Over the past week, Physical Therapy was quietly removed from a federal “professional occupation” category.
Many in our profession felt blindsided.
Some saw it as disrespectful.
Others viewed it as a symbolic demotion.
Let’s set the record straight:
This change does NOT make PT a trade
It does NOT change the DPT degree
It does NOT alter our scope or clinical autonomy
It does NOT diminish our role in the healthcare ecosystem
But it does force us to confront something much bigger — something we’ve avoided for years:
Our education model is financially unsustainable, and the cracks are widening.
Before reacting emotionally, we need to ask a more strategic question:
What truth is this moment revealing… and what opportunity is it giving us?
Let’s stop tiptoeing around it.
PT students routinely graduate with $120,000–$200,000+ in debt.
Starting salaries do not support that burden.
Many students can’t qualify for enough affordable federal loans, pushing them into high-interest private loans.
The result is predictable:
And now, with the recent reclassification, access to certain types of professional-degree loan structures may become even less clear.
This isn’t just symbolic — it’s structural.
Right now, the typical DPT curriculum includes:
➡️ Three, 12-week clinical rotations (36 weeks total)
➡️ All of them are unpaid
➡️ Students continue accumulating debt while providing free labor
This model made sense 40 years ago.
It makes zero sense today given the cost of PT school, the complexity of modern practice, and the hiring crisis facing clinics across the country.
Unpaid rotations do not:
If anything, unpaid rotations add to the problem — financially and clinically.
What if, instead of repeatedly patching a broken system, we redesigned it from the ground up?
Here’s a model worth exploring:
Keep the anatomy, physiology, neuro, clinical reasoning, differential diagnosis — everything that makes PTs autonomous healthcare providers.
No compromise here.
A reimagined training model allows for leaner, smarter, more affordable pathways.
A structured, tightly mentored year where students:
This is not a trade model.
It’s a professional mastery model — the kind used by the most respected professions in the world.
Medicine has residencies.
Engineering has co-ops.
Aviation has supervised flight hours.
The trades have structured apprenticeships.
PT should not be the outlier.
A paid apprenticeship year:
Every clinic I’m involved with — including NeuPTtech, Coach My Clinic, and CEP — would gladly participate.
This model addresses BOTH sides of the hiring crisis:
This solves both.
Emotions aside, maybe the better framing is this:
What if this reclassification forces us to finally rethink an education model that isn’t working — financially or clinically?
Instead of defending a system that is clearly failing, we can use this moment as a catalyst for:
This isn’t lowering standards.
This is raising the bar while removing the financial chains.
Imagine the PT profession five years from now:
That’s not decline.
That’s progress.
Instead of:
“Why is this happening to us?”
Maybe the question is:
What opportunity is this moment giving us to design a smarter, healthier, more sustainable PT profession?
If we’re willing to rethink the system honestly, this reclassification might not be a setback at all.
It might be the very spark we needed.
Food for thought.