A provision tucked into recent federal legislation will cap graduate borrowing and end the open-ended Grad PLUS program next July, higher-education advocates warn, threatening the affordability of professional degrees. Under the change, medical students would face annual borrowing limits of $50,000 and a four-year cap of $200,000—levels many deans say are well short of private tuition and living costs at private medical schools. Nursing and public-health graduate students also face stricter limits. Education officials and academic leaders caution the caps could narrow the pipeline into high-cost health professions and exacerbate provider shortages, particularly at private institutions and for students without wealthy backers. The Department of Education characterized its posture as technical but the change has already prompted alarm from medical schools and nursing programs about enrollment, diversity and workforce impacts.