Not sure everyone knows, but we have a shortage of nurses. Cheetos’s DOE says hold my beer.
https://www.newsweek.com/nursing-not-professional-degree-trump-admin-11079650
The Department of Education has excluded nursing as a “professional degree” program as it sets about implementing various measures regarding student loans laid out in President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
The move has sparked significant uproar among nurses and nursing groups, with the American Nurses Association saying, as reported by Nursing World, that “limiting nurses’ access to funding for graduate education threatens the very foundation of patient care.”
In the regulatory definition of a professional degree (34 CFR 668.2) from 1965, nursing was not definitively listed as a professional degree, although the text lists a number of professions, but says a professional degree is “not limited to” those mentioned.
It is therefore not clear in the text if nursing was previously classified as a professional degree, but now that the term is forming part of student loan determinations, its omission is having an impact.
Department of Education press secretary for higher education Ellen Keast told Newsweek: “This is fake news at its finest. 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 committee, which included institutions of higher education, agreed on the definition that we will put forward in a proposed rule. 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.”
Why It Matters
The change will impact hundreds of thousands of students—there are over 260,000 students currently enrolled in entry-level Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) programs and around 42,000 enrolled in Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN), according to data collected by the American Nurses Association.
