Christopher Friese, a University of Michigan professor of nursing and of health management and policy, is a national authority on health care quality, nursing work environments and workforce policy.

Friese joins the Michigan Minds podcast to explain how proposed federal caps on graduate student loans could shape nurses’ education and career decisions, what high student debt is revealing about the nursing workforce, and why these policies may have ripple effects for patient care and the future supply of nurse practitioners, midwives, anesthetists and nursing faculty.

What makes loan caps on borrowing for graduate nursing degrees different?

We are worried about caps on loans for graduate nurses for a couple of reasons. Our study, the Michigan Nurses Study, identified that about a third of registered nurses have substantial levels of debt to begin with. If you already are carrying a lot of debt, imagine trying to advance your career in nursing—that usually means you have to go back for a graduate degree—and then you’re facing an even higher bill.

What we are worried about is that these proposed caps will deter people from even thinking about graduate school. They will just decide, 'I'm not going to pursue graduate school.' And that is bad for the country, because advanced practice nurses and the future faculty that train nursing students do a tremendous amount for our health care system. If we cut off this supply route for graduate nurses, we are worried about health care outcomes and the future of nursing education.

Michigan Minds is produced by Greta Guest and hosted by Michigan News staff. Jeremy Marble is the audio engineer and Hans Anderson provides social media animations.

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It begins with a single, panicked phone call about a fallen parent or a flickering memory, but it is quickly becoming the defining white noise of a nation. As the American population ages and family structures splinter, a quiet domestic struggle has escalated into a pressing national inquiry: Who is actually responsible for our elders?

New insights from the University of Michigan suggest that while the American heart remains committed to the ideal of family-led care, the American household is running out of resources to provide it.

Sarah Patterson, a sociologist and demographer at the Institute for Social Research, joined the Michigan Minds podcast to talk about a high-stakes collision between universal moral values and a "math problem" that no longer adds up.

Q: Is the traditional family safety net fraying under the weight of several modern demographic shifts.

So I would say that our expectations for family is pretty universal. This is a widely held belief among many people, many nations, that families should help older adults with their care. But as you said, it's becoming sort of a math problem because older adults' families are changing. So we have higher rates of what's known as gray divorce or getting divorced later in life. Family estrangement has become a big topic. For instance, Oprah has been talking about it, so it's a big topic in the public. And there's these sort of family changes that are happening for older adults that call into question what our expectations might be in this changing sort of demographic environment.

My research is concerned with how we think about these expectations for families when families are changing… There is a question about whether these sorts of values will persist into the future as there's more pressure on smaller families to take care of older adults in the U.S.

Michigan Minds is produced by Greta Guest and hosted by Michigan News staff. Jeremy Marble is the audio engineer and Hans Anderson provides social media animations. Listen to all episodes of the podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Joanne Hsu, director of the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers and research associate professor at the Institute for Social Research, specializes in the fields of household finance, consumer sentiment and the impact of economic expectations on the national economy.

Hsu joins the Michigan Minds podcast to discuss her findings on current consumer sentiment, offering insight into persistent high prices and how the labor market is shaping the way Americans manage their budgets today.

How do you see consumers responding to these additional budget constraints?

The number one factor on consumers' minds is the persistence of high prices and tariffs are a major factor in that. Inflation, however, has come down, so Inflation being the rate of change of prices as opposed to just the price level itself, so inflation has slowed down quite a bit since 2022.

But that doesn't mean prices have come down; prices have remained high and that's something that consumers continue to be very frustrated about. The thing is, we all want prices to come down, but historically speaking, it's really hard for prices to come down without something catastrophic happening in the economy, like a major recession. And a major recession will surely affect everyone in a very negative way.

I think sometimes it can be hard for people who watch the macroeconomy, including policymakers, to square the fact that inflation has come down, but people are still so unhappy about how prices are eroding away at their living standards.

Michigan Minds is produced by Greta Guest and hosted by Juan Ochoa. Jeremy Marble is the audio engineer and Hans Anderson provides social media animations. Listen to all episodes of the podcast.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.