One-week face-to-face negotiations took place in early October and again in the second week of November.
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A very limited number of degree courses will be able to access the highest level of loans under a new set of rules signed by the Ministry of Education and its negotiating committee on Thursday.
The rules were enacted in response to loan caps in Congress’s Beauty Act bill, allowing students in professionally qualified programs to withdraw up to $200,000. Meanwhile, graduate students can only withdraw up to $100,000.
Throughout the two-week negotiation process, a key point of contention was which degree programs were eligible for which level of loans.
While Thursday’s definitions of professional programs are slightly more inclusive than the department’s initial proposal, which listed 10 degrees, including masters in medicine, law, dentistry and divinity, they are not as broad as a third proposal from committee member Alex Holt, who represents taxpayers and the public interest.
The final definition limits professional programs to the original 10 programs, the doctoral degree in clinical psychology, and a handful of other doctoral programs that fall under the same four-digit CIP code. In contrast, Holt’s program would include any 80-credit-hour course, whether for a master’s or doctoral degree, as long as it falls under the same two-digit CIP code. (CIP codes, also known as Classification of Instructional Programs, are part of ED’s organizational system for grouping similar academic programs.)
On Thursday, ahead of the committee’s final consensus vote, department officials explained to committee members that if they disagreed with the definition of a professional degree, they risked losing other “concessions” they had won from the department. If consensus is not reached, the department is legally free to rewrite any aspect of the proposal before releasing it for public comment. (Proposals that reach consensus will still receive public comment.)
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Deputy Secretary of State Nicholas Kent noted before the vote that the proposal was “not a perfect definition, but … a perfect definition for consensus.”
“We recognize that not every stakeholder group will be excited about our proposal,” Kent said. “But I want to remind everyone what consensus means, which means if you all agree, or can live with it — because we don’t have to like it — we’re going to take that regulatory language and put it into the notice of proposal.”
Several committee members told Inside higher education They agreed with Kent’s assessment of what was needed to reach a compromise.
Kent noted at the end of the meeting that “because we have reached a consensus, negotiators and their employers will not make negative comments … as they agreed.”
