‘A slap in the face’: Colorado nurses push back as proposal removes ‘professional degree’ status

COLORADO (KRDO) - The Department of Education is redefining professional degrees, which means big changes to student loan limits.

Our news affiliates at CNN have reported that a new proposal in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is limiting funding to student nurses. Graduate students in studies deemed "professional" can still qualify for max loans up to $200,000, but nursing students will now be capped at half of that.

The list of professional degrees would change to the following 10 programs only:

• Pharmacy
• Dentistry
• Law
• Theology
• Optometry
• Medicine
• Podiatry
• Chiropractic
• Veterinary Medicine
• Clinical Psychology

If passed, this limits funding to those seeking to further their education at the graduate level.

We spoke to the Executive Director of the Colorado Nurses Association, Mark Longshore, who says this proposal comes at a time when the country is facing a huge shortage in healthcare workers. He says the passing of this bill not only impacts those working towards getting their degree, but educators in the field as well.

"It's definitely... a slap in the face...looking at the amount of education that is required and the...evaluation that's required to become a nurse, there is no doubt that nursing is a profession," says Longshore. "It's going to exacerbate that, that nursing shortage. Both again at the pre-licensure level, if we can't educate those students, but also at the advanced practice level. We're not going to have enough nurse practitioners and others out there to provide care for folks."

KRDO13 reached out to Pikes Peak State College, and they say in part:

"As far as the impact to hiring nursing faculty: nurses are required to complete master's and doctoral-level degrees to teach. This decision will impact the ability of nurses to continue their education; therefore, we expect to see a decrease in the number of faculty, which will impact the number of students we can support," Carmen Luttrell, nursing director at Pikes Peak College.

I also spoke to the Dean at Pueblo Community College, Cheryl Gomez who is echoing these concerns.

"Today might be healthy, next 4 or 5 years you might be healthy, but you want trained professionals supporting your health plan," says Gomez.

Longshore says they are working with the American Nurses Association, which has started a petition calling on the Department of Education to add nurses to that list of professions.

You can find the petition here.

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