Voices: Utah’s health workforce faces a new threat. Students will pay the price.

For more than a decade, I’ve worked in higher education in Utah, and for over 25 years, I’ve worked in health care. Each year, I work closely with students who want to become nurses, occupational or physical therapists, physician assistants and athletic trainers.

They understand the training will be demanding and the pay modest compared to the debt, yet they choose these careers anyway. Not because they are easy or lucrative, but because their communities need them.

That pathway into health care is now at risk.

A federal loan policy change scheduled to take effect in 2026 threatens to make many essential health professions unaffordable for Utah students. Beginning July 1, Graduate PLUS loans will be discontinued for new borrowers, marking the end of the primary federal option that has allowed graduate students to borrow up to the full cost of attendance.

Instead, new graduate borrowers will be limited to Direct Unsubsidized Loans, capped at $20,500 per year and a total of $100,000.

That cap may work for short, classroom-based academic programs. It does not work for clinical health professions.

Programs such as nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, physician assistant medicine, speech-language pathology, audiology and athletic training require full-time study, intensive coursework and months of unpaid clinical rotations. These experiences are required for accreditation and patient safety. Students cannot shorten them, compress them or work full-time alongside them.

Eliminating Graduate PLUS loans does not lower tuition. Health professions programs require specialized faculty, accredited clinical sites and costly instructional resources. Higher-education policy experts warn that removing PLUS loans will push more students toward private loans with higher interest rates and fewer consumer protections.

In Utah, many of the professions most affected by the elimination of Graduate PLUS loans do not earn six-figure salaries. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, occupational therapists earn about $74,000 to $88,000, physical therapists $78,000 to $93,000, speech-language pathologists $63,000 to $81,000, athletic trainers $44,000 to $56,000, and nurse practitioners $98,000 to $112,000, based on early-career to average wages. These are stable, essential careers, but they are not built to support private student loan balances that can easily exceed six figures.

The legislation creates a second, less visible problem. It reserves higher federal loan limits for only a narrow set of degrees labeled “professional,” while capping other graduate borrowers at lower amounts. This distinction does not accurately reflect how modern health care training actually works.

Weber State University and other institutions of higher education in Utah work diligently to keep health care education affordable and accessible. Programs are designed to serve Utah students, many of whom are from rural communities, who wish to stay and practice in the state. But even the most affordable public institutions cannot overcome a federal system that limits borrowing to $20,500 per year when real programs and living costs far exceed that amount.

Utah cannot afford a health care workforce built solely on who can pay upfront.

If these policies move forward unchanged, the result will be fewer trained providers, longer health care wait times and fewer Utah students able to enter the professions their communities rely on.

Utah’s congressional delegation and higher-education leaders should act now to support both a fair replacement for Graduate PLUS loans and the institutions working to keep health care education affordable.

Colleges and universities, such as Weber State University, are controlling costs while maintaining the high standards required to educate safe and competent health care providers, but they cannot do it alone. Institutions need legislative support that recognizes essential health professions as true professional programs and provides affordable federal loan options, so cost does not become a barrier to education or health care.

If Utah wants a strong, homegrown health workforce in the years ahead, these policies must change now, so the door remains open to the students ready to serve.

Robyn Thompson, PhD, OTR/L, is the Program Director of the Occupational Therapy Assistant Program at Weber State University and a Utah and Wyoming-based health care professional. She has more than 25 years of experience in healthcare and over a decade of working in higher education, with a focus on workforce development and health professions education.

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