Sponsors (10)
Adds aviation training, licensing, and exam costs to cost-of-attendance for qualifying associate's and bachelor's aviation programs and clarifies "professional student" to include FAA Part 141 programs.
The bill expands and clarifies federal student-aid eligibility for aviation training—making costly flight training more affordable and supporting the aviation workforce—while raising federal aid costs, creating risks of uneven/inflated institutional cost estimates, and introducing potential exclusions and regulatory rigidity that could burden some programs and schools.
Students in qualifying aviation programs (FAA Part 141 and specified aviation CIP codes) can have flight training, simulator hours, materials, and licensing fees counted in their cost of attendance, increasing their eligibility for Pell and federal student loans and reducing out-of-pocket costs for training.
Aviation institutions and programs can qualify a broader set of aviation-related programs for federal aid calculations, which supports the aviation workforce pipeline by making training programs more financially accessible and easier to enroll/retain students.
Borrowers and institutions gain clearer, more predictable loan-treatment criteria by tying 'professional student' status to the regulatory definition (including explicit recognition of FAA Part 141 programs), reducing ambiguity in eligibility determinations.
Taxpayers and the federal budget could face higher costs because including high-cost flight training in cost-of-attendance calculations will likely raise Pell and loan awards.
Students, institutions, and taxpayers risk uneven or inflated aid awards because institutions have discretion to determine 'reasonable costs,' which could lead to inconsistent or inflated cost estimates across schools.
Some students in marginal or previously qualifying programs could lose 'professional student' status if the clarified/narrowed definition excludes programs that were earlier treated as qualifying, reducing their loan-treatment protections or benefits.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Official title: To amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to include certain licensure, certification, and aviation training costs in the determination of the cost of attendance of a student, and for other purposes.
Introduced July 23, 2026 by Joyce Beatty · Last progress July 23, 2026
Adds aviation training and licensure expenses to the federal definition of "cost of attendance" for eligible associate's and bachelor's aviation programs, allowing institutions to include those costs when calculating student financial aid budgets starting in the 2027–2028 award year. Also narrows and clarifies which programs make a borrower a "professional student" by tying that label to the federal regulatory definition of a professional degree and to FAA Part 141 flight training programs. The bill creates a new category of allowable costs for qualifying aviation-related programs (specific CIP codes and Secretary-identified programs) and updates the statutory definition of professional student to explicitly include FAA-approved Part 141 flight training, which affects borrower status for student loan rules that reference the professional student classification.