Education Dept. rejects accounting as professional degree

The U.S. Department of Education issued final regulations on which types of graduate and professional degree programs can receive student loans of up to $200,000, ruling out the accounting profession despite a hard-fought campaign from accounting groups.

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The American Institute of CPAs, the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, the American Accounting Association, state CPA societies and other accounting organizations banded together last year to lobby for changes after the Education Department issued the proposal excluding accounting from the list of professions and won some concessions in the way it referred to accounting in the final rules. However, it continued to exclude accounting, nursing, engineering, architecture and many other industries long recognized as professions.

The 11 professions that were included in the final regulations are law, medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, chiropractic, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, veterinary medicine, clinical psychology and theology. They are eligible for up to $200,000 in borrowing. Students who pursue a degree in other graduate or doctoral programs would be capped at $100,000 in federal loans. Undergraduate students would not be affected by the lending limits. 

The changes come in response to the passage last year of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the Trump administration has rebranded as the Working Families Tax Cuts Act. The changes include establishing new loan limits for graduate students, professional students, and parents, and phasing out the Graduate Plus Program. The Working Families Tax Cuts Act also consolidated various student loan repayment plans by phasing out the existing Income-Contingent Repayment plans, creating a new tiered standard repayment plan option, and establishing a new income-driven repayment plan known as the Repayment Assistance Plan. The package also enabled borrowers in default who have previously rehabilitated a defaulted loan a second chance to rehabilitate their loans and resume repayment.

The final regulations include an explanation of the rationale behind omitting accounting from the list of recognized professions, acknowledging the comments the department had received urging it to include accounting and CPA specifically.

“The department received comments from business school stakeholders, accounting faculty, accounting organizations, state certified public accountant societies, and students urging it to treat certain business and accounting graduate programs as professional degree programs,” said the regulations. “Commenters generally argued that the MBA and related graduate business programs are practice-oriented, may be accreditation-driven, and often function as career-entry, career-critical, or leadership credentials.”

It noted that some comments had referred to the expanded pathways to a CPA license now being adopted by many states.

“A subset of commenters urged the department to treat accounting pathways, particularly those intended to prepare students for CPA licensure, like other included professional programs,” said the regulations. “These commenters emphasized public protection responsibilities, ethical obligations, state licensure requirements, and the central role of CPAs in attestation, auditing, tax, and financial reporting. Several state CPA societies argued that graduate accounting programs remain a critical and widely used route to CPA licensure, even where states now provide more than one educational pathway. For example, commenters emphasized that their state allows either a bachelor’s degree plus two years of experience, or a master’s degree plus one year of experience, both coupled with the passage of the Uniform CPA Examination and satisfaction of ethics and competency standards as pathways to licensure.”

“Other commenters argued that even where a master’s degree is not universally required, accounting should still qualify, as graduate study is often the practical route to meet the 150-credit hour expectation, the profession is heavily regulated, and the work implicates public trust and economic stability,” the regulations continued. “Some commenters also urged the department to either include accounting expressly or to retain non-exclusive phrasing that would preserve flexibility for inclusion of accounting and similarly situated programs. Some also requested clarification regarding accounting concentrations housed within business schools and how program identification would be administered for business-related degrees.”

However, the department rejected those arguments, insisting it was applying the framework chosen by Congress, instead of treating it “as an open-ended basis for expanding the category to additional fields.”

“Put plainly, there is no single recognized profession that an MBA prepares students to enter. For the same reason, the department declines to consider other business programs, such as an executive MBA, DBA, or related business doctoral study as professional degrees,” said the regulations. “The department does not contest that these programs may have career value or otherwise assist students in satisfying certain prerequisite licensure requirements. But, for example, to obtain licensure as a certified public accountant, an applicant must have completed 150 credit hours of coursework but is not required to have earned a specific post-baccalaureate degree, which is relevant when the department determines whether a specific degree is a professional degree.”

The department regulations also took a final swipe at comments about advanced accounting degrees. 

“The department also disagrees with commenters that advanced accounting degrees beyond the baccalaureate level should be considered professional degrees,” said the regulations. “As the commenters themselves concede, these master’s degrees are not required, in general, to become a certified public accountant. Even though students must have completed 150 credit hours or 225 quarter hours to sit for the Uniform CPA Examination, there is no specific requirement to earn a master’s degree. In other words, the master’s degree does not signify the beginning of practice in a given profession, because earning 150 credit hours is the primary determinate. In general, undergraduate accounting students can take all of the requisite coursework required to sit for the exam as part of their baccalaureate coursework, although the department acknowledges that most institutions require less than 150 credit hours to graduate.”