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June 27, 2007, 02:53 PM ET
Shortage of Nursing Professors at UT
According to an article in The Daily Texan, the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Nursing denied admission to qualified applicants this year because it lacked enough faculty members to teach them:
The School of Nursing was forced to turn away qualified students this year due to a shortage of faculty, said Patricia Carter, an assistant dean in the school. The low number of faculty is not only a problem at UT, but nationally, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.
In their 2006-2007 report on college nursing programs, the AACN found that almost 71 percent of schools responding to their survey cited faculty shortages as a reason for turning away applicants.
The nursing school at UT currently has 1,000 nursing students and 125 professors. The Texas Board of Nursing Examiners requires 10 students per one professor for undergraduate clinical courses and eight students per one professor for graduate clinical courses. Carter said the nursing admissions this year had to turn away 10 to 20 exceptional students because they did not have enough faculty members to teach them.
Ironically, this may only perpetuate the shortage of nursing faculty members, a student told reporter Regina Philip:
“The problem with the nursing shortage is not because of the lack of interest in the field,” said Sheba Kuriakose, who was recently admitted to the nursing school. “It is due to the fact that students get turned away, because there is not enough room in nursing schools, and in turn, there are no nurses in the job field.”
Categories: Faculty-hiring
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