A federal judge temporarily blocked the U.S. Department of Education from applying new regulations narrowing which graduate degrees count as “professional,” a designation that determines eligibility for higher federal student-loan borrowing caps. The ruling, issued by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, applies to a May definition that limited “professional” degrees to 11 mostly doctoral-level fields and added new criteria. The decision points to likely inconsistencies between the department’s rulemaking and Congress’s borrowing-cap framework in last summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Howell also cited concerns that the Education Department’s process may have violated the Administrative Procedures Act and ordered the department to follow an existing regulatory definition cited by Congress when creating the caps. The injunction was sought by six professional and education associations, including the National Education Association and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. The court allowed some parts of the rule to move forward while ordering the department to adhere to the prior definition for now. The impact for higher education is immediate for graduate programs—especially those in education and nursing—where students could face borrowing-limit changes that affect enrollment demand, institutional planning, and net tuition revenue.