A claim circulating widely on X, Instagram and Facebook alleges that the Department of Education announced nursing and several other graduate programs are “no longer professional degrees.” Many posts warn that these programs will lose access to federal student loans, prompting confusion among nursing students and health care organizations.
The Department of Education has not reclassified nursing or other fields as “non-professional” in general. Instead, the agency has proposed a technical change that affects only federal student loan borrowing limits, not the professional standing of the degrees themselves. The proposal has not been finalized as of late November 2025.
The confusion stems from the administration’s effort to implement borrowing caps required by President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The law creates two tiers of graduate loan limits beginning in July 2026. Students in programs defined as “professional degrees” may borrow up to $50,000 annually, while all other graduate students are capped at $20,500 annually.
To determine who qualifies for the higher cap, the Education Department proposed a narrow interpretation of “professional degree” that includes fields such as medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, law, veterinary medicine, podiatry, osteopathic medicine, optometry, theology and clinical psychology. Nursing programs, including MSN and DNP pathways, do not fall within the specific CIP code groupings tied to the listed fields, which is why they are excluded from the higher loan tier in the proposal.
Health care groups have sharply criticized the change. The American Nurses Association warned that leaving nursing out of the higher-loan category will severely restrict access to critical funding for graduate students pursuing advanced practice roles. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing stated that the proposal “significantly limits student loan access” and could worsen workforce shortages in a profession already facing high strain.
The Department of Education has said the definition used in the proposal is consistent with decades-old federal language and emphasized that the label applies only to loan eligibility, not the value or professional nature of the programs themselves. Officials expect final rules to be released by spring 2026 at the latest.
References
AACN. “AACN Alarmed Over Department of Education’s Proposed Limitation of Student Loan Access for Nursing.” Nov. 7, 2025.
Burke, Minyvonne. “Trump administration says nursing isn’t a professional degree amid new limits on loans.” NBC News, Nov. 27, 2025.
Deng, Rae. “Inspecting claim Education Department stopped counting nursing, other programs as ‘professional degrees.’” Snopes, Nov. 21, 2025.
PolitiFact. “Fact-check on claims that the Trump administration said nursing is not a professional degree.” Nov. 26, 2025.
