<p>Although the recent economic recession helped stem the growing shortage of nurses, nursing schools are struggling to keep up with the high demand expected in the next few years, the Washington Times reports. </p>
<p>According to the Times, nursing schools presently are understaffed. As a result, many top-rated nursing programs have turned away hundreds of potential students in the past two years. For example, the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities admitted 64 if 324 total applicants this year. Meanwhile, the University of Washington-Seattle admitted 95 of 455 applicants, and the University of Pittsburgh admitted 120 of 1,050 applicants in 2010. </p>
<p>Joanne Spetz, an associate professor at the University of California-San Francisco and a specialist in health economics, notes that the current lull in the nursing shortage also could cause lawmakers to withdraw funding for nursing schools. Some nursing school officials say that already is happening, the Times reports. Kristen Swanson, dean of the University of North Carolina's (UNC) School of Nursing, said that UNC reduced its undergraduate nursing program by 25% this year, largely because of state funding cuts (Courchane, Times, 6/6).</p>
<p>It is a real shame that the university system is not more market driven. Our universities annually produce thousands of humanities PhDs with little chance of employment that will use their degrees, while we have a severe shortage of university spaces for nursing students, who are needed.</p>
<p>I read something like 40,000 applicants to RN programs are not accepted into any program each year.</p>
<p>The nursing schools, in turn, blame some of the shortage on the shortage of nurse educators. However, the next question becomes - why don’t you train more nurse educators?</p>
<p>Apparently, the cost per student for a university for a RN program is higher than many other types of majors. Some colleges (such as Pitt and Penn State) charge more tuition for nursing students than most other majors.</p>
I don’t think the actual problem is university spaces as much as it is clinical training spaces. The number of nursing students that can fit in a lecture hall for a class can be quite large, it is when they have to go into the hospitals to practice the “hands on” portion of their training that the number of spaces are limited by instructors and how many students the hospitals can accommodate.</p>