Fayetteville State U. to Suspend Nursing Program

Fayetteville State University, in North Carolina, will suspend its undergraduate nursing program because of low test scores, infighting, and unfavorable public perceptions, The Fayetteville Observer reported today. The campus’s chancellor, James A. Anderson, said some faculty members and students had attempted to undermine the program.

“Some folks over there lost their moral compass,” Mr. Anderson said, according to the newspaper. “We really need to re-establish academic integrity over there.”

In North Carolina’s nurse-licensing test last year, just 39 percent of Fayetteville’s nursing students passed the first time they took it. The North Carolina Board of Nursing requires that institutions keep an 83-percent pass rate over a two-year period, according to the paper. Fayetteville had an average of 46 percent.

Mr. Anderson said the program would be reinstated, possibly in a couple of years, after the curriculum is revised. The future of current faculty members is unknown, but Mr. Anderson told the newspaper that some would help create the new program while others would work with registered nurses seeking bachelor’s degrees. Rising seniors will be able to complete the program before it is shuttered.

Mr. Anderson took office in June 2008, after his predecessor, T.J. Bryan, was asked to step down as Fayetteville, which is part of the University of North Carolina system, faced a state audit over the nursing program. —Steven Bushong