Very noteworthy how most of these professions are typically female-gendered in US culture.
Also, it completely misses the point that a profession is an occupation REGULATED BY A STATUTORY BODY with specific privileges and responsibilities defined by law."Professional" has been devalued in recent decades by overuse, but do you really want to be treated by an unregulated doctor?
Whatever idiot drafted this guideline is clearly not a member of a regulated profession.
@cstross Would you be so kind as to explain to puzzled French me what professional mean in this context?
Would the change have legal consequences? Is it about taxes? Student loans?
@temptoetiam Who knows? (I'm Scottish.)
@cstross My theory, flimsy as it is, is this is about not having to call Dr Jill Biden "Doctor Biden." It's retroactively making a frequent idiotic gibe from the presidunce rhetorically correct.
@cstross Engineering? *laughs in bridges collapsing* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVdVpd-pqcM
"engineering"
🤣
@cstross If my understanding is correct, what this really means is - people who get student loans can get some reimbursement of their loan after finishing the degree, and the reimbursement amount is considerably higher if the degree is "considered professional" by the DoE.
So, the regulation of those professions by professional bodies will continue, but the fields will become more of an intergenerational-wealth club than they already are because they'll be more expensive to get into.
@cstross Engineering? WTF?
There’s no degree needed to be barefoot and pregnant. This fiat is just another way to force women out of the workforce and get back to the home/hearth where they belong.
He is dismantling decades of civil rights.
Women are either whores or saints in his eyes. The whores are there for him & his ilk to own/discard, and the saints are there to incubate their (preferably) male offspring.
@mckra1g While I broadly agree with you, I think it's a mistake to over-personalize this and ascribe it all to Trump. T is the idiot king sitting on his throne of gold, presiding on chaos,while behind the throne the courtiers behind Project 2025 pull the levers. Neutralizing or replacing Trump won't fix this: it's a toxic system, not one man (however horrible he is).
@cstross I assume this is to prevent these professionals from leaving the US and working in another, less stupid country.
@cstross
The opportunity exists for a bank or lending institution to champion these educational fields and earn the loyalty of many women and men.
Not only is this continuing Bob Kennedy's assault on medical care, it's an assault on women and professionalism. The latter is something no one in Trump's administration knows anything about.
@cstross "I love the poorly educated!" --DJT
@cstross No more loans. Interesting that both Nursing, including graduate degrees as Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistant degrees will no longer qualify. Most urgent care and clinics and nursing homes and ERs and hospitals are staffed by NPs and PAs (Hospitalists). This is another attack on access to health care.
@cstross The brain drain is going to get way worse...
@cstross I kept going "WHAT?" all the way down the list, then got to Engineering and exploded into a million bits.
@cstross See also how the current administration has been trying to get rid of the Dept. of Ed., along with the CDC, and likely the Food & Drug Administration. They’d be happy to end any kind of regulations, and don’t care if it kills people as long as they make a profit.
@cstross Shocked, SHOCKED, that librarians aren't on that list and I can only hope that it is because they fear us.
ENGINEERING?!?!?
@blogdiva Yep. Remember this shit is trickle-down from Project 2025, whose vision of Future America is a thin scum of oligarchs/aristocrats lording it over an immiserated, de-skilled peasantry doing the stoop labour at the direction of (non-existent, but that won't stop them) AIs.
@cstross Nursing, PA, and physical therapy not being considered professional?!
For those who don't know, interprofessional care is imperative to quality healthcare: the idea that the people caring for you collaborate with each other instead of being all silo'd is great for patients! Undermining like half of the professions that are involved in that care is Y I K E S
@cstross @soniadevonie This is an attack on mostly healthcare but also education. Good luck on getting doctor visits, as not as many people will go into the fields, not to mention QUALITY. This also seeks to privatize nursing, medical, and mental healthcare to the level of cosmetology.
Pure. Fucking. Insanity.
…unless you interested in starting certification mills.
@cstross so what we'll get is "professionals" will suggest people go to nurses, social workers and therapists who'll make the problem worse, and then when that fails the professional will go to a speech pathologist and direct the person to an audiologist to see if perhaps the professional misspoke or the person misheard. then they'll try OT & PT, but nothing more as the building will fall down because the engineer who built it wasn't taught by a qualified person.
Sounds wonderful...
@cstross I don't know, Linda was the one who drafted this but she did talk a sex abuse survivor out of compensation years back. This lawsuit related to that incident: https://abcnews.go.com/US/linda-mcmahons-alleged-wwe-sexual-abuse-lawsuit-paused/story?id=116558050
Just, perhaps important to underscore this type of leadership and professionalism in this moment.
edit: added the CW because SA and Linda's face
@cstross engineering not professional?
Well, it all plays out as planned:
limiting peoples ability to get educated, access to healthcare, access to vote, access to family planning.
keeps them stupid, poor, unhealthy
Now just make everything expensive, make being poor illegal and soon you have more people in prison as an unlimited amount of slaves.
Capitalism. Yay ☹️
It’s OK you see all these tasks will be performed by their silicon God
You'll have bridges built by unqualified, unregulated 'professionals'?
@Sarasartagne Medical regulation is familiar and has more obvious, personal impact to more people, otherwise I'd have specified engineering (which can be deadlier when it goes wrong): but I can only cram so much text into a single toot!
This one is undergoing Telephone Game alterations as it passes around social media.
What's actually happening is that #DonaldJTrump's new "big beautiful" law said that only "professional students" can have certain levels of student loans, and the RISE committee of the USDOE is having a bit of a barney about what "professional degrees" qualify for this because of a wording mis-match.
https://ed.gov/media/document/rise-2025-loan-limit-definitions-lily-112447.pdf
https://law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/1087e#a_4
Yes, it is eerie how many of these PROFESSIONS are predominantly represented by women. Although engineering is a bit of an outlier (not that there aren’t lots of women engineers), but this is just jawdropping.
More startling still - by an administration supposedly headed by a ‘real estate and construction genius 😂 ‘ is… that the regulatory body that licenses structural engineers is what ensures that if your building doesn’t stand up, you can sue someone for that.
@Remittancegirl If Trump was involved in that aspect of it at all (which I doubt) he'd be enthusiastic for decertifying engineering as a profession because it would exert downward pressure on his contractors' wages. Right?
@cstross @Remittancegirl I seem to remember hearing during Trump’s first term that he made most of his money from renting his name to actual builders, who thought having it over the entrance added prestige.
@cstross you want to drive on a bridge designed by an unregulated engineer?
After all: doctor's mistake= 1 box; Engineer's mistake= hundreds of boxes.
@cstross If you weren’t avoiding visiting the US already…
I am confused by “engineering” being listed by itself there. Engineering is not just one field. And the term “engineer” is already widely abused by unregulated workers, including faux “software engineers” (it depends where you are).
I suspect this doesn’t include all the usual specific engineers, i.e. civil, mechanical, aerospace, chemical, computer, etc. But if it does, and they simply let anyone cosplay as any kind of technical engineer, the US will disintegrate pretty rapidly, and literally.
As for education, home schooling is already ubiquitous.
Could it be that they want to leave this kind of thing to states? I mean, still a stupid idea, but perhaps this is part of a program to reduce internal migration? If your professional degree is only recognized at the state level, in one state, you can’t work anywhere else.
@cstross of course this reclassification is meant to limit the amount of financial assistance and student loans students can receive. Few students can afford college without loans because higher education here is wildly unaffordable just like our healthcare. From what I've read they've cut the eligible degrees from ~2000 to under 600. But hey a theology degree still counts as professional!
What do they mean by 'no longer consider'? Consider for what?
@cstross Is this for real?
@cstross Though at least theologians are regulated. No risk of heresy spreading…
