Congress is on the verge of greenlighting new restrictions capping how much graduate students will be able to borrow from the federal government in a move that some worry will ice marginalized communities out of advanced degrees. 

As part of the megabill Republicans hope to pass this week to advance President Trump’s agenda, senators included a ceiling on federal student loans for graduate, medical and law students as a way to combat the rising cost of college, arguing unlimited loans incentivizes colleges to raise their prices.  

Graduate students will only be able to borrow $20,500 a year, with a lifetime cap of $100,000. For professional students, including those studying law and medicine, they could borrow $50,000 a year with a lifetime cap of $200,000.  

But with some students unable to cover the full cost of an advanced degree without a government loan, advocates worry about students turning to private lenders or skipping out on an advanced degree altogether at a time when more jobs are requiring the additional education.  

“There are two very likely outcomes of this. One is that more and more students will decide graduate school is not worth it and won’t go at all despite the growing share of the workforce that requires some form of post-graduate education … Those will disproportionately be Black and Latino Americans. I would expect significant growth in the private lending market, those loans will most likely have higher interest rates and fewer borrower protections,” said Kyle Southern, associate vice president of higher education quality at The Institute for College Access & Success. 

The GOP-crafted provision would also eliminate the Graduate PLUS program, which allows students to cover the full cost of a post-graduate program.  

The pitch comes as Republicans have attached a slew of measures aimed at generating savings for the federal government in the nearly 900-page package they hope to pass this week. The reconciliation bill, which has already passed the Senate, is estimated to put trillions of dollars toward the nation’s deficits over the next decade. 

Other changes to student loans programs in the bill including simplifying repayment plans down to two options and expanding Pell Grants to include workplace programs. 

Asked about the proposed grad student cap earlier this week, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), head of the Senate committee that crafted the proposal, told The Hill that “if you allow more money to be borrowed, schools just raise their tuition more, and that’s what we’re trying to stop.” 

“There’s some suggestion that there’s no recourse for people who cannot borrow as much as the school would have them borrow,” said Cassidy, who also worked as a gastroenterologist for years before serving in Congress. 

But with changes to Medicaid, a doctors’ shortage and a lack of inflation-adjusted measures for the cap, others speculate this move will lead not only to fewer medical professionals but to harm for disadvantaged communities.  

“Physician groups have warned that these changes could worsen doctor shortages, in combination with the proposed changes to Medicaid that could force rural hospitals to close. This legislation can have significant impact on access to health care, particularly for rural Americans. And furthermore, because these limits are not indexed to inflation, over time, they will gradually cover less and less of the total cost of attendance,” said Sara Partridge, associate director for higher education policy at the Center for American Progress. 

The price of college has risen sharply since the 1980s, with a report from Georgetown University estimating a 169 percent increase from 1980 to 2019. 

“The biggest concern that I’m hearing is the graduate student loan cap,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who heads the subcommittee that oversees annual Education Department funding, told The Hill over the weekend. She said she’s heard from  “graduate, particularly medical schools, dental school, concerned about that.” 

However, Capito, who ultimately voted for the bill, also noted cases where “these professionals are coming out with such enormous debt that I think the schools need to work to try to rein in the cost there so it is more affordable.” 

Cassidy argued it is “going to be a different mix” of how the plan would work for students. 

“My family helped pay for my education,” he said. “Some people worked while they went to school. Some people borrowed money independently of the federal program. Some people got scholarships.” 

“Some people, and by the way, this is very doable, committed four years to working for either the Public Health Service or the military, and they got a total free ride. Now a total free ride, and those programs still exist,” he added. 

Democrats have sharply criticized the plan. 

“On so many levels, it’s problematic,” Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.), who serves on the House Committee on Education and Workforce, told The Hill on Wednesday. 

“But if you’re trying to have a professional pipeline, the people who are dentists and doctors, which we absolutely need, I mean, I’m an educator, and I think that you meet people where they are,” Hayes said. “We absolutely need job training programs. We actually absolutely need skills training programs, but we also need people with professional degrees.” 

“What this says, once again, is that only the people who can already afford it should be able to go to college,” she said. “So what about low income communities with high achieving students who want to become get a professional degree and go back to their community, to be a dentist or a doctor or, you know, a social worker, the things that require graduate degrees and saying that, unless you can, can pay for it yourself.” 

Other critics say further options are available to Congress to rein in the cost of higher education. 

If an individual cannot cover the cost of their program with the cap on federal loans, experts posit they will go for private loans, which come with their own difficulties.  

Some would have difficulties getting a co-signer for a private student loan, and interest rates are higher. Additionally, despite being a much smaller portion of all student loans, 40 percent of student loan-related complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are regarding private loans.  

“There’s certainly a legitimate conversation to be had about the affordability, especially of graduate education, and of the payoff on that return on investment. I do think that the disproportionate concern for high-cost, low-quality programs has been in the for profit college sector, and we’ve seen legal action taken as such. And so, if it was me making these decisions, I would take a more targeted approach to really addressing those kinds of deceptive practices and high cost, low outcome programs for students,” said Southern.