Many potential nursing students are turned away each year because there aren't enough professors to train them, according to a Campus Reform article by Regina M. Cusson, dean and professor of the University of Connecticut's School of Nursing.
Colleges must do a better job at attracting, developing, and retaining nursing faculty in order to reduce the 80,000 qualified applicants that are rejected each year.
Currently, most nursing colleges employ a majority of adjunct professors to minimize salaries and keep up with strict teacher-to-student ratios required of a degree. Eventually, however, schools want more full time faculty. According to Cusson, "savvy nursing school administrators identify the best adjunct faculty and encourage them to consider a full-time career as nursing school educators."
Tempting adjunct professors into full time work includes offering them discounts on graduate level courses towards their PHD and periodic raises, among other incentives, said Cusson.
The "long term approach," as Cusson calls it, is attracting nursing students into professor-development programs. For most professions, this would seem like a tough sell. People typically become interested in a profession to perform it, not teach it. Otherwise, they'd become grade-school teachers or professors in a field with greater research possibilities.
Except the nursing profession has the inconvenience (or convenience for some) of odd working hours. Candidates turned off by such a schedule might view the more leisurely pace of a professorship as a better fit. Also, as Cusson wrote, nursing professors have the option of splitting their time between teaching and clinical work. It would mark the rare opportunity to combine phyiscal and mental work -- or doing and teaching.
Finally, belonging to a college would serve to add more professional and personal connections to a nurse's life.
