Nursing has been excluded as a “professional degree” by the Department of Education as it looks to implement sweeping cuts to student loads laid out in President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
The move by Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s team that is currently overseeing the Trump administration’s plans to dismantle the Education Department has alarmed nursing organizations, which warned that limiting student nurses’ access to funding “threatens the very foundation of patient care.”
Trump’s signature legislation, which was signed into law earlier this year, eliminates the Grad PLUS loans used by many students to pay for grad school, and puts a cap on the amount they can borrow.
Under Trump’s bill, only “professional degree” students are eligible for the higher loan limit of $200,000, while graduate students are capped at $100,000. Excluding nursing by definition as a professional degree effectively prices aspiring nurses out of their studies.
“Nursing is the backbone of the healthcare structure in the United States,” Dr Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, president of the American Nursing Association, told NewsNation. “We are short tens of thousands of nurses and advanced practice nurses already. This is going to stop nurses from going to school to be teachers for other nurses.”
The American Association of Colleges of Nursing is also calling on the Department of Education to reverse the decision.
“Excluding nursing from the definition of professional degree programs disregards decades of progress toward parity across the health professions and contradicts the Department’s own acknowledgment that professional programs are those leading to licensure and direct practice,” the organization said in a statement.
“Should this proposal be finalized, the impact on our already-challenged nursing workforce would be devastating,” the statement added.
Mary Turner, RN, president of National Nurses United, told The Independent that the Trump administration’s priorities were “at odds with the needs of nurses and patients.”
“If the Trump administration truly wanted to support nurses, it would be working to improve working conditions, expanding education opportunities, and ensuring patients can get health care,” Turner said. “Instead, this administration is stripping nurses of their union rights, making education harder to access, and cutting health care for those who need it most.”
Nurses earn $45 per hour on average, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile, Trump’s bill provides more than $1.5 trillion in tax cuts for the top 5 percent of Americans, the Center for American Progress found.
The Education Department brushed off concerns over the future of nursing as “fake news” and accused the nursing organizations of having had an “unlimited tuition ride on the taxpayer dime.”
“The Department has had a consistent definition of what constitutes a professional degree for decades and the consensus-based language aligns with this historical precedent,” the department’s press secretary for higher education Ellen Keast told Newsweek.
“The committee, which included institutions of higher education, agreed on the definition that we will put forward in a proposed rule,” Keast continued. “We’re not surprised that some institutions are crying wolf over regulations that never existed because their unlimited tuition ride on the taxpayer dime is over.”
The Department of Education did not immediately respond to The Independent’s request for comment.
An entire four-year bachelor of science in nursing program can range from $89,560 to $211,390, including tuition, housing and other fees, according to NurseJournal.
Nursing wasn’t the only casualty of Trump’s spending bill. Physician assistants, physical therapists, educators, social workers, audiologists, architects and accountants were also on the list of degrees that were not classed as “professional” by the Trump administration.
Programs deemed “professional” by the department were medicine, pharmacy, law, dentistry, osteopathic medicine, optometry, podiatry, chiropractic, veterinary medicine, theology, and clinical psychology.
“Can someone explain how a theologian is considered more “professional” than a nurse practitioner?” Amy McGrath, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky, asked on X.
“As part of the “Big Beautiful Bill” the Department of Education just proposed a reclassification of a “professional degree,” and it means fewer students will qualify for the higher loan limits they need for grad school,” she said. “Programs being excluded include many fields dominated by women like healthcare, counseling, and social work. This isn’t a coincidence. This is a way to quietly push women out of professional careers.”
The new measures are due to be implemented beginning July 1, 2026.
