Are Nurses “Professional”?

South Carolina Nurses Association is up in arms over the recent decision by Trump’s Department of Education to strip graduate-level nursing degrees of their “professional degree” classification. This is more than a bureaucratic change. It is a shortsighted policy shift that threatens the already fragile nursing workforce, particularly in long-term care, where residents’ lives depend on skilled, well-trained care providers.

Graduate nursing programs, including MSN and DNP tracks, will now fall under tighter loan limits and lose the higher federal borrowing caps historically available to professional programs like medicine, pharmacy, and law. In practical terms, this makes advanced nursing education significantly harder to afford and will almost certainly reduce the number of trained nurse practitioners, clinical specialists, and nurse leaders entering the field.

This decision could not come at a worse time. Our country is in the midst of a severe nursing shortage, and nowhere is that shortage felt more acutely than in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities. These settings rely heavily on well-trained nurses to prevent pressure ulcers, manage chronic conditions, monitor changes in residents’ health, supervise aides, and intervene in emergencies. When facilities are understaffed or staffed with underqualified workers, we see predictable patterns of neglect such as falls, infections, untreated wounds, medication errors, dehydration, and avoidable deaths.

By making advanced nursing education more financially out of reach, the Department of Education has effectively tightened the funnel feeding the nursing workforce. Fewer nurses entering advanced roles means fewer supervisors, fewer wound-care specialists, fewer educators training the next generation, and fewer highly skilled clinicians available to long-term care residents. In a field already plagued by chronic understaffing and cost-cutting, this ruling threatens to widen the gap between what residents need and what facilities are prepared, or willing, to provide.

For those of us who regularly confront the consequences of understaffing in our cases, the implications are obvious. When the workforce is strained, resident suffering increases. Families already entrusting their loved ones to overstretched facilities may now face even steeper risks. And as the supply of qualified nurses shrinks, the standard of care in long-term care homes is likely to deteriorate even further. In other words, this decision does not merely affect students — it affects every vulnerable person living in a nursing home today.