Survey outlines recession impact on nurse faculty shortage

Sep 19 2009

New data collected by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) show that the downturn in the economy may be impacting the nurse faculty shortage by lowering the national vacancy rate. Based on data received from 554 schools of nursing in the U.S. with baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs (70.2% response rate), the nurse faculty vacancy rate in 2009 was 6.6%, down from 7.6% in 2008. Many schools point to changes in faculty retirement patterns and hiring freezes at academic institutions as reasons for this presumably short-term easing of the shortage.

“Though AACN is pleased to see a lower faculty vacancy rate this year, we fully expect the shortage of nurse educators to re-emerge when the U.S. economy rallies and faculty retirement patterns resume,” said AACN President Fay Raines. “Over the next 15 years, workforce analysts project that the nation’s nursing shortage will grow twice as large as any shortage experienced in this country since the mid-1960s, and this will no doubt impact the supply of nurse faculty.”

Since 2000, AACN has collected data from member schools of nursing to assess the current state of the faculty shortage. The survey collects data on budgeted, but unfilled full-time faculty positions by rank, tenure, and level of teaching. This year, AACN opened the Faculty Vacancy Survey to both member and non-member schools to enhance our understanding of this issue. In July 2009, 803 faculty vacancies were identified at 310 nursing schools with baccalaureate and/or graduate programs across the country. Besides these vacancies, 117 schools cited the need to create 279 additional faculty positions to accommodate student demand. The latest data show a national nurse faculty vacancy rate of 6.6% with most of the vacancies (90.6%) for faculty positions requiring or preferring a doctoral degree. The top reasons cited by schools having difficulty finding faculty were noncompetitive salaries compared to positions in the practice arena (32.2%) and the limited pool of doctorally-prepared faculty (30.3%). To review the 2009 survey findings, see http://www.aacn.nche.edu/IDS/pdf/vacancy09.pdf.

Nursing schools report that the drop in faculty vacancies this year is due in part to the nation’s struggling economy. To maintain household income, fewer faculty are retiring, and many schools are facing budget cuts and hiring freezes which makes it difficult to grow their faculty pool. This pattern is similar to what is occurring in the registered nurse (RN) workforce, which has stabilized over the past few months. For example, many retired nurses are returning to work to maintain family income, and nurses considering retirement are holding onto their jobs. Some hospitals have instituted hiring freezes and are reducing services, which have released some experienced nurses back into the applicant pool. These developments, however, are not adding new nurses into the workforce to fill RN positions that are being created. Analysts with the Bureau of Labor Statistics project that more than 587,000 new RN positions will be created by 2016. For more information, see AACN’s talking points on the Impact of the Economy on the Nursing Shortage: http://www.aacn.nche.edu/Media/pdf/TalkingPoints.pdf.