to rehabilitate their loans.

The Education Department has adopted “common-sense solutions” for a burdensome process, Abby Shafroth, managing director of advocacy at the National Consumer Law Center, said in a statement.

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From Nevada: Five years ago, Nevada colleges stopped putting students in remedial math and English classes and switched to what’s known as a corequisite model. The new approach lets students jump into college-level courses, with additional supports.

Officials say the new approach shows promise, as more students are passing entry-level math and English. But through reporting we did in partnership with The Nevada Independent, we learned it’s not so clear-cut.

Fewer than 50% of students are passing the corequisite version of precalculus with a C-minus or better. And Black students who take math corequisite classes don’t perform as well as their peers. Faculty say some students still need the slower pace of a remedial class.

Patrick Villa, a math professor at the College of Southern Nevada, told Rocío Hernández at the Indy that the old model gave students time to learn the basics.

“Now you take that same student who can barely add or subtract, and … we’re going to get you ready to finish and do rational functions and equations in a couple of weeks. It’s almost impossible,” he said.

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