BUZZ
School seeks to prove its value now that Trump is slowing flow of taxpayer dollars
University of Pennsylvania’s nursing program is joining a national network to helps its graduates find jobs and pay off loans.
The decision follows new graduate loan limits from the Trump administration. The nursing school offers graduate degrees that cost $168,000, exceeding the new $20,500 annual cap on taxpayer loans applied to most master’s programs. The change eliminated the GradPLUS loans, subsidized by taxpayers and without any limits.
Effective July 1, graduate students can borrow $20,500 per year unless they are in a “professional” degree program, in which case they can borrow up to $50,000 per year. The Department of Education classified certain programs as “professional” such as medicine or dentistry.
Nursing school dean Antonia Villarruel previously criticized the exclusion of nursing programs from the higher “professional” limit.
But now the school has decided it might be best to actually help students find jobs and match them with employers who offer loan repayment options.
The Daily Pennsylvanian reported:
The school is among roughly 50 participating in similar agreements with Scholars Network, a national organization that pledges to reduce staffing shortages and student debt. The partnership comes as the nursing field faces rising education costs and growing challenges from the Trump administration.
…The goal is to address the rising cost of professional education while also combating nursing shortages in high-demand clinical fields. Debt scales with the degree: the median graduate nursing debt is $40,000-$55,000, well above the $29,000 average for BSN grads.
The Penn Medicine Scholars program offers between $30,000 and $105,000 in loan repayment in exchange for a three-year, full-time work commitment. As of June, that program has hired four CRNAs, four respiratory therapists, and three RNs.
Students apply while in school.
The job placement network is the latest way universities have responded to the new loan limits. While lawsuits continue against the classification system, many schools are reducing tuition to align with the new borrowing caps.
These include Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, and Lewis & Clark College.
Other universities, including the University of California Irvine and Santa Clara University’s law school have similarly capped tuition or offered financial aid in response to the One Big Beautiful Bill, as The College Fix previously reported.
Even opponents of the new limits have implicitly acknowledged the wisdom behind it.
Minnesota recently started its own student loan program to make up for gaps created by the new Trump limits. However, it also excludes certain graduate programs from higher limits and requires applicants to either have a co-signer or a 650 credit score or higher.
Cato Institute expert Andrew Gillen summarized the student loan field in comments to The Fix about Minnesota’s program.
“Lots of people and states have criticized the Trump administration for eliminating GradPLUS,” Andrew Gillen said. “But none of them have simply recreated GradPLUS loans.”
