Take Action:
Contact your congressmembers at congress.gov/members/find-your-member and urge them to tell the Trump administration that nurses must be included in the Department of Education’s “professional” category for student loan qualifications so we can address the nursing crisis and protect our patients.
Our Statement:
“Nurses across Pennsylvania strongly condemn the Trump administration’s proposal to exclude nursing from the ‘professional’ category, which will worsen the nursing shortage crisis, reduce access to needed care and hurt our patients. Pennsylvania already has a shortfall of 20,000 practicing nurses, the worst in the entire nation. At the same time, our population is older, sicker, and needs more care than ever before. Elected leaders should be investing many more resources in supporting the nursing profession, not less.
“Under the Trump administration’s proposed Department of Education rules, students pursuing graduate nursing degrees – including for nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives and others – would not be considered ‘professionals’ and so would have much lower federal loan limits. These changes will discourage nurses from pursuing advanced degrees, push more nurses out of the field, and deter many people from entering the profession in the first place since they will have limited opportunities for future growth. The proposed rules would also aggravate the already-existing shortage of nurse educators with advanced degrees to train the next generation of nurses. Rural and underserved communities will be especially hard hit, as they rely more heavily on advanced-practice nurses for care delivery.
“The proposed rules are a symbolic slap in the face and devaluing of a majority-women workforce which has advocated for decades to ensure nurses are rightly and fully recognized as professionals. This is not a Republican or Democratic issue, this is about the health and future of our entire nation. We urgently call on the Trump administration to include nursing as a professional category in the proposed Department of Education rules, and to invest in building a thriving, sustainable nursing workforce so we can provide quality care to our patients moving forward.”
–The nurses and advanced practice professionals of SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania, the largest healthcare union in the state.
Background Information:
- The Trump administration’s Department of Education has issued new rules that exclude nursing from the “professional degree” category, which will impose much lower limits on federal loans that students can borrow for graduate nursing degrees starting July 1, 2026.
- Students pursuing a graduate nursing degree will now only be able to borrow $20,500 annually, with a total limit of $100,000.
- For comparison, students in the designated “professional degree” fields (such as doctors and lawyers) will be able to borrow up to $50,000 annually and $200,000 in total.
- Students who need more funding to cover tuition and living expenses may be forced to turn to riskier, costlier private student loans, which typically offer fewer protections and do not qualify for federal forgiveness programs like Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).
- PSLF offers a pathway to loan forgiveness for nurses and other healthcare professionals who work in non-profit or public hospitals, and the Trump administration is also seeking to restrict eligibility for this program.