Nursing programs across the country are being forced to turn away qualified applicants due to a shortage of qualified instructors.
The problem is the result of how quickly the nursing field is growing. With an aging population creating an increased need for health care professionals, getting those new professionals trained requires additional faculty and staff.
Without having additional teachers in place, some colleges are forced to keep enrollment numbers flat.
The College of New Jersey, for example, has maintained a nursing school enrollment of 60 during each of the past four years. During that time frame, the number of students seeking nursing school admission with the university has jumped from 440 in 2009 to 750 in 2013, according to the Times of Trenton.
Elsewhere in New Jersey, Thomas Edison State College has initiated construction of a $16.9 million, 27,000-square-foot nursing building on the grounds of a former apartment complex to meet growing demand for the program.
On the West Coast, the interim chairman of nursing at Cal State San Bernardino, Dwight Sweeney, said the problem plagues all of the school’s California campuses.
“We have over 1,200 pre-nursing students. I can only take about 108 a year. In the fall, we had over 600 applicants for 44 positions,” he told the Long Beach Press Telegram. “Realistically, we are turning away people with 3.6 and 3.7 GPAs.”
For the 2013 fall semester, Cal State Long Beach was only able to admit 82 of the 450 students who applied to the nursing program, an 18 percent acceptance rate.
Out of the 300 students who applied for the accelerated nursing degree at Cal State Northridge, only 60 were accepted. Marianne Hattar-Pollara, the university’s program director for nursing called the applicants a “highly qualified pool.”
Efforts to recruit qualified nursing instructors face an uphill battle in today’s nursing job market.
“We have a rising nursing shortage, but it may appear we do not have one,” said Louise Bailey, executive officer of California’s Board of Registered Nursing.
During the recession, many nurses planning to retire changed their minds and some working part-time opted for full-time.
Bailey describes “a vicious cycle” of turning away applicants due to faculty shortages. With the Affordable Care Act offering broader coverage to Americans and older citizens needing additional care, the cycle may be difficult to break.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual pay for registered nurses in 2010 was $64,690, or $31.10 per hour. The agency predicts a shortfall of 1.2 million nurses by the end of the decade, with about 30 million insured Americans under the new law.
