Despite High Demand For Nurses, Colleges Aren’t Keeping Up

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Student nurse Gail Powers outside the College Medical Center in Long Beach, Calif.

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Sergey Bystrov, a student nurse, outside the College Medical Center in Long Beach, Calif. The program at Long Beach City College, had 1,200 applicants this fall and accepted only 32 of them.

James Bernal/The Hechinger Report

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James Bernal/The Hechinger Report

Sergey Bystrov, a student nurse, outside the College Medical Center in Long Beach, Calif. The program at Long Beach City College, had 1,200 applicants this fall and accepted only 32 of them.

James Bernal/The Hechinger Report

«When the nurse has a student next to her, it takes some of the pressure off,» he said. «It’s an extra set of hands.»

Nursing instructors are also leaving in droves. Nearly one-third of California nursing schools surveyed have lost faculty members since March, said Sharon Goldfarb, dean of health sciences at California’s College of Marin and a regional president of the California Organization of Associate Degree Nursing. The average age of the remaining instructors is 63, she said.

At community colleges, instructors’ salaries are notoriously low, especially compared with what a practicing nurse can earn, so open faculty positions sometimes remain unfilled for a year or more.

The nursing program at Rio Hondo College, a community college in Whittier, Calif., has been unable to fill two open faculty slots for the past year, said Catherine Page, dean of health science and nursing. Candidates have turned down the jobs because of the salaries, she said. Pay for Rio Hondo instructors starts at $60,000 a year, while the average California registered nurse makes $113,000.

Rio Hondo had an increase in the number of nursing school applicants this year but had to limit new admissions because of the faculty vacancies and a lack of clinical opportunities.

The challenges are keeping colleges from helping solve the nursing shortage, Page said. «We’re not going to produce those new nurses.»

Experts worry that the next year or two could devastate nursing — and nursing quality. Scores of nursing programs are replacing on-site clinical work with computer simulations, mannequins or patient care by video, which some educators worry may not sufficiently prepare new graduates for work. Several said they aren’t convinced that students will pass their licensing exams.

«It would be naive to say, ‘Oh, no, this won’t affect them at all,’ » said Renae Schumann, dean of the Houston Baptist University nursing school in Texas. «Yes, we all worry about it.»

Even if new nurses do arrive completely prepared, lower staffing levels in hospitals may mean higher numbers of medication errors and deaths, according to the American Nurses Association.

Older, experienced nurses are the ones who keep things running smoothly, says Buerhaus, the Montana State professor. «Some of these nurses are exactly who you need right now, and they’re leaving. I hope many of them hang in there.»

Hospitals could have major problems soon: Acute-care hospitals employ more than 60 percent of nurses, Buerhaus said.

Lopez, the student at Cal State East Bay, worked her way through school as a nurse’s aide. She is preparing to take her licensing exam and find a job, even if it’s out of state.

In the end, she says, her hard-fought clinical rotations this year have turned out to be the most rewarding part of her education.

«What a time to learn, during the pandemic,» she said. «What a once-in-a-lifetime experience.»

This story about nursing education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Additional reporting by Jon Marcus. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.