As part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the U.S. Department of Education (which was supposed to be destroyed by now, if I remember correctly?) is cutting the nation’s student loan programs.

There are several ways this is happening but one change that was announced this past week is the classification of some graduate-level degrees as “graduate” degrees and some as “professional” degrees.

Programs classified as “graduate” will only be eligible for a maximum of $20,500 in federal loans per year. “Professional” degree programs will be eligible for a maximum of $50,000 in loans per year.

Here is the list of programs that will no longer be considered “professional” by the government as of July 1, 2026: nursing, physician assistants, physical therapists, educators, social workers, audiologists, accountants and architects.

You know what’s among the adequately “professional” programs? Theology. Not that pastors aren’t important to society, but personally if the government is short on money I’d prefer they invest in nurses.

Now, I don’t know if Maine has a shortage of accountants and architects. But I’ve been working in health care long enough to know that we have a huge shortage of just about every type of medical provider, especially in rural areas.

I also know that in rural areas, physician assistants and nurse practitioners provide a disproportionate amount of health care, especially in primary care settings (which, again, we don’t have enough of here. Have you tried to find a PCP lately?).

My primary care provider is a nurse practitioner; quite a bit of my prenatal care was with nurse practitioners and certified nurse midwives (another group whose programs would be defunded). Capping loans for those programs at $20,500 a year would be a gut shot straight to our health care system.

Wait times would lengthen. Costs would go up. More facilities would be understaffed, increasing the burden on the providers that are left, which would lead to otherwise preventable medical errors and mistakes.

This is an attack not just on higher education in general but on women’s education and economic independence as well. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the programs suddenly deemed not worthy enough to be “professional” are dominated by women.

Roughly 89% of registered nurses are female. The numbers are a little better for nurse practitioners; roughly 76% of them are women. In addition, 86% of audiologists are female, as are about 90% of new social workers, 77% of public school educators and 69% of physical therapists.

You’ll note that this is the same administration constantly encouraging women to have more children and doing their best to reduce access to birth control and abortion. It’s clear they want women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, and not economically able to support themselves.

Now, I don’t want to entirely defend the student loan system. As it currently stands, it’s often predatory. It locks young people who don’t come from family money into a cycle of debt that follows them around for decades. I would know; I have $69,000 in student loan debt.

Personally I’d prefer a return to the days when public colleges and universities were adequately funded by their states, instead of pushing more and more of the cost of their education onto student tuition. But in the current world we live in, the federal student loan program is what we’ve got, and I can tell you the federal loans are a hell of a lot better — and fairer — than private loans.

When young people who want to become nurses or audiologists or physician assistants can’t afford it out of pocket, and if they aren’t able to borrow enough federal-backed loans to pay for their education, they’ll have two choices: go through the private system, which is much more predatory, or they simply won’t get that education. And we’ll all be poorer for it.

Fortunately, these changes aren’t finalized yet. These definitions of a professional degree were the result of the Education Department’s rulemaking committee, but there is still time for them to be changed based on public comment.

The committee is expected to formally put out a “notice of proposed rulemaking” in January, which will officially open a 30-day public comment period. After that period, the department will either keep the proposed rule (boo, hiss) or revise it.

I encourage members of the public to comment on this proposal when they get a chance. But even before January, I hope that Maine’s entire congressional delegation will speak out against these loan limitations, unless they want to see a theologian for their annual physical.