Limiting loans for nurses will make our country’s health care crisis even worse

Proposed changes to federal student loans threaten to shrink the nursing workforce when we can least afford it.

Our nation is in the throes of a health care crisis, and we should be doing everything possible to support nurses and attract new ones to the profession. Yet, the Department of Education has officially proposed new rules that will limit access to federal loans for graduate education and exclude nursing from a list of “professional degree” programs eligible for higher financial support. This proposal risks making our crisis even worse.

By 2028, the U.S. is expected to be short more than 100,000 health care workers needed to provide essential care. Simultaneously, health care demand is accelerating due to an aging population and the growing prevalence of chronic diseases. This growing gap between workforce supply and patient need is already straining Americans’ access to timely, quality care.

If adopted, this change would sharply limit federal loan amounts and loan forgiveness pathways for post-baccalaureate nurses including our Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs), our nurse faculty, nurse leaders, researchers, scientists and other frontline providers. It’s a misguided move that would hurt not only current and future nurses, but patients and families across the country – at the exact moment our country can least afford it. 

The Department of Education’s definition of “professional degree” for these loan caps includes disciplines we’d all expect and support: medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, optometry, and law, to name a few. Yet somehow, their approach overlooks nursing – even though nurses are, in many instances, the sole providers of essential health care services for patients and communities.

If federal policymakers leave nursing off the list of “professional degree,” nurses pursuing master’s or doctoral degrees would have access to roughly half as much federal student loan aid as other recognized professional degrees. Post-baccalaureate nursing students’ aggregate borrowing will be capped at $100,000, compared to $200,000 for degrees deemed professional. The annual borrowing limit would be just $20,500 for nursing, compared to $50,000 for recognized professional degrees. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, graduate nursing programs cost an average of more than $33,000 per year, already exceeding the proposed federal cap. Recent studies also show the average cost to be closer to $38,542. Many nurses interested in pursuing advanced roles and leadership positions will either be priced out of this educational pathway or will have to take out private loans which have higher interest rates. It also creates barriers, not only for nurses from rural, underserved or low-income backgrounds, but for the patients that rely on high-quality nursing care in communities across the country. 

Each year, thousands of nurses depend on federal student loans to pursue advanced degrees to become nurse practitioners, certified registered nurse anesthetists, certified nurse midwives and clinical nurse specialists. These professionals are essential to broadening access to primary care, supporting rural hospitals and ensuring the stability of the health care workforce.

The ripple effects extend even further. In 2024 alone, U.S. nursing schools had 1,693 full-time faculty vacancies. Imposing these graduate loan caps would only deepen this faculty shortage by discouraging nurses from earning the degrees required to teach our next generation of nurses. We desperately need more new nurses entering the field. Without them the consequences will be evident across every setting where patients seek health care. 

In a recent letter to the Department of Education, a bipartisan, bicameral group of more than 140 lawmakers urged the inclusion of nursing on the list of professional degrees eligible for full federal loan benefits, emphasizing the field’s critical contribution to the health care system. And more than 245,000 nurses and patients across the country have signed our petition calling on the Department of Education to reverse course.This is not just a trivial policy change. It will have enormous consequences, not only for the nursing profession but for all of us who will need nurses’ care. The Department of Education public comment period is now open. We urge all Americans, who have relied on the care of our nation’s nurses, to submit comments to regulations.gov urging the Department of Education to include post-baccalaureate nursing degrees (MSN, DNP, Ph.D.) explicitly in the list of “professional degrees.”  Our nation’s health depends on it.

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