In the 2025–2026 academic year, American nursing programs turned away 93,176 qualified applicants, the highest number ever recorded, and nearly 30,000 more than just two years earlier. These were not students who failed their prerequisites; they met every requirement. The doors were closed to them because the schools lacked open seats. The reasons? There are not enough professors because a nurse who teaches earns far less than a nurse who practices. Experienced clinicians cannot afford to change sectors. Nor do many small- and medium-sized institutions have the financial means to fund student scholarships and the facilities and specialized equipment necessary for training. At the same time, the healthcare industry has spent years warning of a catastrophic nursing shortage. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the estimated annual openings for registered nurses (RNs) will be 189,100 through the year 2034. The shortage of full-time RNs is expected to be 267,000 nationally by 2028. Yet the hospitals and healthcare systems that desperately need nurses are not paying to produce them. That cost lands on universities and, ultimately, on students, their families, and the taxpayers who fund public higher education in the United States. The pipeline to alleviate a scarcity everyone insists is a national emergency is so narrow it can only trickle. Still, the industries downstream (the ones who will hire graduates) are nowhere to be seen at the production source (colleges and universities), where a modest investment would widen the pipeline permanently. This is true in many other fields beside nursing, from cybersecurity to data analytics. The philanthropic landscape supporting nursing is surprising. Despite the growing awareness of the nursing shortage since COVID-19, “private giving for the nursing profession is just one penny of every dollar given for health care,” according to a 2023 American Nurses Foundation report. Most major gifts to nursing programs have been funded by individuals, family foundations, and community foundations that support large institutions. Leonard A. Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune, and his $125 million gift to the University of Pennsylvania’s Nursing School; Bill and Joanne Conway’s donation of over $80 million to the Catholic University of America, the University of Virginia, and Virginia Commonwealth University; and Mark and Robyn Jones’s $100 million to Montana State University are high-profile examples. Very few of the major contributors are health care corporations. In most cases, institutions, especially small- and medium- sized schools in… [TheTopNews] Read More.
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