GEOFF BENNETT: New limits on federal student loans could dramatically reshape how the U.S.

trains nurses and doctors.

Under the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed earlier this year, future medical students would be capped at borrowing $50,000 per year, no more than $200,000 total.

The law also gives the Department of Education broad authority to decide which graduate degrees count as professional and therefore qualify for higher loan limits.

The Trump administration is now proposing a far stricter cap, $20,500 a year for students pursuing graduate degrees in nursing, public health or social work, fields the department says no longer meet the definition of professional programs.

Other disciplines, including education, accounting and architecture, would also lose their professional designations.

We're joined now by Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, president of the American Nurses Association.

Thanks for being with us.

JENNIFER MENSIK KENNEDY, President, American Nurses Association: Thank you for having me.

GEOFF BENNETT: So what's your principal concern about how these new federal loan caps would affect future nursing students and, beyond that, the delivery of medical care in the U.S.?

JENNIFER MENSIK KENNEDY: It's going to have devastating effects.

We know the average cost of attendance for nursing graduate students is over $30,000 a year.

And the fact that some individuals might say, well, maybe nursing school shouldn't cost that much, that's fine, but we shouldn't limit the definition of what's considered a professional, because these have -- these policy implications have real-world negative impacts.

It's like a Trojan horse.

We define it once in one area without nursing.

What's next?

There's a lot of downhill consequences that could happen in so many other things besides just this.

And this is on the heels of the Big Beautiful Bill taking out all of the Title 8 funding.

So all the federal funding for nursing education was removed, now this.

We're going to see increased wait times for primary care visits.

We're going to see people not having access to health care in the United States.

GEOFF BENNETT: The administration says that nearly all nursing students fall under the proposed caps and therefore would see no impact.

I would imagine you see it differently.

JENNIFER MENSIK KENNEDY: No, absolutely.

So, about 20 percent of nurses have a graduate degree.

And when we think about majority and percentage, maybe that seems like it's a small amount.

But when you think there's over five million registered nurses, 20 percent is a million individuals.

And when we're looking at a time when there is a primary care shortage, we have lack of access in rural communities, we need to make sure we help support individuals who are going back to school to be able to become nurse practitioners, certified registered nurse anesthesiologists, certified nurse midwives and CNSes.

So this is a really important time for our country, because nursing is absolutely indispensable to our health care system.

GEOFF BENNETT: Our team spoke this morning with Preston Cooper, who focuses on higher education policy at the American Enterprise Institute.

And he has a different view.

He says the current structure contributes to rising tuition.

Take a listen.

PRESTON COOPER, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute: The loan limits which are being applied to nursing programs are going to protect aspiring nurses from borrowing excessive debts.

And they are going to protect nurses from schools which are charging just way too much relative to the value they are offering.

This is going to lower student loan burdens for aspiring nurses.

And so it's just very odd to me that professional associations which claim to represent nurses seem to want to bury aspiring nurses in more student debt.

GEOFF BENNETT: How do you respond to that?

JENNIFER MENSIK KENNEDY: Well, that's an unfortunate perspective, because research does show that this won't have an impact on reducing the cost of nursing education.

What's going to happen are, individuals are going to go and seek private loans.

Oftentimes, those are more maybe more predatory or have higher interest rates, and they don't qualify, for instance, for public service loan forgiveness.

So if you have federal loan and you work in a rural or underserved community, you can work off that time or work off your loan through PSLF.

You can't do that with a private loan.

So it's not going to stop people from taking out loans.

They're just going to get loans that are actually going to be a more negative impact via the private process.

GEOFF BENNETT: What would a better policy solution look like, in your view?

JENNIFER MENSIK KENNEDY: A better policy solution, of course, would be to include the definition of professional include nursing, advanced practice nurses back in that definition, particularly in a time when we have a shortage of R.N.s and a shortage of advanced practice registered nurses.

This is also for faculty, right?

So nurses who go on to get doctoral degrees to go back and teach nurses.

We had over 80,000 qualified applicants for nursing school turned away last year because mostly we don't have enough nurses to teach in nursing programs.

So I would want the Department of Education to go back and include nursing in that professional definition and make sure that Title 8 funding gets re-put into the budget, because both of those have such a negative impact that it's just going to be very much more compounded.

GEOFF BENNETT: Do you from your vantage point have an idea as to why the Trump administration is delisting these areas of pursuit as no longer professional?

JENNIFER MENSIK KENNEDY: You know, it's a really good question.

And I'm going to say that, with -- you have a first year of administration.

You have many new people and a lot of departments.

The Trump administration has been very supportive of advanced practice registered nurses.

Particularly, we saw that in the first time -- in his first administration during COVID.

And so this seems very counter to that time.

So we think this is really more of a misunderstanding.

We did send a letter in October, 57 total nursing organizations, asking to make sure that nursing was included.

So we're hoping that they go back and review this and add nursing before the comment period opens.

GEOFF BENNETT: And what's the risk that students, especially those from low-income backgrounds, will be pushed toward private high-interest lenders if they can't get a loan from the federal government?

JENNIFER MENSIK KENNEDY: No, absolutely.

So, the majority of nurses in this country are white.

And what we see is, the majority, 56 to 58 percent of our population, is not white.

And so we really want those from other ethnic backgrounds, minorities to come into nursing school, because we're going to see better patient care when we have nurses and advanced practice nurses who reflect the communities that they serve.

We're going to see people very much question the ability to go back to school.

And so it's another limitation on individuals who want to become nurses who don't have the access, who don't have the economic means to have parents or have other incomes to be able to pay for their education out of pocket.

So this is going to severely limit even further those ethnic minority groups who maybe want to aspire to be a nurse and just had their opportunity taken away from them.

GEOFF BENNETT: Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, president of the American Nurses Association, thanks for joining us.

JENNIFER MENSIK KENNEDY: Thank you.