The debate over President Donald Trump’s student-loan borrowing caps continues.
House Republicans advanced an amendment in their budget bill that would make advanced nursing programs eligible for higher student loan borrowing caps, which Trump is limiting.
Trump’s overhaul labels 11 programs as “professional,” including for medicine, law, and dentistry , but excludes advanced nursing programs from that designation. This means advanced nursing programs and other graduate programs would have a $100,000 lifetime student-loan borrowing cap, compared to the $200,000 cap professional programs receive.
The new budget amendment counters Trump’s limit, saying that funds may not be used “in a manner that does not designate advanced nursing programs as professional degree programs,” including certified registered nurse anesthetists, nurse practitioners, and clinical nurse specialists.
While the amendment has advanced out of committee, budgets typically don’t pass through both chambers of Congress until the fall, meaning that Trump’s student-loan changes are still on track to take effect on July 1.
And ongoing lawsuits could still halt the plans. In late May, 25 Democratic-led states sued the Department of Education over the borrowing caps, saying that the department’s definition of “professional” is too narrow and could exacerbate the healthcare worker shortage.
Undersecretary of Education Nicholas Kent said in a statement responding to the lawsuit that “after decades of unchecked student loan borrowing that gave schools no reason to control costs, these commonsense loan caps — created by Congress — are already incentivizing colleges and universities to lower tuition.”
The American Academy of Physician Associates and the PA Education Association followed suit on June 3, saying in its lawsuit that the borrowing caps fall short of tuition costs for PA school.
“I don’t believe I have any shot of being a PA at this time,” Benjamin Pinckney, who recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree and with the goal of enrolling in a physician associate school, said. “It changed what I was looking for, as far as being able to provide care to underserved communities.
Including advanced nursing in the higher borrowing cap is grounds for rare bipartisan agreement, with a bipartisan pair of lawmakers in late May also introducing a bill to address the issue.
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