Court ruling may affect loan limits for architecture students

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Department of Education’s narrowed definition of “professional degree,” a decision that could help determine how much federal loan funding architecture students can access.

As Archinect previously reported, architecture was left out of the Department’s new professional degree classification under the Trump administration’s student aid overhaul. That distinction matters because students in programs classified as professional degrees may qualify for higher federal borrowing limits than standard graduate students.

According to Inside Higher Ed, U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled that the Education Department had gone beyond Congress’s instructions by limiting the category to 11 fields. NASFAA reports that the ruling temporarily restores the broader existing federal definition while litigation continues.