I'm more skeptical of the CC plan than most. Here's the reason: We face, for example, a critical shortage of nurses in the country. There are plenty of young men and women dying to become nurses. Seems like an easy thing to fix, right? Train more nurses. Buuuuuuut, no one can get into nursing school. That's the rate limiting step. Normally, when there's a worker shortage, wages increase, but that's not happened in nursing, because the root cause of the shortage isn't that people aren't attracted to the profession at current wages; it's that you need to get on a goddam wait list for two years just to get your CC associate's degree in nursing. What's gonna happen when everyone can go for free? The system is going to break under its own weight. The capacity simply isn't there to handle the influx of students, and anyway it isn't debt from CC that is crushing young Americans. It sounds good, but I'm not convinced it's going to solve anyone's problems. To me, the bigger proposal is raising the capital gains and eliminating the step up tax loophole. This is a small step in the correct direction for taxation that, while not Earth shattering, should at least move the glacial debate toward fairness. If the GOP wants to continue to defend policy that affects only the richest of the rich at the expense of everyone else, then it's up to the 2016 Dem nominee to pound that point into the ground. The way the Feds and especially the states collect taxes is in desperate need of fixing. This simple fix that the President proposed could be the beginning of that fix.
Did you try searching for nursing schools with no waiting list?
I was surprised at the low number. Still, the presence of nursing schools in most states with no waiting list suggests that many students are choosing to wait to get into a preferred school. But that just changes the question; why don't the busier schools expand capacity? It can't be done overnight, but we have been hearing about this crisis for years. There appears to be a shortage of nursing faculty, especially for "positions requiring or preferring a doctoral degree." A bottleneck in schools makes it hard to produce more qualified instructors, but the deeper cause is compensation: According to the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners, the average salary of a nurse practitioner, across settings and specialties, is $94,050. By contrast, AACN reported in March 2013 that master's prepared faculty earned an annual average salary of $80,690. It's still hard to figure. The schools are refusing to admit new students, thereby declining additional revenue, which could be used to attract professors.Higher compensation in clinical and private-sector settings is luring current and potential nurse educators away from teaching.
This is interesting, b_b. A white paper on the faculty shortage points out that It had not occurred to me that there would be a legal limit. Elsewhere I read that states typically limit the ratio to 10 or 12 students per instructor. Not so hard to figure now. With a legal cap on the amount of revenue an additional class can bring in, the schools have little incentive to respond to the demand of the aspiring nursing students. Wait, maybe the government figured supply-and-demand would do its thing and schools would simply raise tuition to allow them to attract more professors with higher salaries, and students would happily pay a market rate for the guaranteed 10% of an instructor's attention. Then again, maybe not.It's still hard to figure. The schools are refusing to admit new students, thereby declining additional revenue, which could be used to attract professors.
Several states allow instructor-to-student ratio of 1:12 in clinical courses utilizing qualified preceptors, thereby expanding faculty capacity. Other states allow a 1:20 ratio (Delaware) or 1:25 (Texas) for precepted courses.