A proposed federal rule would exclude nursing from the list of professional degrees and cut the amount of student loans graduate nursing students can access in half.
The proposed rule, part of President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”, said only certain programs classified as “professional degrees” would qualify for higher federal loan limits.
Graduate nursing programs are not included in that category, meaning students would face lower limits on how much they can borrow, capped at $20,500 per year and $100,000 total in unsubsidized loans. Students in programs designated as professional degrees, such as medicine and law, would remain eligible for higher borrowing limits of up to $50,000 per year and $200,000 total.
This comes even as nationwide nursing shortages have impacted care and other federal proposals aim to help nursing programs train more.
Lindsey Cardwell, who leads the Virginia Nurses Association, said the reduced loan limits could discourage nurses from pursuing advanced degrees required for high-demand roles such as nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists and nursing faculty.
“Registered nurses, including those that are prepared at a graduate degree level, are the largest segment of the healthcare workforce,” Cardwell said. “If we decrease access to federal loans for graduate nursing programs, we're going to decrease the pipeline of all registered nurses. This will impact the health care that we receive across all the systems and within our communities.”
Cindy Rubenstein, founding director of nursing at Randolph-Macon College, said faculty shortages are already limiting how many students nursing programs can accept, because instructors are required to hold graduate degrees.
She said Virginia is already facing an 11% nurse faculty vacancy rate, which she warned could worsen if the proposed rule is finalized.
“It's really critical that our legislators look at not only advocating for this particular rule making to include graduate nursing, but also look at a state level for how we support that nursing pipeline, and how we do things innovatively,” Rubenstein said.
She noted the path to becoming faculty in a nursing program is different from many other professions and often comes with significant financial strain.
Unlike students in other fields who may move directly from undergraduate to graduate study, nurses typically spend years in clinical practice before returning to school to earn advanced degrees.
Many nurses already carry significant financial responsibilities, and those who move from clinical practice into teaching typically take pay cuts of about 30%.
“So they're not transitioning for economic gain. They're transitioning basically to serve their profession and build the next generation of nurses,” Rubenstein said.
In a press release, the Department of Education said the proposal would not affect most nursing students and is intended to reduce graduate student debt, not diminish the role of nurses.
The department said its data shows about 95% of nursing students borrow below the proposed caps and emphasized that the limits would apply only to graduate programs, leaving undergraduate nursing degrees unaffected.
However, Harrison Hayes with Virginia Health Workforce Development Authority said the impact could still be significant for nurses who already carry undergraduate debt and later seek advanced credentials.
Hayes said tuition for advanced nursing degrees can reach about $69,000, meaning some nurses could quickly hit the new lifetime borrowing cap and be forced to rely on private loans to cover tuition and living costs.
Hayes said the larger concern is that medical students already face annual tuition costs of $40,000 to $60,000 — near or above the $50,000 professional-degree loan cap. Meanwhile, nurse anesthetist programs can cost tens of thousands of dollars more and fall under lower graduate loan limits.
