WASHINGTON, June 14 -- On July 1 a new set of federal student-loan caps takes effect, and buried in the fine print is a judgment that has enraged the people who keep American hospitals running: the government does not consider nursing a profession. Under the rule, students pursuing medicine, dentistry and law can borrow up to two hundred thousand dollars for their degrees. Students training to become nurses, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and physical therapists are placed in a lower tier, capped well below that, because their fields are not on the administration's list of "professional" programs. The country is short of exactly these workers. The rule will make it harder to train more of them.

The caps come out of the tax-and...