The decision is final, and I want to be direct about what it means: the Department of Education has chosen to devalue nursing. The RISE rule is now official, effective July 1, 2026, and advanced nursing degrees, MSN, DNP, and PhD in Nursing, will not be classified as “professional” degrees. Not a proposal. Not a draft. A final rule. But no rule changes the fact that nursing is a profession.
I have been a nurse for 41 years and a school nurse for the past 25 years. I have watched nurses do extraordinary work, managing chronic illness, navigating mental health crises, and filling the gaps that a broken healthcare system leaves behind. The nurses I work alongside are professionals in every sense of the word. What the Department of Education released this week says otherwise. And I am not willing to let that stand without saying so clearly.
This policy has real consequences that will be felt in real communities. Under the RISE rule, graduate nursing students are capped at $20,500 per year in federal loans, while students in law, medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy can borrow up to $50,000 annually. That gap is not a technicality. Many CRNA programs cost more than $100,000 in tuition alone, before a single living expense is counted. For nurses who want to become nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, nurse anesthesiologists, or nursing faculty, the people our healthcare system depends on, the path forward just became significantly harder and more expensive.
The elimination of the Grad PLUS loan program, combined with these new caps, delivers a blunt message to nurses from under-resourced and underrepresented backgrounds: find another way to pay for it, take on private debt, or don’t go. These are the very nurses whose leadership and perspective we need most in healthcare. This policy does not just limit individual careers. It narrows the pipeline at exactly the moment we need to be expanding it.
This is not only a nursing issue. It is a patient care issue. Advanced practice nurses are often the only providers in rural communities, underserved neighborhoods, and school health settings. A poll conducted earlier this year found that 59% of nurses said they are now less likely to pursue a graduate degree because of this policy. We are already facing a nursing shortage. We are already stretched dangerously thin. We should be making the path to advanced practice more accessible, not more exclusionary.
The Department of Education says this classification is just an internal definition, not a judgment on the value of nursing. I do not buy that, and nurses should not either. When law, medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy are on the list, and nursing is not — after 245,000 petition signatures, after tens of thousands of public comments, after every major nursing organization raised its voice — that is not a technicality. That is a choice. And releasing this final rule one week before National Nurses Week is not lost on any of us. ANA President Jennifer Mensik Kennedy said it plainly: “This Department of Education has chosen to make it harder for nurses to advance their education and their careers.” She is right. And this community is watching.
The ANA is calling on Congress to correct this decision. Here is how you can act right now:
Contact your elected officials at usa.gov/elected-officials and demand that advanced nursing degrees be recognized as professional degrees with full access to federal loan support. Be specific. Be persistent.
Share this post and keep the conversation loud — especially during Nurses Week, when the public is paying attention to nursing. Make sure they understand what is actually happening to the profession this week.
Stay connected to the ANA and AACN for ongoing advocacy updates, action alerts, and opportunities to keep the pressure on Congress.
Nursing is a profession. No federal rule changes that truth. But policies like this determine who gets to advance, who gets left behind, and whose expertise gets counted. That is why this moment matters. That is why we do not stop.
Be relentless.
