Advocates for nursing programs and students have taken issue with the Trump administration’s definition of professional degrees.
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A coalition of advanced nurses, public health workers, teachers and therapists is once again challenging how the Department of Education determines which graduate programs qualify for higher loan caps, filing an amended complaint Monday.
The group originally filed its lawsuit in May, arguing that the regulatory language ED was using to implement a new law was too narrow, unlawfully limiting which degree programs qualified as “professional” and therefore would be eligible for higher amounts of federal aid.
A district court judge put the definition on hold in late June, before the rules took effect, and directed the department to implement Congress’s preexisting definition of professional while the case played out. By the end of the month, the Education Department released an updated list of eligible programs that deemed 29 programs as professional, up from 11 the first time around.
