Benjamin Pinckney, 46, has dreamed of becoming a physician assistant since just after his 20th birthday. He had been targeted by a drive-by shooter in Jacksonville, Florida, and hospitalized with two gunshot wounds. During his weeklong hospitalization, he said, a physician assistant changed the course of his life by visiting his hospital bed each day and warning him that Black men with gunshot wounds often end up paralyzed — or worse.
Pinckney used to run the streets, on the wrong sides of the track. The physician assistant made him promise that he would never come into his ER that way again. That was the last conversation they had, right before he was discharged.
His goal since then has been to become a physician assistant. Pinckney, who spent most of his career working for New York City’s Department of Sanitation and as an Army Reserve medic, recently took a step toward achieving it. In May, he graduated with departmental honors from Lehman College with a Bachelor of Science degree.
Pinckney is worried his dream may be thwarted by new student loan rules.
Starting July 1, the amount of money graduate students will be allowed to borrow from the federal government will be capped. The new student loan limits are part of the GOP’s tax-and-spending legislation known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law last year.
The caps are intended to curb the cost of higher education and student loan debt, according to the Trump administration. But critics widely agree the new limits are too low, especially for students allowed to borrow only $20,500 a year in federal loans due to the law’s definition of a “professional degree.”
On June 24, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Department of Education from enforcing that definition. Still, for many students, the new caps won’t cover the combined cost of tuition, housing, and living expenses.
This could leave hundreds of thousands of students who borrow money for graduate school each year at the mercy of private lenders with higher interest rates and fewer repayment options.
Pinckney wants to go to graduate school to become a physician assistant but doesn’t know how he will finance his education as new student loan limits go into effect.
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Some experts and students also worry that the limits will threaten efforts to diversify the healthcare workforce by deterring minorities and people from low-income households from applying to graduate programs. A drop in incoming students could worsen existing rural and primary care shortages.
Many politicians and loan experts have acknowledged that the cost of higher education needs to be addressed. But the new federal loan limits are “just not going to achieve that goal,” said Todd Pickard, president of the American Academy of Physician Associates, one of several organizations that have sued the Department of Education over the rules.
“It’d be like if you had a hangnail and I cut your whole arm off instead of just taking care of your hangnail,” Pickard said. “The treatment doesn’t match the problem.”
Students working toward what the law describes as “professional degrees” — including trainee doctors, dentists, pharmacists, and chiropractors — will be allowed to borrow up to $200,000 total, and no more than $50,000 a year.
The median cost of attending a public medical school is nearly $300,000 over four years, while the median cost of a private medical school education exceeds $400,000, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Olivia Trull, 24, who is scheduled to begin the physician assistant program at Northwest University in Kirkland, Washington, this summer, is facing a similar dilemma. The 28-month program costs $137,000, with about $62,000 in tuition and fees estimated for the first year, she said. That doesn’t include living expenses.
Before the court order, Trull said she qualified for the maximum annual allotment under the new rules of $20,500 in federal loans during her first year of graduate school. The balance would need to be financed through a private lender.
She anticipated she would need up to $100,000 in private loans to finance her graduate degree and would face loan payments of more than $3,000 a month when she was done.
Trull has to consider if she wants to be drowning in debt for the next 10 years of her life.
One private bank offered her a loan with an interest rate of nearly 14%, she said.
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Pinckney finished his undergraduate degree with about $10,000 in federal student loan debt. Some of his friends who have already applied for private student loans have been quoted interest rates as high as 13%.
Meanwhile, interest rates for federal loans for graduate students, which are set annually, are currently about 8-9%. Federal loans also offer more flexible repayment options than private loans typically do.
In May, 25 states and the District of Columbia filed a federal lawsuit against the Department of Education over the new rules. The complaint described the law’s “professional degree” definition as “arbitrary and capricious.”
Betsy Mayotte, president of the Institute for Student Loan Advisors, expects the new rules will force some graduates into bankruptcy when they can’t afford to repay private loans.
Pinckney has spent most of his career working for New York City’s Department of Sanitation. But he has dreamed of becoming a physician assistant since he was treated for gunshot wounds at a Jacksonville, Florida, hospital in 1999.
Pinckney is not really sure what the future holds. He paid for most of his undergraduate education by working while he was in school, but that’s typically not possible for full-time physician assistant students.
He has considered applying to a biomedical science graduate program instead, which he estimated would cost about $30,000 — an amount that’s a lot more doable, he said.
Pinckney is holding out hope.
If he can influence one person’s life, that would be his way of paying him forward for what he did, referring to the physician assistant who inspired him back in 1999.
