The Trump administration’s plan to redefine what constitutes a professional degree would exclude nursing and limit access to student loans from the Graduate PLUS loan program. At a time when health care in our country faces a historic nursing shortage, limiting nurses' access to funding for graduate education threatens the very foundation of patient care and is not a solution.

Past decades and generations saw “Nurses as caregivers” – while that was the nurses’ role at that time, nurses today are recognized for...