When a Degree No Longer Counts
Why the Department of Education’s Proposed Rule Should Alarm Anyone Who Cares About Public Health
This week brought a somewhat startling development in federal education policy. Though, to be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure the Department of Education was still functioning until news broke that its Reimagining and Improving Student Education (RISE) Committee has proposed excluding public health graduate degrees (i.e. MPH, DrPH, and related credentials) from the federal definition of a “professional degree.”
The Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) quickly issued an alert outlining the implications, and they are not trivial. As with all federal policies, definitions do matter. What a policy or guidance document includes does far more than define terms; it distributes value, shapes legitimacy, and determines access to opportunity, resources, and funding. In this case, the definition of a degree could influence which students can take out loans, how universities structure programs, and how entire professions are sustained.
For a field already under unprecedented strain, the message this sends to current and future public health professionals could not be more discouraging.
Why This Definition Matters
The “professional degree” designation carries real consequences for students, institutions, and the workforce:
Access to financing: Students pursuing public health degrees could lose eligibility for certain federal loan programs or face reduced borrowing limits, deepening inequities in who can enter the field.
Institutional classification: Universities rely on these definitions to allocate funding, set tuition, and differentiate among disciplines.
Perceptions of legitimacy: Federal recognition signals how policymakers, employers, and the broader public regard a field’s rigor and professional standing.
Excluding public health from this category implies that public health is somehow less of a profession than law, medicine, nursing, engineering, or education. It reflects a profound misunderstanding of what public health practitioners do and what the country depends on them to do: control disease outbreaks, prevent environmental exposures, reduce maternal mortality, safeguard water and food safety, design emergency response systems, analyze risk, and protect the well-being of entire communities.
That such a proposal would emerge after a global pandemic, amid mounting climate-driven health threats and widening inequities, defies both logic and lived experience—yet remains entirely on brand for an Administration that has repeatedly targeted public health institutions, expertise, and practice.
The Pipeline Problem
This reclassification, if passed, will directly affect the public health workforce pipeline, equity, and national preparedness, as I’m sure it is intended to do:
Reduced affordability: Losing access to key loan programs will inevitably deter prospective students, especially those from lower-income backgrounds or mid-career professionals who enter the field out of service, not salary.
Deepening shortages: State and local health departments have already lost tens of thousands of workers since 2020. Some have seen more than a quarter of their workforce disappear. On top of this, of course, are the recent federal funding cuts, including the demolition of the Center for Disease Control, the National Institute for Health, and the Department of Health and Human Servies, as well as the funding that support public health programs here at home and around the world.
Diminished capacity: Our ability to respond to epidemics, climate-related hazards, rising maternal mortality, chronic disease, and overdose epidemics hinges on a steady pipeline of trained professionals.
You can defund public health, but you cannot defund outbreaks, toxins, or maternal mortality.
Public health professionals rarely choose this work for prestige or pay. They choose it because they care about people. They care about disease prevention, equity, and community well-being.
When I started my career, I never thought of public health as remotely political. It felt like a public service, which included quiet, steady, essential work that happened behind the scenes to keep communities thriving. Even during COVID-19, when I suddenly had the most popular degree around and everyone wanted my take on case curves or vaccine development, I didn’t imagine my MPH degree would become a political flashpoint. Sure, there were controversial topics—gun control, soda taxes, comprehensive sex education—but most of what we did (and still do!) is not. Clean drinking water, fluoridated water, seatbelts and drunk-driving laws, anti-tobacco campaigns, food safety and school lunch programs, prenatal care and folic acid fortification, robust disease-surveillance systems, and even the eradication of smallpox have increased modern life expectancy and created the conditions for healthy families. These gains are now so deeply embedded in daily life that we often forget they were hard-won public health victories.
The simplest proof that public health works is that people forget what life looked like without it.
And yet today, public health professionals have become, at least in some circles, political pariahs. The field that exists to protect communities is being treated with hostility and suspicion. Why? Mostly, because we tried to stop a pandemic from killing even more millions of people and we did it by imposing mandates. I will never argue that public health got everything right during COVID-19. We made mistakes, there is no doubt. I will argue, however, that we did our best to do the right thing. To interpret data and evidence and provide recommendation that were for the good of all people.
Could we have had better communications campaigns? Yes. Do I wish we would have understood the science better and earlier, as not to cause confusion around prevention and treatment? Of course. Do I wish that basic epidemiology and the concept of herd immunity was taught in public schools? Sure do. However, to inherently cut a profession that does, in fact, strive to keep communities safe and has succeeded on many, many fronts, is just another example of how the current policy environment does not seem to care about the health and well-being of everyday Americans.
It has been disorienting for me to watch my profession, which is grounded in service, science, and systems-thinking, recast as something partisan. Most people in public health simply want to do good, prevent harm, and strengthen the conditions in which people can thrive. To see the degrees that prepare this workforce deemed “non-professional” is another blow to a field that has already absorbed more than its share of political attacks.
Excluding these degrees ignores what public health education actually demands: rigorous, multidisciplinary, research-centered training to solve complex problems across systems. It sends exactly the wrong message at a moment when the discipline needs renewal, reinvestment, and trust.
And shrinking that pipeline now, when the scale, complexity, and politicization of public health threats are all increasing, is the exact opposite of what the moment demands. Public health is deeply technical (and empathetic) work: epidemiology, biostatistics, environmental science, maternal and reproductive health, health systems strengthening, risk communication, policy analysis. These are not “nice to have” skills; they are the foundation of a functioning health infrastructure.
A Profession Under Strain
A growing body of evidence shows that policy shifts diminishing support for public health directly increase risks for communities. The current Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda has already harmed health outcomes, particularly in rural communities and communities of color. By promoting misinformation, neglecting evidence-based solutions, and fueling policies that can further restrict access to care or undermine immunization efforts, MAHA is most certainly making Americans sicker.
Indeed, MAHA’s strategy to elevate unscientific claims to the level of public policy, while attacking the actual drivers of preventable death and disability, such as vaccine-preventable disease, is further example of the politization of public health. Taken together, these trends contribute to a climate where public health expertise is actively devalued, putting lives at greater risk and making future emergencies harder to manage.
What Comes Next
ASPPH reports that the Department of Education will soon publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, followed by a 30-day public comment period. That window matters. Every voice, from students and faculty to health departments and national organizations, can shape the final rule.
Public comments are part of the official record; agencies rely on them to justify decisions, interpret evidence, and often revise rules. This is one of the few moments in the policymaking process when technical expertise, lived experience, and collective advocacy can materially influence an outcome.
A society’s health infrastructure rises or falls with its public health workforce. To devalue the degrees that build that workforce is to weaken the scaffolding that holds prevention, preparedness, and resilience together.
The easiest way to undermine public health is to pretend it’s not a profession. The fastest way to regret that is to live through an outbreak, disaster, or health emergency with too few professionals left to manage it.
Few of us would have imagined—even a decade ago—that an MPH or DrPH might be excluded from the ranks of professional degrees. Yet here we are. The truth is simple: our work has value. It always has. Public health professionals deserve not just recognition but respect for the systems they build and the crises they prevent—quietly, consistently, and often invisibly.
At stake is more than a definition of what qualifies as a professional degree. It’s our capacity to sustain the workforce that keeps water safe, prevents outbreaks, and protects communities from the crises we rarely see coming. If we fail to defend that now, we will feel the consequences later—long after the next preventable crisis arives.
Resources
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “U.S. governmental public health workforce shrank by half in five years.” Harvard School of Public Health, November 21, 2024.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/us-public-health-workforce-shrinks/The JAMA Network. “The Supreme Court Disempowers Public Health Agencies and Threatens Health Equity.” JAMA, September 5, 2024.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/xxxxxxAutistic Self Advocacy Network. “ASAN Reiterates: MAHA Strategy Is Dishonest & Dangerous.” ASAN, September 17, 2025.
https://autisticadvocacy.org/update-maha-strategy-september-2025/American Public Health Association. “For Our Health warns the proposed HHS budget cuts put Americans at risk.” APHA, April 24, 2025.
https://apha.org/news/2025/hhs-budget-cutsCenter for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), University of Minnesota. “GAO: Public-health workforce shortage undermines ability to respond.” CIDRAP, January 30, 2025.
https://cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2025/01/gao-public-health-workforce-shortageEconomic Policy Institute. “Trump’s gutting of public health institutions is setting the stage for the next crisis.” EPI, April 20, 2025.
https://www.epi.org/public-health-crisis-april-2025/Union of Concerned Scientists. “The Empty Promises and Grim Reality of ‘MAHA’.” UCS, September 21, 2025.
https://blog.ucs.org/maha-empty-promises-september-2025/Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. “Reduction in Force and Funding Cuts at HHS Will Undermine Public Health.” SHEA, March 26, 2025.
https://www.shea-online.org/news/reduction-in-force-hhs-march-2025Travel Nurses Across America. “The State of Healthcare Workforce Shortages.” TNAA, September 4, 2025.
https://www.tnaa.com/blog/state-healthcare-workforce-shortages
Mediocrity and spite masquerading as power. May we remember this forever, as we hope to rebuild.
I am sickened and mad as hell. As an educator for 20 years, I can’t take this lightly. How do we fight this?