In the News: New Scholarship Programs Aimed at Stemming Nursing Shortage
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The state of New Jersey has developed an innovative program to help stem its projected nursing shortage: a $22 million scholarship fund known as the New Jersey Nursing Initiative.
The privately funded initiative provides tuition and living stipend to nurses going back to school for a MA or PhD in nursing. The catch is that recipients must commit to being nursing instructors at one of eight New Jersey schools for at least three years after they graduate.
According to a recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the nursing shortage problem is not due to a lack of interested nursing students, but rather a lack of nursing faculty. The article quotes Linda Aiken, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the nursing shortage, as saying that approximately 50,000 qualified applicants to nursing programs are turned down.
With a more robust faculty, more nurses could be trained every year.
The state of Pennsylvania responded to the nursing faculty crisis in 2004 with the Independence Blue Cross Nurse Scholars program, which provides grants to graduate students planning to become nursing educators. The program is set to continue through 2011.
So why do nurses need a push to enter academia? One reason is the nursing salary. According to the Inquirer article, nurses in clinical settings can earn $50,000 a year more than those in faculty positions.
If you are interested in going back to school to become a nurse (faculty or otherwise), I recently came across this list of nursing scholarships that you might want to check out.
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August 20, 2009 at 9:34 am
This is a great story about the nurse faculty shortage and the need to address it quickly. It’s important to note, however, that the New Jersey Nursing Initiative (NJNI) is much more than a scholarship program. This multi-year, multifaceted project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce is working a variety of fronts to address the shortage, including creating a statewide model for nurse recruitment and retention, creating innovate nursing curricula to educate new faculty, and building partnerships among diverse groups.
The Faculty Preparation Program is providing support to New Jersey-based nursing programs to enhance master’s and doctoral level curriculum; and creating a comprehensive scholarship program to support the education of future nurses. The Faculty Preparation Program supports students receiving clinical MS degrees in Nursing, not MA’s. I would also like to clarify that scholars are not required to work at any specific school in New Jersey, though they must commit to teach nursing in the state for three years upon completing the program.
To find out more about the Faculty Preparation Program and the NJNI, please visit our website at http://www.njni.org.
Lynn Mertz, PhD
Program Deputy Director, New Jersey Nursing Initiative