The Wegmans School of Nursing at St. John Fisher University is exploring ways to offset a proposed federal cap on student loans for some graduate programs.
The limit is part of the Trump administration’s proposed rule change to not identify graduate-level nursing programs as a professional degree.
This exclusion will especially affect programs like physician assistant and nurse practitioner.
“I would be crazy not to say that I'm not worried,” said Tricia Gatlin, dean of the nursing school, “But I also know that we have strong relationships with our potential employers and how they're offering potential scholarships.”
Scholarships are just one of the solutions that the university is betting on. Gatlin said St. John Fisher proposed making changes that would allow graduate students greater flexibility to work while pursuing their degree.
“It really is going to be this creative effort of what does a student need to be able to be successful,” Gatlin said. “And we, as a university, are committed to looking at all those avenues.”
A survey last month by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing found a majority of nursing school deans expect the loan cap would hurt enrollment and the workforce, including faculty recruitment. Nurses with professional degrees often become instructors. Gatlin said this ultimately becomes “a threat to public safety and to health care outcomes.”
“We have such a shortage in health care, and nursing makes up the biggest body of health care workers,” Gatlin said. “So when something feels threatened like this, it makes you pause to go, ‘Will we have enough people wanting to do this?’”
The Department of Education has countered that most nursing students borrow below the loan cap.
“I feel like there's a lot of unintended consequences that are going to be coming down the pipe,” said Celia McIntosh, immediate past president of Rochester Black Nurses Association.
As a nurse practitioner, McIntosh said one of her concerns is that excluding nursing from the list of professional degrees — and capping student loan amounts — could be the beginning of changes that will destabilize the profession.
“If you don't have nurse practitioners going into the field, then you don't have that resource,” McIntosh said. “And then it decreases access for the patients.”
