Annual Survey of Schools of Nursing
Academic Year 2006-2007: Executive Summary

Since the 1950s, the NLN has conducted an annual survey of all nursing programs in the United States to obtain key statistics including admissions, enrollments, graduations, student demographics, and numbers of faculty. The 2008 annual survey was administered from March to September 2008 to obtain 2006-2007 data.

This Executive Summary provides major findings from the 2008 survey with representative figures. All data are available in a variety of easy-to-use electronic formats at www.nln.org/research/slides, the new NLN DataView website. The NLN will no longer publish the Nursing Data Review in book format.

There were more than 1,900 unfilled full-time faculty positions nationwide in 2007, affecting more than one third of all schools of nursing (36 percent). An estimated 1,716 of those vacancies were in schools offering prelicensure RN and/or graduate programs. Those schools experienced a 23.5 percent increase in full-time vacancies between 2006 and 2007.

Given those vacancy rates, it is not surprising that 84 percent of US nursing schools attempted to hire new faculty in 2007-2008. Of those, over three quarters (79 percent) found recruitment "difficult," and almost one in three schools found it "very difficult."

While the main obstacle to recruitment cited most frequently by all types of institutions was the lack of qualified applicants for positions, this impediment was somewhat more frequently cited by schools offering baccalaureate programs (51 percent) than by those offering associate degree but not BSN programs (43 percent). Schools offering associate degrees were slightly more likely to identify "inability to offer competitive salaries" as the key obstacle to bringing new faculty on board (41 percent vs 34 percent for schools offering BSN degrees).

Overall, indicators point to additional expansion in the RN workforce pipeline. The nation added 64 additional prelicensure RN programs between 2006 and 2007. While this was a healthy increase, more than 150 new programs had been added during the prior research cycle, indicating that the rate of growth in the capacity of the educational pipeline was slower in 2006-2007 than in the previous year.

Of the 64 new programs that opened in 2007, most were located in the South and West, which added 25 and 24 new programs, respectively. Thirteen new programs opened in the Midwest, while only two opened in the Northeast.

Despite expanded capacity, an estimated 99,000 qualified applications — or almost 40 percent of qualified applications submitted to prelicensure RN programs — were rejected in 2006-2007. Moreover, selectivity (acceptance) rates were extremely low, with 53 percent of RN programs falling into the "highly selective" category — a designation earned by programs offering admission to fewer than half of their applicants.

Annual admissions to nursing education programs rose by 12.3 percent, compared to only 7.6 percent during the prior academic year. The greatest increase was in ADN programs, which admitted 12.3 percent more new students than last year. Diploma admissions were down slightly (4.2 percent). And baccalaureate admissions continued to grow, albeit at a slower rate than in recent years. The rate of growth was 5.6 percent in 2006-2007.

All told, the nations ranks of prelicensure nursing students expanded by almost 20,000, or 6.7 percent between 2006 and 2007; almost 18,000 of those were enrolled in ADN programs. While enrollment levels in BSN programs were relatively flat during this period, there was a substantial rise in associate degree enrollments, which increased from about 153,000 in 2006 to 170,651 in 2007.

Prelicensure graduations increased by only 3 percent between 2006 and 2007 after two years of more than 8 percent annual growth. Associate degree graduations accounted for the larger share of the increase, rising by 4.3 percent. Growth in baccalaureate program graduations slowed to only 2.3 percent, after a dramatic rise of almost 20 percent last year.

After holding steady since the early 1990s, the proportion of nursing students enrolled in associate degree programs inched up fractionally in the past year to achieve an historic peak in 2007 at 54.3 percent. ADN students also continued to comprise the majority of prelicensure admissions (61.8 percent) and graduations (60.2 percent) in 2006-2007. This trend is relevant not only to the characteristics of the future RN labor supply, but also to the future nurse educator workforce, underscoring the exigency of expanding opportunities for academic progression to nurses of all educational backgrounds.

It is of particular note that the cohort of students enrolled in associate degree programs during 2006-2007 were not only older than their diploma- and baccalaureate-based counterparts, but were also older than their predecessors enrolled in ADN programs in 2003 and 2005. While in 2003 slightly more than 41 percent of ADN students were over age 30, more than 49 percent were over 30 in 2005. By 2007, the over 30 percentage exceeded 52 percent. By comparison, the percentage of baccalaureate students who are over 30 has been relatively stable with just under one in five (19 percent) falling into that age bracket in 2007. And 38 percent of diploma students were over 30 at last count.

There was no significant movement in the percentage of racial-ethnic minorities graduating from prelicensure RN programs between 2006 and 2007. Although the Class of 2006 had been considerably more diverse than in previous years, 2007 brought little change. Just under 23.6 percent of new graduates were from minority backgrounds in 2007 compared with 24.5 percent in 2006. Similarly, the percentage of male graduates held steady at 12 percent in 2007.

Although this brief synopsis does not allow for an exhaustive examination of the Annual Survey findings and implications, I encourage all readers to visit the NLN DataView website at www.nln.org/research/slides and to share this link with students and colleagues.

This dataset was made possible as a result of the generous support of all those nursing colleagues who contribute data each year to the NLN's Annual Survey of Schools of Nursing. Let's spread the word about the availability of this valuable resource.

Kathy A. Kaufman, PhD
Senior Research Scientist, Public Policy
National League for Nursing