Trump's student loan limits could rock the health care industry

The Trump administration's new federal student loan limits could force aspiring health care workers to abandon their degrees or turn to private lenders.

Why it matters: America's aging population means the nation needs more health care workers, but the borrowing cap could exacerbate the industry's worker shortage, which is already marked by medical care deserts and longer wait times.

• "The health care workforce is not a faucet that you can turn on and off," Adrienne Thomas of the American Hospital Association tells Axios. "We're really concerned that this rule will discourage students from entering health care professions because they can't afford it."

Catch up quickly: Trump's 2025 tax bill capped federal loans at $100,000 total for those pursuing graduate degrees, and $200,000 for 11 professional degrees, including medical doctors, pharmacists and dentists. Both caps take effect on July 1.

• Physician assistants, nurse practitioners and other health care professionals fall in the graduate degree category, excluding them from the higher borrowing cap.

Zoom in: Median tuition totals $298,000 at four-year public medical schools and more than $408,000 at private ones, per Association of American Medical Colleges data — far above the lifetime cap.

• And the elimination of the Grad PLUS loan program — which allowed borrowing the full cost of an advanced degree, regardless of major — will cut off a financial lifeline that many students used to bridge the previous loan cap of $138,500.
• Kristen Earle, student financial services director at the Association of American Medical Colleges, says students "will have to turn to the private loan market to make up for that unmet need."

By the numbers: Not everyone qualifies for private student loans, per research by the Century Foundation and Protect Borrowers.

• Roughly 40% of Americans, including nearly two-thirds of Pell Grant recipients, aren't eligible, the study showed.
• Peter Granville of The Century Foundation tells Axios that private loans often carry more predatory terms and that the disproportionate exclusion of Pell recipients — historically people of color and lower-income students — "is not a coincidence."
• "It's baked into our unequal access to financial resources in the U.S. You can then see how they wouldn't then be going back to their communities to serve them as doctors or dentists."

The other side: Education Department spokesperson Ellen Keast says schools charge "virtually unlimited tuition, even as many student loan borrowers see little to no return on their investment."

Yes, but: "A university doesn't say, 'hey, we're going to set tuition based on the federal loan amount,'" American Association of Nurse Practitioners President Valerie Fuller tells Axios. "It just isn't the way it happens."

Zoom out: Thomas worries that a shrinking pipeline of clinicians will have long-term impacts. "It's not just the students ... it's also who can educate and train the next generation," she says.

• "We already have a tremendous issue with access to care in this country," Fuller says. "By stifling the pipeline … it really goes counter to the administration's own ideals of helping to strengthen the health care workforce."

The bottom line: Jennifer Zhang, a data analyst at Protect Borrowers, says the rules will be "disastrous" long term.

• "There will be a reduction in the number of people who can become public health workers. The people who do fill those roles ... will have larger loan balances, higher interest rates and be in greater financial distress."

Go deeper: Health worker shortages forecast thru 2028