As we mark National Nurses Week May 6-12, the country will do what it does every year. We will thank nurses for their contributions. We will celebrate their compassion. We will call them heroes.
Nurses have been ranked the most trusted profession in America for 22 consecutive years. No other profession comes close. Demand is also rising fast, with advanced practice nurses among the fastest growing roles in the country and central to expanding access to care.
By any honest measure, trust, demand and impact, nursing is indispensable.
But this year, that is not enough.
A recent Wall Street Journal headline called nursing the surest path to American prosperity. It captured something real.
Nursing has become one of the most reliable ways into the middle class, offering stability, mobility and long-term opportunity in a volatile economy. Healthcare now drives job growth in the United States, and nurses are at the center of that expansion.
At a time when other industries are shrinking or being automated, the country is leaning on nurses to hold the system together and extend care to communities that already struggle to access care.
And yet, during the very week we celebrate nurses, we are advancing policies that quietly make it harder to become one.
Recent changes tied to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act restructure graduate student lending in ways that place many nursing programs at a disadvantage. Graduate students have historically been able to borrow up to the full cost of attendance for their programs but the U.S. Department of Education restructured graduate student loans through the Reimagining and Improving Student Education negotiated rulemaking process. The new rule splits borrowers into two categories: “Professional students” can take out up to $50,000 in annual loans and $200,000 in total, while “graduate students” are limited to $20,500 annually and $100,000 in total. The key issue is how the Education Department determines which programs qualify as “professional.” Graduate nursing programs are classified as non-professional.
Graduate nursing students report average annual education costs of more than $38,000, nearly double the new loan cap, according to a survey in November by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN). More than 80% say the new rule will affect their ability to finance their education, and more than three-quarters of deans from AACN member schools expect to see a drop in post-baccalaureate enrollment as a result of the annual borrowing limit. Limiting access to loans could make it more difficult for aspiring advanced practice nurses and faculty to pursue their degrees and reduce access to care and aggravate the existing nursing and nursing faculty shortages.
At the same time, Gainful Employment regulations are evaluating programs using debt to earnings measures that do not reflect how nursing careers actually progress. Programs that fall short risk losing access to federal financial aid altogether.
These are not abstract policy shifts. They shape which programs survive, who can afford to enroll, and ultimately who enters the workforce.
For nursing, the impact is immediate. Fewer nurse practitioners. Fewer faculty. Fewer providers entering a system already stretched thin.
Each year, tens of thousands of qualified applicants are turned away from nursing programs, largely because there are not enough faculty to teach them. Policies that limit access to education will only make that bottleneck worse.
We cannot spend Nurses Week celebrating the future of nursing while quietly constraining the pipeline that makes that future possible.
This tension is not new.
Nursing has long occupied a strange space in American culture. It is trusted more than any other profession, yet still not fully recognized for the depth of knowledge it requires. During the covid-19 pandemic, nurses were praised as heroes. But the language of heroism often replaces a harder truth: that nursing is highly skilled, highly technical work that depends on education, judgment and constant adaptation.
Part of this comes down to perception. Nursing, as a profession historically dominated by women, is still too often associated with compassion alone. Care is framed as instinct rather than expertise. That framing lingers, even as the work itself becomes more complex.
Today’s nurses are managing advanced monitoring systems, interpreting rapidly changing clinical data, and increasingly using artificial intelligence tools to support decision making in real time. They are making critical judgments in environments where there is little room for error.
That is not support work. It is professional practice.
What makes nursing distinct is not just the human connection patients rely on, but the expectation that nurses deliver that connection alongside technical precision, often under pressure and without hesitation.
So, during this National Nurses Week, it is worth asking a more direct question. Do our legislative policies reflect what we say we value?
If the answer is yes, then nursing must be recognized for what it is, a profession that requires investment. That means access to education, support for programs, and policies that strengthen rather than restrict the workforce.
Nurses are not asking to be called heroes. They are asking for a system that recognizes the role they already play.
National Nurses Week is the perfect time to begin to acknowledge nurses for the professionals they are.
Mary Ellen Glasgow is dean and professor in the Duquesne University School of Nursing. Kymberlee Montgomery is a clinical professor of nursing and chief nurse academic officer at Drexel University College of Nursing and Health Professions.