One Big Beautiful Bill’s impact on student loans

ADA says cap on Direct Unsubsidized Loans, elimination of Grad PLUS loan program will affect dental students

Provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will impact the 78% of dental school graduates starting their careers with more than $312,000 in student loan debt, according to a letter from the American Dental Association to the U.S. Department of Education.

ADA leaders sent the letter Aug. 26 in response to a Federal Register notice announcing the Education Department’s intent to establish a negotiated rulemaking committee to implement the higher education provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. In the letter, President Brett Kessler, D.D.S., and Interim Executive Director Elizabeth Shapiro, D.D.S., J.D., outlined how those provisions would impact dental students who participate in federal student loan programs.

The act lowers the borrowing limits on Direct Unsubsidized Loans from the cost of attendance to $50,000 annually, or $200,000 in a lifetime. It also eliminates the Grad PLUS loan program altogether. Both of these provisions go into effect July 1, 2026.

According to the letter, 85% of dental students use Direct Unsubsidized Loans to finance their dental education while 79% use Grad PLUS loans. The Association urged the department — to the extent its discretionary authority allows — “to expand federal borrowing options, so students are not forced into less favorable commercial loans.”

While the act will likely reduce the federal government’s student loan portfolio, it is not designed to lower tuition levels or reduce student borrowing, Drs. Kessler and Shapiro pointed out. Instead, student borrowers may transition to commercial loans, which typically have higher interest rates and lack the many borrower protections that federal student loans offer.

“Higher interest rates could also affect a dental student’s choice of whether to pursue a lower-paying career in an area of national need, including academia and public health settings,” they said in the letter.

The act also requires the department to develop accountability measures that will impact how accreditors assess student achievements, with an emphasis on post-graduation outcomes and alignment with labor market demands. This could have a disproportionate effect on dental schools because of the changing labor market in dentistry, with some graduates owning and operating small private practices while others work for corporate-owned dental support organizations, according to the letter.

“The Department should consider the context of the rapidly evolving dental labor market before penalizing accreditors for granting accreditation to schools whose dentists are entering the workforce with disparate incomes. Doing so will help dental school accreditors continue focusing on their primary mission, which is to hold institutions of higher education accountable for the quality, integrity, and financial stability of the education they provide,” Drs. Kessler and Shapiro said. “We urge the Department to ensure accreditor accountability measures reflect the realities of the dental labor market.”

The ADA also signed onto a separate letter sent Aug. 25 by a coalition of dental organizations to the Education Department, highlighting many of the same concerns about caps on Direct Unsubsidized Loans and the elimination of the Grad PLUS loan program. In the letter, the signers encouraged the department to report to Congress how those two provisions affect the following items within five years of implementation:

• Tuition costs for dental education.
• Interest rates and borrowing terms in the private loan market.
• Access to dental education and overall enrollment trends.
• Workforce distribution, especially in health professional shortage areas.
• The growing influence of corporate dental practice models, such as DSOs.

“In sum, we remain concerned about the implications of the changes to the federal student loan system made in the [One Big Beautiful Bill Act] on the future of the dental profession, which ultimately impacts the nation’s oral health well-being,” the organizations said in the letter. “We strongly urge the department to study the important issues outlined in this letter to determine whether the policy changes have had the intended impact of reducing the cost of dental education as well as to assess any additional impacts — intended or otherwise — on the dental workforce.”

For more on the ADA’s student loan advocacy, visit ADA.org/advocacy.