Federal Loan Limits for Students Studying Accounting Will Be Reduced as of July 1, 2026
Perhaps you heard that the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) plans to reclassify accounting degrees as ‘non-professional.’ What’s the big deal, you might ask? Well, if you have a son or daughter who chooses to study accounting and enter what heretofore was considered a profession, your kids annual federal loan limits will be reduced. If the DOE proposal is finalized it will affect how much federal aid students are able to receive. Students in the 11-degree fields[1] designated as ‘professional’ will be able to borrow up to $50,000 a year and no more than $200,000 in total. For students in other programs, federal loans will be capped at $20,500 per year and a total of $100,000. These will be new limits for federal student loans disbursed on or after July 1, 2026. The changes are part of the new Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) within President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
Undergraduate borrowers will have the same current limit of up to $7,500 a year for dependent students, depending on their class year. Master’s and doctorates in accounting are no longer designated as “professional” degrees. Graduate PLUS loans, which previously allowed students to borrow up to their total cost of attendance, will be eliminated.
What Constitutes a Profession?
The debate about what constitutes a profession is significant because it directly affects financial aid eligibility and professional recognition for millions of workers in the U.S. The DOE justifies the reclassification as a way to simplify the complex student loan system and get a better handle on the rapidly increasing student debt.
Traditionally, a profession has been designated as such because it has rigorous educational standards, highly specialized professionals with a high level of expertise, they abide by a strict code of conduct (i.e., state board regulations; the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct); specialized standards of practice (i.e., Statements on Standards for Tax Practice); and mandatory continuing education to maintain licensure, such as the CPA. Moreover, there is a public interest dimension and public trust in the work done by licensed CPAs.
Accounting has been recognized as a profession for many years, alongside medicine and the law. The main reason is its public interest dimension and challenging licensing exam. This raises the following question: What, if anything, has happened to convince the government that the professional designation should no longer be applied? The streamlining of the government and controlling expenditures are the underlying reasons for the proposed change in student loans.
The DOE for its part rationalizes the change in designation by emphasizing that their definition of a “professional degree” is an internal classification for loan limit purposes only, not a value judgment on the importance of accounting and the inherent professionalism of the field. The DOE contends that the new loan caps are intended to curb inflated tuition amounts, arguing that the previous system, which allowed borrowing for the full cost of attendance, contributed to rising educational costs.
Position of NASBA and the AICPA
Not surprising, the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) and the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) are against the new designation because it could weaken public perception of accounting as a learned profession. Writing for www.cfo.brew.com, Courney Vien points out that these organizations, along with the American Accounting Association (AAA), have all released formal statements in opposition to the decision. Both the AICPA and AAA have requested that the DOE reconsider classifying accounting degrees as professional, and NASBA recommended that it “will engage policymakers to ensure accounting is restored to the professional degree category.” In a video posted to LinkedIn, AICPA president and CEO Mark Koziel stated: “Accounting is absolutely a profession. It’s built on trust, integrity, and rigorous standards” and requires a “lifelong commitment to an ethical practice and continuing education,” concluding that “these are hallmarks of a true profession.”
Why Now?
One could say that the reason for the proposed change in designation is part of the effort to streamline government costs. This is, no doubt, part of the story. The position of accounting educators is well stated by Mark Beasley, president of the AAA, noting that the DOE’s decision could “make it more difficult financially” for students to earn advanced degrees. According to U.S. News and World Report, tuition for a master’s in accounting typically ranges from about $25,000 to $70,000. In some schools it exceeds the federal loan cap the DOE proposed.
Beasley rightly points out that the proposal could be harmful to accounting education on a broader scale. If it lowers the demand for graduate education, programs might get smaller, he said. He also points out that master’s degree completions in accounting have already dropped 38% between 2017-2018 and 2023-2024, AICPA data shows. Beasley notes that fewer students will pursue master’s degrees in the future, given that candidates no longer need to complete 150 credit hours of coursework, or 30 more hours than are necessary for a bachelor’s degree, to be a licensed CPA. He sums it up quite nicely by saying the DOE’s ruling “work[s] against the public interest and may discourage people from pursuing the kinds of training and education and knowledge development to really be good at making professional judgments that are critical for the capital market system to be reliable here in the US.”
It is ironic that some accounting educators argue against the change in ‘professional’ designation because it could reduce the educational coursework to be a successful CPA thereby negatively affecting the public trust, while, at the same time, supporting the new experience-based pathway for licensing on the other hand because it may be the answer to the pipeline problem whereby the number of students studying accounting and seeking licensure as a CPA has declined over many years presumably because of the 30-extra credit hours. In other words, the extra 30 hours that heretofore have been required for licensure is now just one of three options, or pathways, to be a CPA. In all likelihood, accounting students will choose another pathway such as an extra year of experience in lieu of the 30 hours. Perhaps this is an example of having your cake and eating it too. More will be said about this in my Workplace Ethics Advice blog on January 28, 2026.
I am left wondering whether the DOE saw the changing landscape and concluded that maybe accounting was not a profession, with the likes of medicine and the law that have rigorous educational requirements for licensing. Perhaps they are right. It seems that increasingly accounting has become a business/industry with new forms of ownership and financing that are akin to the business world, such as privity equity ownership and ownership of the firms in the hands of non-CPAs.
Blog posted by Steven Mintz, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, CA. You can learn more about Steve’s activities on his personal website and sign up for his blogs: www.ethicssage.com and www.workplaceethicsadvice.com.
[1] Pharmacy, Dentistry doctorate, Veterinary medicine, Chiropractic, Law, Medicine, Optometry, Osteopathic medicine, Podiatry, Theology, Clinical psychology.