Analyzing loan risk for graduate nursing students

Many organizations and lawmakers have expressed concerns about a proposal that would limit federal loans to graduate nursing students to half of what those pursuing degrees in medicine, dentistry, law, and other professional fields can borrow.

The New England Journal of Medicine on March 25 published a perspective piece co-authored by Maja Djukic, PhD, RN, FAAN, that added helpful data to the discussion. Djukic is a professor in the Department of Research at Cizik School of Nursing at UTHealth Houston.

“Nurses generally are not high-risk borrowers,” the authors wrote. “These findings are in keeping with evidence suggesting that nurses with graduate degrees are among the professionals most likely to receive a positive return on investment from their degrees.”

The U.S. Department of Education proposed a rule that would limit federal student loans for graduate nursing students to $20,500 per year and $100,000 in total, compared to $50,000 and $200,000, respectively, for students studying to become physicians, dentists, pharmacists, veterinarians, and practitioners in several other fields. The exclusion of graduate nursing programs from the higher loan limits was based on a definition of “professional students” from the Higher Education Act of 1965, a time when fewer graduate-level nursing programs existed.

Djukic co-wrote the paper with Amy W. Stimpfel, PhD, RN, an assistant professor at New York University. They analyzed salaries, tuition, projected job growth, and debt-to-earnings ratios for advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) compared to fields that would have higher loan limits.

“APRNs are estimated to have the lowest debt-to-earnings ratio of employees included in the analysis and are projected to have the highest rate of job growth over the next decade at 35%,” they wrote.

Read the entire publication: https://www.nejm.org/search?q=Using+data+to+inform+decision+making+-+borrowing+limits

Sherri Deatherage Green