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Falloff in Nursing School Enrollments
A long-term shift in the desirability of nursing as a profession has been accelerated by the practice of managed care, which in the 1990s brought dramatic decreases in the number of students enrolled in nursing programs. In 1999, only 5 percent of college freshman women and only .05 percent of men named nursing as one of their top career choices. This marks a decline of 40 percent since 1973.58
The decline of the profession has also resulted in shrinking budgets for nursing schools. Partly as a result — and partly reflecting the general difficulty of attracting sufficient numbers of practitioners — a shortage in nursing faculty looms. Across the country, nursing faculty now average 50 years of age, with large numbers approaching retirement and no identifiable pipeline for replacing them. The shortage of faculty, in turn, limits the number of nursing students that can be admitted. In 2001, nursing schools turned away 5,000 qualified applicants.59
As a result of these combined dynamics, enrollment in nursing schools has declined precipitously. In each year since 1995, enrollment in nursing school programs has fallen by between 4 percent and 6 percent per year.60 Similarly, from 1996 to 2000 the number of individuals who passed the national RN licensing exam fell 23 percent, from 98,000 to 75,000.61
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Nursing Schools: RN Program Enrollees |
| 1993 |
270,228 |
| 1994 |
268,350 |
| 1995 |
261,219 |
| 1996 |
238,244 |
| 1997 |
247,932 |
| 1998 |
230,342 |
| 2000 (E) |
220,000 |
| 2005 (E) |
200,000 |
Source: Nursing Executive Center, Becoming a Chief Retention Officer, The Advisory
Board Company, Washington, D.C., 2001, p. 6. Figures for 2000 and 2005 are estimates. |
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