Caps to federal student loans included in President Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" are concerning officials at Maine's only medical school.
Signed into law earlier this month, the bill sets a new lifetime borrowing limit for professional degrees at $200,000. The average University of New England medical student borrowed more than $300,000 last year.
Jane Carreiro, dean of the UNE medical school, said federal loans are favorable because they don't require students to pay during their residencies. She's worried that students will now be forced to turn to the private market where there are often less advantageous options.
"What kind of terms does the private market provide to students who don't have a lot of collateral, whose parents may or may not have a lot of collateral, may or may not be able to, you know, put that forward as a guarantee against the loan. And so it's kind of going to be the wild wild west for a little bit," Carreiro said.
Carreiro said barriers to entry are already high for people to go to medical school and she is concerned about the effect this will have on the already slim rural physician workforce.
"That dissuades people who could go into medicine and could practice and would go back to their communities. It dissuades them from taking that leap," Carreiro said.
Carreiro said another thing that will hurt graduate students is the elimination of the GradPLUS loans program in Trump's bill. Roughly 75% of UNE grad students receive this type of loan.
