Forty years ago, women who wanted a professional career were largely limited to being either receptionists, teachers or nurses. Now that young women have a multitude of options, a lot fewer of them are going to nursing school.
Enrollment in entry-level bachelor’s degree nursing programs fell by 4.6 percent in 1999, the fifth consecutive annual drop, according to the American Association of Colleges in Nursing.
Local colleges are also feeling the effects, including the USC Department of Nursing, which received 400 applications this fall down 20 percent from last year.
“There’s more opportunities out there for employment that are well-paying and don’t have high stress levels,” said Jean Harlow, supervising nursing consultant for the Board of Registered Nurses. “We’re seeing an increase in the number of men enrolling, but this is still a women’s profession and now they don’t have to turn to nursing as their only career choice.”
Of course, the problems are not being felt across the board. The California State University system, for example, cannot accommodate anywhere near all the applicants for its nursing programs.
Considered the largest nursing program in the state, the Cal State system churns out the majority of four-year nursing graduates as much as 68 percent, according to the California Post-Secondary Education Commission.
Both Cal State Los Angeles and Long Beach have upped their available student slots from 50 two years ago to 70 this year, but still must contend with a steady stream of 250 applications.
“We’re biting the bullet to accept 70. We need further funding to maintain low student-to-faculty ratios of 10 to 1,” said Judy Papenhausen, chair of the department of nursing at Cal State L.A.
Many lament that the University of California system, which accepts the top tier of high school students, doesn’t offer undergraduate nursing programs at its nine campuses. UCLA scrapped its 47-year-old program in 1997 due to the recession and lack of demand.
“If you’re a top high school student, nursing isn’t open to you at the UC system and consequently, we’re losing some of the best students in California,” said Marie Cowan, dean and professor of the UCLA School of Nursing master’s program.
‘Terrible waste’
The top tier of students in California usually ends up at private schools with four-year programs like USC, where enrollment in nursing programs is dropping.
Meanwhile, the state’s community college system is churning out a large number of graduates with two-year nursing degrees. These grads are registered nurses, but they don’t have the training of bachelor’s degree grads and are not as heavily in demand.
Community college nursing students are admitted through the lottery system, a random method adopted four years ago to comply with state mandates to ensure equal opportunity education. That means applicants are accepted regardless of their academic abilities a democratic application process, but one that is leading to rising dropout and failure rates.
“Many students took math a (long time) ago, so now they’re failing math and they can’t calculate dosages,” said Sharon Hall, associate dean of allied health services at Glendale Community College, where the dropout rate has increased from 6 percent to 20 percent since the lottery system was imposed. “It’s a terrible waste of student and taxpayers’ money.”
Today’s community college nursing students often take longer to graduate or have difficulty passing the state board exams. That difficulty is reflected in the declining portion of students who are passing the exams. A few years ago, 89 percent of all students who took the tests passed, but that figure fell to 82 percent last year, Harlow said.
“It’s a concern. Employers have identified that the complexity of nursing has raised the bar for entry and are stressing the need for baccalaureate (BSN) nurses,” Harlow said.
Indeed, many hospitals not already requiring the BSN degree have established BSN-preferred policies for new hires. For example, the Veteran’s Administration, the nation’s largest employer of registered nurses, has established the baccalaureate degree as the minimum preparation that its nurses must have for promotion beyond entry-level beginning in 2005. It also has committed to spend $50 million over the next five years to help VA nurses obtain baccalaureate or higher nursing degrees.
Meeting the demand
Another measure to combat the problem is legislation authored last year by Assemblyman Jack Scott, D-Pasadena. It calls on the state’s public community colleges to form a committee to draft recommendations for boosting the pool of nursing graduates to meet the state’s demand for 15,000 additional nurses over the next seven years.
Among the committee’s recommendations is to allocate $15 million annually to the community colleges for the next seven years for the acquisition of specialized equipment, plus an additional $168.6 million to add more student slots, and giving $24.9 million to the UC system to begin BSN programs.
