New loan limits could complicate PA dreams for some students

Benjamin Pinckney has wanted to become a physician assistant for most of his adult life, but a new round of federal student loan limits has left him unsure how he will pay for graduate school. His goal began shortly after his 20th birthday, after he was shot in Jacksonville, Florida, and spent a week in the hospital recovering from two gunshot wounds. During that stay, he said, a physician assistant visited him each day and urged him to avoid the path that had led him there.

Pinckney recalled that the clinician told him Black men with gunshot wounds often end up paralyzed, or worse. The conversations made an impression that never faded. “I used to run the streets, you know, on the wrong sides of the track,” Pinckney said. “He made me promise that I would never come into his ER that way again. That was the last conversation we had, right before I was discharged.”

Since then, he has kept that promise in mind as he built a career that included work for New York City’s Department of Sanitation and service as an Army Reserve medic. In May, he earned departmental honors at Lehman College in New York, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree. After later moving to Prince George’s County, Maryland, he planned to apply to physician assistant school this year. Now, he says, the new borrowing rules may make that impossible.

Starting July 1, the amount graduate students can borrow from the federal government is capped. The limits are part of the GOP’s tax-and-spending package, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law last year. The administration says the limits are meant to reduce the cost of higher education and student debt. Critics say the rules are far too restrictive, especially for students who are limited to borrowing $20,500 a year because of the law’s definition of a “professional degree.”

On June 24, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Department of Education from enforcing that definition. Even so, many students would not be able to use the new federal caps to cover tuition, housing, and other living expenses. That could push large numbers of graduate students toward private lenders, which often charge higher interest rates and offer fewer repayment options than federal loans.

The policy has raised alarm among some students and experts who worry it will discourage lower-income applicants and people from underrepresented groups from enrolling in graduate programs. They say that could make existing shortages in rural and primary care settings worse. Todd Pickard, president of the American Academy of Physician Associates, said the new federal limits are not a workable solution to high education costs. His organization is among several that have sued the Department of Education over the rules. “It’d be like if you had a hangnail and I cut your whole arm off instead of just taking care of your hangnail,” he said. “The treatment doesn’t match the problem.”

Under the law, students in programs classified as “professional degrees” can borrow up to $200,000 total, with no more than $50,000 a year. That category includes trainee doctors, dentists, pharmacists, and chiropractors. The same law set a lower limit for other graduate programs: $100,000 total in federal loans, with an annual cap of $20,500. Physician assistant, nursing, and physical therapy programs were initially placed in that lower category. But on June 29, the Department of Education issued guidance, reported by The Associated Press, saying some of those students will at least temporarily be able to borrow up to the higher limit.

Even with that change, the uncertainty has left many prospective students uneasy. As the law was written, a physician assistant student finishing a program in the typical two- to three-year time frame would not have been eligible to borrow the full $100,000. That is a problem because physician assistants typically begin their careers with average debt of $112,000, according to the article. Some students could be forced to turn to private loans to cover the gap.

Olivia Trull, 24, is scheduled to begin a physician assistant program at Northwest University in Kirkland, Washington, this summer. She said the 28-month program costs $137,000, with about $62,000 in tuition and fees expected for the first year alone, not including living costs. Before the court order, she said she qualified for the maximum annual federal loan amount of $20,500 during her first year. The rest, she believed, would have to come from private lenders.

Trull said she expected she might need as much as $100,000 in private loans and could face monthly payments of more than $3,000 after graduation. One private bank offered her a loan with an interest rate of nearly 14%, she said. “I have to actually sit down and have a conversation with myself,” Trull said, to decide “if I want to be drowning in debt for the next 10 years of my life.”

Pinckney said his own financial path has already been difficult. He estimated that he paid at least 90% of his undergraduate tuition out of pocket and finished with about $10,000 in federal student loan debt. Some of his friends who have applied for private student loans were quoted interest rates as high as 13%, he said. By comparison, federal graduate loan rates are currently about 8% to 9%, and federal loans generally offer more flexible repayment options.

The new rules have also triggered legal challenges. In May, 25 states and the District of Columbia filed a federal lawsuit against the Department of Education, calling the definition of “professional degree” arbitrary and capricious. In June, the American Academy of Physician Associates and the PA Education Association filed a separate federal suit, saying the rules deny students the borrowing power needed to attend physician assistant programs. The organizations argue that PA students should have access to the higher loan limits available to medical students and other professional degree students.

At the same time, Trump administration officials have defended the policy by saying graduate school costs are too high across the board. Education Secretary Linda McMahon told a House committee in May that the administration’s goal is to bring down the cost of college and education. Some higher education experts agree that borrowing limits could pressure schools to rein in prices, and Sandy Baum, a higher education economist at the Urban Institute, said there is evidence that some students borrowed more than they needed. She noted that the University of California-Irvine lowered the price of some MBA programs in May to fall below the new thresholds. Still, she does not expect a broad decline in prices and said some programs could close.

Baum also said the changes could fall hardest on Black students, who have historically borrowed more than white and Hispanic students. Students who already borrowed for undergraduate study would be subject to a lifetime federal borrowing cap of $257,000 under the new rules. “There will be students who can’t enroll,” she said. Andrei Robu, a 26-year-old medical student at the Medical University of South Carolina, said many students are worried the limits will make medical training less diverse. He also said schools may still fill their classes by favoring applicants from wealthier backgrounds, even if access narrows for others. The story noted that the Department of Education did not respond to questions about the rules.