For a growing slice of future nurses and allied-health students, healthcare students Kalshi activity is not a side hustle for thrills — it is line-item tuition financing. According to Clasp’s State of Healthcare Student Finances survey of 1,000 U.S. healthcare students, more than one in four have used betting or prediction-market platforms, and most who started did so for school or living expenses, not entertainment.
KEY FACTS AT A GLANCE
- Survey: 1,000 U.S. healthcare students (Pollfish, June 16–28, 2026) via Clasp
- Platform use: 27% have used betting or prediction markets
- Why they started: 69% sought extra money for school or living costs
- School-money mindset: 67% treat winnings as real or potential tuition help
- Results: Only 40% of student bettors say they are net positive
- Kalshi vs sportsbooks: Among bettors, Kalshi (45%) nearly matches DraftKings (50%)
What the Clasp survey actually says
Clasp, a workforce infrastructure company that ties student-loan repayment to healthcare hiring, released its inaugural State of Healthcare Student Finances report on July 21, 2026. The survey of 1,000 U.S. healthcare students was fielded by Pollfish between June 16 and 28 — just before new federal graduate loan limits took effect on July 1.
Some headlines flattened one of the most important numbers. Clasp did not find that 70% of all healthcare students bet a few times a week. According to Clasp, 27% of respondents have used a betting or prediction-market platform. Among those bettors, 73% use the apps at least a few times a week, and 15% bet daily. That is a habit story among users — not universal campus gambling.
Among student bettors, the platform mix is nearly a dead heat between licensed sportsbooks and federally regulated prediction markets. DraftKings leads at 50%, Kalshi sits at 45%, FanDuel at 42%, and Polymarket at 31%. Respondents also volunteered PrizePicks, Underdog, and Fliff. For readers tracking the 18-year-old sports betting loophole, Kalshi’s near-parity with DraftKings is the structural tell: prediction markets are not a niche side channel for these students. They are core infrastructure.
Prediction markets as a student loan substitute
The shareable core of this story is not “students gamble.” It is that students betting to pay for school are treating apps like a shadow cash facility when traditional financing feels blocked.
According to Clasp, 69% of those who started using these platforms did so to make extra money for school or living expenses. Two-thirds of student bettors (67%) treat winnings as real or potential school money: 24% say winnings are part of their plan to pay for school, and another 43% say the money could help. That is the “prediction markets as student loan substitute” line in survey form — not metaphor, self-reported budgeting.
“These students aren’t betting for fun. They’re budgeting winnings into their tuition plans, and most of them are barely breaking even.”
— Tess Michaels, CEO of Clasp
The math rarely cooperates. Only 40% of student bettors say they are net positive. About half say they roughly break even. The most common win or loss range is $100 to $1,000. One in ten report amounts over $5,000. Two respondents reported wins or losses above $50,000 — the long tail of variance that makes “tuition lottery” thinking so sticky.
That gap — motive versus outcome — is the human-cost engine. Students are not merely playing for dopamine. They are plugging a financing hole with a product that, by design, extracts edge from the average participant. Retail users already lose that contest more often than they win on prediction platforms; see our breakdown of the prediction markets 90/10 problem.
Not casual: weekly habit intensity
Frequency is where the Clasp sample looks most different from broader young-adult sports-wagering patterns. Clasp cites the NCAA’s national survey of 18-to-22-year-olds: only 14% of young-adult bettors reported betting a few times a week or more, and 4% bet daily. Among healthcare student bettors in Clasp’s sample, 73% are at least a few times a week and 15% are daily.
Sample composition also matters. Clasp says respondents were 81% women, and more than one in five women in the sample had used these platforms — roughly double the rate at which American women bet on sports nationally, per Clasp’s Statista comparison. CNBC’s write-up adds that nearly half of male students used the platforms versus about a fifth of women. A mostly female healthcare pipeline still shows elevated female participation relative to national sports-betting norms — another sign this is financial coping, not just sports-culture spillover.
Why students reach for the app
Michaels’s argument is blunt: healthcare training leaves little time for traditional side work, private loans often demand a cosigner (“code for wealthy parents,” she told CNBC), and the fastest cash interface wins. Prediction markets and sportsbooks load in seconds. Clinical shifts do not.
“Time is really precious in healthcare, and there are different jobs that you can do to try and earn extra cash. And so the fastest routes to being able to get access to cash are probably going to win.”
— Tess Michaels, CEO of Clasp
Federal loan-cap chaos sat in the background while the survey was fielded. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act framework, graduate programs faced annual federal borrowing caps of $20,500 (with a $100,000 aggregate), while “professional” programs could reach $50,000 a year ($200,000 aggregate). Nursing and other health fields were initially left off the professional list — a fight the American Hospital Association warned could shrink the clinician pipeline — before court-order updates from the Department of Education in late June and early July restored certain nursing CIP codes (including MSN and DNP pathways) to higher professional limits.
LOAN-CAP TIMELINE NOTE
Clasp surveyed students in mid-to-late June, before July 1 implementation and amid shifting professional-degree lists. Its July 21 release still frames nursing financing stress under the lower graduate caps. The article here treats financing pressure and cosigner walls as the durable story — not a claim that every nursing student remains permanently capped at $20,500 under current ED guidance.
Even with partial restoration of professional status for some nursing programs, Clasp’s pressure metrics are sobering. According to the survey, 61% of respondents say becoming a healthcare professional without family wealth or outside support is extremely difficult (47%) or not realistically achievable (14%). Nearly three in ten (29%) cannot reliably cover a month’s basic expenses. Sixty-six percent chose healthcare to help people; only 6% chose it for salary. Only 3% said loan caps made them reconsider the career.
“Graduate students require a cosigner to get access to a private loan, which is code for wealthy parents. So if you don’t have a wealthy parent, how are you going to supplement [school]? It’s through outlets like this.”
— Tess Michaels, CEO of Clasp
The wider shadow economy of healthcare degrees
Betting is only one channel. Clasp reports that 56% of all respondents turned to at least one non-traditional income source for tuition or living costs. Credit cards and paid content creation (TikTok, YouTube, OnlyFans, Substack) tied at 21% each. Eleven percent trained AI models for cash. Ten percent pursued sperm or egg donation. Six percent sold feet pics or similar content online.
Among income sources, content creation was most often named the biggest moneymaker (16%), ahead of sports betting (14%) and prediction markets (11%). In other words, prediction markets are not the most lucrative shadow job — they are among the most liquid and habitual ones.
The 18+ supply side: why Kalshi fits the gap
Demand for cash does not explain platform choice by itself. Supply does. Licensed sportsbooks in many states set the age floor at 21 and stay out of prohibition states. Prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket generally open at 18 as CFTC-regulated event contracts, with a different federal-vs-state legal map. That is the same pipeline we covered in the student shadow sportsbook story — and it is why campus acquisition has been so aggressive.
CNBC reported earlier in 2026 that analysts saw 18-to-20-year-olds as a growth engine for prediction markets, with Kalshi’s college-football handle at times outpacing NFL and NBA share. Inside Higher Ed has documented campus marketing through fraternities, student groups, and influencer payouts. States are already reacting: see Washington’s college-betting bill debate in our coverage of SB 6137 and prediction-market pressure, plus the broader CFTC sports prediction market rules fight.
When a future nurse is 19, cash-strapped, and locked out of FanDuel in a 21+ state, Kalshi is not an abstract “information market.” It is the open door. Pair that access with Clasp’s finding that students are budgeting winnings into tuition plans, and you get the product-market fit nobody should celebrate: federally cleared event contracts as emergency financial aid.
What this means for prediction markets and the workforce
Clasp has a commercial interest in loan-linked hiring infrastructure — disclose that when you read its alarm. The survey is still one of the first quantitative looks at non-traditional income among healthcare students, and the numbers are internally coherent: high financial stress, high non-traditional income use, elevated betting frequency among those who bet, weak average results.
For the prediction-market industry, the lesson is uncomfortable. Volume from students who treat contracts as rent money is not a pure “truth discovery” story. It is a financing story with gambling mechanics. For hospitals and nursing schools, it is a workforce-pipeline story: if the path to the bedside runs through weekly Kalshi sessions and credit-card float, retention and mental-health costs show up later. For regulators, it is another data point in the age-and-access fight already driving facial-recognition and youth-protection proposals — including the push we tracked in the facial recognition gambling bill coverage.
“Nursing is supposed to be the career that holds when everything else gets automated away, and we’ve made it harder to finance than law school… What struck me most is that they’re staying anyway. The commitment isn’t the problem. The financing is.”
— Tess Michaels, CEO of Clasp
One more disclosure when you see this story on cable business news: CNBC has a commercial relationship with Kalshi that includes customer acquisition and a minority investment. That does not invalidate the survey, but it is context for how the Kalshi-student narrative travels through mainstream media — a media integration path we previously examined in our piece on the Kalshi-CNBC deal.
FAQs
According to Clasp’s June 2026 survey of 1,000 U.S. healthcare students, 27% have used a betting or prediction-market platform. Two-thirds of those bettors treat winnings as real or potential school money, and 69% who started did so for school or living expenses.
Do not confuse the denominators. Clasp finds 27% of all surveyed healthcare students have used these platforms. Among those bettors, 73% use them at least a few times a week and 15% bet daily — not 70% of every healthcare student.
Usually not enough to call it tuition strategy. Only 40% of student bettors in the Clasp survey say they are net positive, about half say they roughly break even, and the most common win-or-loss band is $100 to $1,000.
Among healthcare student bettors, Kalshi (45%) nearly matches DraftKings (50%), with FanDuel at 42% and Polymarket at 31%. Prediction markets also reach many 18-year-olds and more states than licensed sportsbooks.
Students were surveyed amid new graduate and professional loan limits taking effect July 1, 2026, and shifting professional-degree lists for fields like nursing. Clasp links financing stress and private-loan cosigner barriers to non-traditional cash sources, including betting apps.
No. Clasp reports 56% of respondents used at least one non-traditional income source, including heavy credit-card use (21%), content creation (21%), AI training (11%), and donation or adult content channels.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Loan-substitute framing is survey-backed — According to Clasp, 69% who started betting did so for school/living money, and 67% of bettors treat winnings as real or potential tuition help.
- Fix the 70% misread — 27% of healthcare students have used these platforms; 73% of bettors are weekly+ users.
- Kalshi is core, not niche — 45% of student bettors used Kalshi, nearly matching DraftKings at 50%.
- Most are not “winning school” — Only 40% report net positive results; typical P&L sits at $100–$1,000.
- 18+ access is the supply-side enabler — Prediction markets fill age and geo gaps licensed sportsbooks leave open.
- Betting is one channel in a larger shadow economy — 56% of respondents used non-traditional income including credit cards and content creation.
Sources
- America’s Future Nurses Are Betting on Kalshi and DraftKings to Pay for Nursing School — Clasp / Business Wire via Morningstar
- Healthcare students are turning to Kalshi and betting platforms to pay for their degrees, survey shows — CNBC
- Update to List of Professional Degree Programs Due to Court Order — U.S. Department of Education / Federal Student Aid
- Fact Sheet: Federal Student Loan Limits for Graduate and Professional Programs — American Hospital Association
- Prediction markets: College students, teens could be fueling the boom — CNBC
- Rise of Prediction Apps on Campuses Poses Big Risk — Inside Higher Ed (Ryan Craig)
