Health care professionals warn about nursing degrees degraded by Trump’s DOE

Changes from President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” will make it harder for students to obtain nursing and other advanced degrees.

Health care professionals across Pennsylvania have condemned President Donald Trump’s Department of Education (DOE) for redefining “professional degree” programs as it excludes many advanced nursing degrees for federal loan eligibility. 

Advocates believe these changes will make it harder for people to obtain nursing or advanced nursing degrees and worsen the country’s ability to care for patients. 

“This proposal shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what it takes to provide safe patient care,” Maureen May, RN, president of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP), said in a statement.

“Advanced practice nurses keep emergency rooms running, staff primary care clinics, deliver babies, provide anesthesia, and support entire hospital units. Blocking nurses from the financial support they need to pursue advanced degrees won’t just hurt the nurses, it will hurt patients.”

Thanks to changes made by Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” borrowers enrolled in degree programs that aren’t classified as “professional” by the DOE would have their student loans capped at lower limits compared to those who are receiving so-called professional degrees. 

Trump’s budget bill also eliminates the Grad PLUS program, which helps graduate and professional students cover expenses for graduate degrees. 

These new caps would limit government-backed loans for non-professional degrees at 20,500 annually, or $100,000 over the course of the degree, while those seeking an advanced professional degree would be eligible for loans up to $50,000 per year, or $250,000 over the course of the degree. 

According to the American Association of Colleges of Nurses, there are over 265,000 students across the country enrolled in entry level Bachelor of Science Nursing degrees and another 136,000 students enrolled in masters programs. 

Newsweek reported that the DOE classified “medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, optometry, law, veterinary medicine, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, chiropractic, theology and clinical psychology” as professional programs, but excludes physician assistants, nurse practitioners, physical therapists and audiologists.

“Making grad PLUS loans unavailable to nurse anesthesia and nurse practitioner students essentially makes advanced degrees unattainable for a huge pool of qualified nurses who don’t have the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash on hand needed to complete these educational programs,” Bernadette Golarz, a nurse anesthetist at Temple University Hospital’s Jeanes Hospital and Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, said in a statement.

“This change will make the existing crises of lack of primary and specialty care for a growing aging population and ever increasing complexity of medical needs for the entire community much, much worse.”