The DOE Might Cut Accounting Out of Professional Degree Status And The Profession Is Pushing Back

What Is Happening

The United States Department of Education is considering a proposal that would remove accounting from the federal definition of a professional degree program.

This matters because the One Big Beautiful Bill Act requires the department to decide which programs qualify for higher federal student loan limits.

A negotiating committee recommended that only a few fields should count as professional degrees. The suggested list includes medicine dentistry law and several other high cost programs. These students would be allowed to borrow up to two hundred thousand dollars in total.

Everyone else including accounting students would be capped at one hundred thousand dollars for graduate or doctoral programs.

Undergraduate students are not affected.

The department also said it has not published a proposed rule or a final rule yet and the public will have more chances to comment early next year.

Why Accounting Groups Are Pushing Back

The American Accounting Association the American Institute of CPAs and the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy all strongly disagree with the proposal.

They say accounting is absolutely a profession.

AAA chief executive Yvonne Hinson says accounting programs prepare students for licensure require serious training and play a major public interest role by keeping financial reporting honest and trustworthy.

She says leaving accounting off the list does not match the realities of what accountants do.

How The Loan Limits Would Change

Under the new OBBBA loan structure:

Students in programs recognized as professional could borrow up to fifty thousand dollars per year.

Students in programs not recognized as professional including accounting under the proposal would be limited to twenty thousand five hundred dollars per year starting next July.

This is the exact difference the AAA is worried about. It would make graduate accounting programs much harder for many students to afford.

The Impact On The Profession

The AAA says the new loan limits could reduce access to graduate education for accounting students shrink the pipeline of future CPAs professors and researchers hurt the profession at a time when demand is rising in areas like analytics sustainability reporting technology enabled assurance and global compliance and undermine the global competitiveness of the accounting workforce.

The worry is simple. If students cannot borrow enough to finish the education required for professional licensing fewer people will enter the field.

What Accounting Leaders Want

The AAA is asking the Department of Education to review how accounting programs are classified work with the accounting academic and professional community and recognize the licensure based and public interest role of accounting when setting loan limits.

AAA president Mark Beasley says students preparing for careers in auditing accounting analytics and oversight need fair access to graduate education.

He also says the public relies on qualified accountants and federal policy should support the talent pipeline instead of making it harder to join the profession.

Bottom Line

Nothing is final yet but the accounting world is responding early because the stakes are high.

If accounting is not recognized as a professional degree program many students may not be able to borrow enough to cover the education needed to enter the field.

The decision will shape the next generation of accountants and the profession is pushing hard to make sure accounting is treated like the profession it truly is.