Here’s a fun fact: Did you know that Nursing is the largest healthcare profession in the U.S, with ~4.7M registered nurses?
That’s not all! When it comes to student debt statistics, nursing is also one of the more interesting healthcare professions in the U.S. Like other healthcare professions, nursing has a high concentration of student debt; unlike other healthcare professions, the average amount of student debt among nurse borrowers can vary wildly as advanced professional degrees (masters or doctorates) are not necessarily required to become a registered nurse.
How much is the average student loan debt for nurses? Exactly how many nurses graduate with student debt? How long do nurses spend paying back their student loans? How can they pay off their loans more quickly? How would an employer student loan repayments benefit help? We'll cover this and more.
As nursing is a profession that can require years and years of formal education, nurses may hold an average of $23K to $185K of student loan debt depending on which type (and how many) degrees they have.
Generally, the amount of student debt a nurse has increases with their level of education; nurses with an associate (ADN) or bachelors of science (BSN) degree in nursing owe an estimated average of $23,302 and $28,917 in student debt upon graduation; nurses who complete their Master of Science in nursing owe roughly $49,047 in student debt, and nurses who complete doctorate degrees in nursing owe an average of $184,787 of student debt.
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Average Nursing Student Debt By Degree Type (2024)
It’s estimated that ~3/4ths of all nurses have some level of student debt. In 2017, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) found that roughly 76% of nurses surveyed had some level of undergraduate loans, with 54% of nurse borrowers owed between $25,000 and $69,000 of student debt.
It’s estimated that ~3/4ths of all nurses have some level of student debt.
The survey also found that approximately 69% of nurses who obtained graduate degrees financed their education with federal student loans. Among nurses with advanced degrees, 71% of nurses with a Masters, 67% of nurses with a Doctorate, and 48% of nurses with a PhD in nursing had some level of student debt.
Today, a majority of the nursing workforce (~71.7% as of 2022) has a BSN or higher, 17.4% of RNs have an MSN, and 2.7% have a doctoral degree (DNP or PhD). As employers increasingly prefer nurses with bachelors degrees and the cost of education continues to increase, it’s likely we will continue to see a majority of new nurses graduate with some level of student debt.
The amount of time it can take for a nurse to repay their student loans depends on a wide variety of factors including the original loan details (balance, interest rate, minimum payment etc), their own personal financial situation (salary, living expenses, other debt, etc), and their loan repayment strategy. It takes the average borrower 20 years to repay their student loans but some nurses may repay their loans in as few as three years or they may take more than 25 years to repay their loans.
To illustrate how widely repayment times can vary, Utica University did a state-by-state analysis to calculate the average amount of time it would take nursing graduates to repay their student loans a) if all their discretionary income was put towards paying off their loan balance and b) if only 30% of discretionary income was put towards student loans. The analysis found that, depending on the state, a registered nurse could conceivably pay off their loans in <3 years or take up to 40 years!
There are several strategies available for nurses to pay off their student loans, including pursuing student loan forgiveness or taking advantage of student loan repayment assistance programs, and many nurses may already be planning to use some of these strategies to pay off their student loans.
According to the AACN survey, while half of all nurses with federal student loans are worried about their ability to repay their student debt, many nurses already plan to pursue various avenues to help them repay their student debt; 45% of nurses surveyed indicated they would repay their federal loans by enrolling in the standard 10 year repayment plan, 57% planned to apply for the PSLF program, 22% planned to apply for an IDR plan, and 38% want to use a Title VIII nursing workforce development program to help pay for their education.
Two primary student loan options available to nurses with federal student loans are Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) and forgiveness via income-driven repayment plans.
Nurses who want to apply for PSLF need to work for a qualifying employer, such as the government, 501(c)(3) nonprofit, or other qualifying nonprofits, for 10 years and make 120 qualifying payments on their student loans in order to have their loan forgiven at the end of the repayment period.
Nurses on an income-driven repayment plan don’t necessarily need to work for a qualifying employer to see their loans forgiven at the end of their repayment period; if there’s an outstanding balance at the end of the repayment period, it may be automatically forgiven.
One major note: court injunctions against the SAVE plan have put forgiveness under SAVE, PAYE, and ICR on hold. Borrowers who reach their required number of payments while forgiveness is on hold are currently being put into interest-free forbearance until more guidance is available.
If a student loan is forgiven under an income-driven repayment plan, nurses will likely owe taxes on the amount forgiven. A caveat to this–currently qualifying student loans forgiven between Dec 31, 2020 and Jan 1, 2026 may be exempt from federal taxation under the American Rescue Plan Act (but may still be subject to state taxes).
If a student loan is forgiven under PSLF, borrowers will likely not owe taxes on the remaining balance forgiven.
There are two broad buckets of student loan repayment assistance programs available for nurses:
Nurses willing to work for certain government organizations and/or in Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) or other underserved, high-needs locations, may be able to take advantage of special loan repayment programs.
These programs often:
For example, nurses who choose to serve in a branch of the military, like the Army or Navy, may be eligible to participate in loan repayment incentive programs that will either subsidize further education or repay student loans in exchange for service commitments.
Other government and government-affiliated organizations like the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA), the Indian Health Service, and state-level healthcare agencies also offer a number of similar student loan assistance programs in exchange for service commitments.
Some of the available programs are:
One last option nurses can use to help repay their student loans (and potentially repay them quickly), is to work for an employer that offers tax-free student loan repayments as a benefit.
Employers offering this benefit can contribute up to $5,250 tax-free annually to an individual nurse’s student loans, and any employer (in the private or public sector) can offer this benefit!
These employer contributions can help nurses save thousands of dollars in principal & interest payments and, when made on top of their monthly minimum payments and applied towards loan principal, can help them pay off their loans faster.
An employer student loan repayment benefit is a powerful, prescriptive tool that any of the many companies and organizations that employ nurses can leverage to attract and retain top nursing talent, while simultaneously tackling one of their biggest sources of financial stress.
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Interested in learning more about employer student loan repayment benefits? Speak with a member of our team today.
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