Nursing Coalition Challenges ED’s Professional Degrees List

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.

But according to the plaintiffs, the department’s latest list is still not in line with what Congress intended when it put the loan caps in place.

“The Department’s [latest] guidance, like its [original] rulemaking, depart from Congress’s instructions, and the Department again acted arbitrarily and capriciously in issuing it,” the amended complaint reads. “In doing so, the Department excludes from professional-degree status degree programs that meet the definition Congress enacted and that prepare students for entry into critical professional programs that require specialized training.”

And members of the associations listed as plaintiffs are still “among the entities and individuals that will suffer harm” as a result, the complaint notes.

For example, the updated list leaves out some Master of Science in Nursing and Doctor of Nursing Practice degrees because of how the department categorized programs. The guidance used six-digit CIP codes—the most specific label government officials can use to classify various fields of study—to designate some MSN and DNP programs as professional. But not all advanced nursing programs fall under the same CIPs.

On July 10, department officials clarified that it would use a broader four-digit CIP code to determine which advanced nursing degrees qualified, addressing some of the plaintiff’s concerns.

But even then, they argue, the four-digit CIP code fails to recognize a Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing and “numerous” other advanced nursing specialties. Other degree programs beyond nursing also meet the Congressional definition but were not included in ED’s latest list. Some, including Educational Psychology, had been on the original list but were removed from the latest version.

The department said it relied on Congress’s definition of professional programs to build the latest list, but didn’t explain how exactly it did so. Similar concerns have been raised by social work and education groups not represented in this case.

The plaintiffs want the judge to rule that the guidance violates federal law, and that degree programs offered and pursued by their members are professional.