Court Temporarily Pauses Key Parts of Professional Student Definition Days Before July 1 Effective Date
By Megan Walter, Senior Policy Analyst
A federal court has temporarily halted the implementation of a portion of the Department of Education’s (ED) narrowed professional degree definition from its Reimagining and Improving Student Education (RISE) final rule, just days before the rule was set to take effect on July 1, 2026.
Significant uncertainty remains as the ruling is only a day old. ED has not yet appealed, a path they can pursue, or commented publicly on any plans to issue guidance. For now, institutions should consult their own legal counsel before deciding how to proceed.
The decision, which applies nationally, temporarily reverts to the current three-part standard for professional degree programs at 34 CFR 668.2 until the court issues a final decision on the full merits of the case. Under that standard, a professional degree is one that signifies completion of the academic requirements for beginning practice in a given profession and a level of professional skill beyond that normally required for a bachelor's degree, generally requires professional licensure, and includes (but is not limited to) the ten fields of study listed in the regulation.
As previously reported, the consolidated lawsuit brought by professional associations representing multiple healthcare-related professionals argued that ED violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by adopting a “professional degree program” definition that “imposed new requirements absent from the preexisting definition adopted by Congress and turned an illustrative list of qualifying degrees into an exhaustive one.” The court heard arguments on June 23, with the plaintiffs seeking, among other forms of relief, a stay of the rule pending resolution of the case, a request that was partially granted.
The stay order pauses two pieces of the final rule: part (i) of the professional degree definition at 34 CFR 685.102, which contained ED’s new requirements that narrowed the fields of study that would be considered professional degree programs, and the requirement that a degree program be free from another professional’s supervision, which appeared in the rule’s preamble.
Part (i) is the portion of the definition that established ED’s more restrictive test for what can be considered a professional degree program. It required, among other things, that a professional degree generally be at the doctoral level, that it require at least six academic years of postsecondary coursework including at least two years of post-baccalaureate coursework, that it generally require professional licensure to begin practice, and that it carry a four-digit Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) code in the same intermediate group as the eleven fields ED established as an exhaustive list in the rule. The court's stay suspends the applicability of these criteria.
Part (ii) of the final rule lists the eleven fields ED established as professional degree programs: the ten listed in the current definition at 34 CFR 668.2 (Pharmacy, Dentistry, Veterinary Medicine, Chiropractic, Law, Medicine, Optometry, Osteopathic Medicine, Podiatry, Theology) plus Clinical Psychology, which ED added in the final rule. Part (ii) remains in place, but the court adopted the understanding that this list is not exclusive.
With part (i) paused, programs that would have been measured against ED’s stricter professional degree criteria (that the program be at the doctoral-level, require six years of postsecondary coursework, and share a 4-digit CIP-code with one of the 11 programs in part (ii)) will now be evaluated under the current three-part standard at 34 CFR 668.2 described above. Clinical Psychology remains an eligible program because part (ii) survived the stay.
Emergency relief like this is sometimes limited to the parties who brought the suit. In this case, the court froze the provisions because they likely violate portions of the APA, and it explained that relief arising from APA violations generally applies nationwide, not just to the plaintiff organizations and their members.
The ordered stay suspends ED's authority to implement the provisions until the court can fully decide the case on its substance (called a full-merit hearing). The June 23 ruling was a quick emergency decision on whether the plaintiffs had grounds for temporary relief before July 1, not a deep-dive hearing on whether the rule is actually lawful.ED sought to block the pause order from taking effect until it could file its own appeal, a request that the judge ultimately denied.
Both ED and the plaintiffs must propose a schedule for further court proceedings by July 2, and the stay will remain in place until the case is fully resolved, whenever that occurs.
NASFAA will continue to monitor the case, as well as the related multistate challenge, and will provide updates in Today’s News as the litigation proceeds.
Publication Date: 6/25/2026
Kristi W | 7/23/2026 5:17:03 PM
One main question that many of us are debating--should we assume this is for non-legacy students only, so those who fall under OB3 rules?
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