Local Educator expands on the impact of Nursing no longer being a “Professional Degree”

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- A federal reclassification of nursing graduate programs has educators worried about how the change could affect students’ access to financial aid in a field already struggling with staffing shortages.

The U.S. Department of Education clarified that “professional degree” is a loan-related category used to determine federal borrowing limits. The designation, the department says, has no connection to the quality of a program or its value in the workforce.

Barbara White, Chief Nurse Administrator at Indiana University South Bend, said the shift effectively moves nursing out of a higher loan-funding tier.

“Nursing is no longer in the tier of the extra funding, the high-level funding, and instead we've been bumped down to the other tier,” White said.

White said that although the reclassification is mainly administrative, it still feels like a slight to the profession — especially as nursing students and faculty cope with the recent loss of other funding sources.

“Congress, when they were doing the budget stuff, canceled the Nurse Faculty Loan Program,” she said. “I'm concerned that people are going to misinterpret this … and interpret that as ‘Oh gosh, that’s something I don’t want to do now,’ or that it’s a profession that’s not stable.”

On the other end, White said she sees potential for the change to benefit more rural programs like the nursing program at Indiana University South Bend because the school’s graduate tuition falls below the projected new loan cap.

“Baccalaureate-prepared nurses who are doing acute-care nursing in hospitals tend to gravitate toward urban areas,” she said. “For those who are coming to IUSB, they will still be able to get the loans that they need in order to become nurses positioned to serve our rural communities, which is predominantly what the federal government is interested in.”

The reclassification is set to take effect next year and will apply only to students seeking federal aid for graduate-level nursing programs. The Department of Education says 95 percent of nursing students will not be affected.