Nursing is still a degree that prepares you for a licensed health profession, but in this context it is being treated as an academic/graduate degree rather than a “professional degree” in the narrow financial-aid sense used by the U.S. Department of Education.

What “professional degree” means here

In U.S. federal student-aid rules, “professional degree” is a technical label usually reserved for programs like medicine (MD), law (JD), dentistry (DDS), and pharmacy (PharmD), which are given higher federal loan limits. Recent policy language stopped explicitly listing nursing in that category, so many nursing programs (including advanced practice and NP tracks) are now treated like other non‑professional graduate programs for loan limits and some regulations.

What nursing education actually is

Educationally, nursing is offered as regular academic degrees: associate degrees in nursing (ADN/ASN), bachelor’s degrees (BSN), master’s degrees (MSN) and doctorates such as DNP or PhD in Nursing. These are still recognized health‑profession pathways that lead to licensure as an RN or advanced practice nurse, even if they are not labeled “professional degrees” in that specific loan classification system.

What this does and doesn’t change

The change in label mainly affects things like maximum federal loan amounts and how programs are grouped in certain regulations, not whether nursing is a real profession or whether nurses are “professionals.” Nursing remains a licensed, regulated healthcare profession with its own scope of practice, career ladder, and degree structure; it is just being categorized differently for financial‑aid and policy purposes in this specific context.