Changing the Rules to Make Advanced Nursing Degrees More Expensive, Less Desirable, and Less Respected
One feature of the Republican administration in Washington and Project 2025 is their apparent wish to demote people in “women’s professions”. They are stripping them of their professional status at work. New government student loan caps will increase the cost of their student loans and potentially lower their salaries, making graduate degrees in these now officially designated “non-professional” fields less accessible and desirable.
In the back story to this change, many Republicans believe women should be in the home raising children and supported by males. The change in loan rules and definitions of a profession represents an effort to move towards a regressive, Republican, ideal world.
Nurses, physician’s assistants, physical therapists, nurse practitioners, social workers, and other public health professionals with advanced degrees are being subject to the new “rule change” beginning July 1st, 2026
Of course, there is the right-wing government’s claim that educational institutions are somehow corrupt by objecting to these loan cap changes and the removal of nurse’s professional status. The implication is that student loans for advanced medical degrees in the above professions are a kind of scam with the taxpayer being the victim.
But taxpayers benefit enormously from the services of these medical professionals and their role in supporting an increasingly burdened and underfunded public healthcare system.
In the short term, “Loan caps will fall dramatically for these now ‘nonprofessional’ fields.”
In the longer term, “By capping federal graduate nursing loans at $100,000 and eliminating Grad PLUS loans, the pathway to advanced nursing education could become financially inaccessible for many, weakening the workforce pipelines and destabilizing care delivery.”
The entire nursing field has been under pressure for decades with nursing shortages estimated to be 193,100 per year in 2025. This shortage negatively affects the quality-of-care in hospitals, long-term care facilities, outpatient clinics, schools, and community health organizations.
By reducing financial support for those seeking to become Nurse Practitioners, nurses who wish to advance in the field at a later time are being discouraged and are less likely to enter the lower rungs of the nursing field in the first place.
Nursing and other medical degrees obtained mostly by women are the backbone of the medical field. With so many physicians and nurses set to retire in the next decade, nurses with advanced degrees (especially Nurse Practitioners) will become an increasingly important part of the medical system. Putting additional financial pressure and removing their professional status is a way of devaluing and reducing the power of women in these professions while also reducing the number of graduates.
It is time for these essential workers to demand that this attack on their professional status be halted and that the new rules and definitions being implemented by the Department of Education be reversed.
A strike or work slowdown by the people in these professions for a day or a week would bring virtually the entire medical system in the US to a halt. It is time to act.
