Children's Hospital Colorado cutting program that offered employees paid tuition for advanced degrees

Children's Hospital Colorado is cutting a program that offered employees paid tuition for advanced degrees. It was a deal that brought many nurses to Aurora.

In a statement, Children's Hospital Colorado wrote: "Due to significantly higher-than-expected utilization, we had to make the difficult decision to make changes to the scope of our 2024 Guild educational offerings in the catalog. This was a very difficult decision and one we did not make without serious consideration of various options."

A nurse enrolled in the program who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation spoke with CBS News Colorado about the change.

"There are better programs, less expensive programs, programs with more advisement help. But none of that outweighed the fact that we could get free tuition (here)," the nurse said.

Children's Hospital Colorado will still pay up to $5,200 a year for tuition, but that won't cover the full cost as they had promised.

"I'm going to try to find a way to get through it," the nurse said. "Whether that'd be through loans, using my savings, talking to family. But I have colleagues that like literally cannot afford to take more loans, aren't approved, already have debt from nursing school."

Children's Hospital Colorado says it has committed more than $11 million to team member education since offering this program. The nurses left with less say it's not their fault the hospital overpromised.

"We are literally at a crossroads of like, do we quit a program we're already in? Or do we sink ourselves even further to try to finish it simply because this promise wasn't upheld," the nurse said.

The hospital says "team members are only responsible for the taxes above the annual cap. This is unfortunately an IRS tax code that we do not control."