Barbara Mikulski: “I would be happy to respond, if the Senator would allow me to focus on the allied health professions of which I am quite…”

“I would be happy to respond, if the Senator would allow me to focus on the allied health professions of which I am quite familiar, that it affects, first of all, when you look at what you could owe, it affects your major. So if I want to major in nursing, or where there is another shortage, x-ray technology, and you look at what you are going to earn, and what you are going to owe, well, you will take perhaps an easier path, and something that will be more lucrative at the end of graduation. So it starts in the freshman year when they are looking at that. Second, let's go to another issue in nursing. As the Senator knows, we have a problem with having enough people to teach nursing. That requires graduate training, master's, plus doctoral. Well, if you come out and you owe this bucket of bucks, and you are trying to pay off your undergraduate loan, working the terrific shifts the nurses work, and you are thinking about graduate school, you are not going to go get a master's or a doctorate to teach nursing, and we have little in the way of helping you. So we are, No. 1, affecting the shortages we have in these areas, and we are also exacerbating the people who would then have to go on to graduate school to teach the very people we need to teach.”