We touched on this before, but CHE offers this update:

According to the consensus definitions, approved Thursday after two rounds of negotiated rulemaking, a degree will be considered professional if the field requires skills beyond those needed to receive a bachelor’s degree. The distinction matters: Professional students will be able to take out $50,000 in loans per year, or $200,000 total, more than double that of a graduate student. A graduate degree, meanwhile, will be defined as a program that is “above the baccalaureate level” and awards a “graduate credential.”

A lot of students are going to need to find alternative ways to get loans.

The classification could affect whether students will be able to afford graduate school, particularly master’s programs, and how much colleges, which have traditionally seen master’s degrees as revenue generators, will be able to charge for tuition. With a $20,500 annual cap on federal loans for nonprofessional programs, many prospective students may reconsider getting a master’s degree at all….

Professional programs, according to the consensus definition, include those in medicine, law, dentistry, veterinary medicine, clinical psychology, and theology. Ph.D. and other doctoral programs may also be considered professional, so long as they involve at least six years of postsecondary education, including at least two years of postbaccalaureate coursework.

$50,000 per year will not be enough for most law or medicine or business school students, at least those who are borrowing for all their expenses. That means they will have to turn to the private loan market, which will have, almost certainly, less favorable rates.