UArizona College of Nursing recruiting almost doubled in past four years
The University of Arizona College of Nursing has nearly doubled the number of pre-licensure students it has onboarded over the last four years, an impressive response to the state and national nursing shortage. In fiscal 2020, the College enrolled 283 new pre-licensure students and is projected to enroll close to 550 this year. This unprecedented growth is just the beginning as the college plans to surpass 1,000 enrollees by fiscal year 2030.
The increase stems from the strategic plan to aggressively grow pre-licensure programs in both Gilbert and Tucson. The college launched the Bachelor of Science in Nursing-Integrative Health at the Gilbert campus in 2019 with the capacity for 24 students per semester. The program now enrolls about 216 students per year. At the same time, the college’s Master of Science in Nursing – Entry to the Profession of Nursing program has grown from about 130 students a year in 2019 to 288 students in 2024.
In 2023, the college received a $9.2 million grant from the Arizona Department of Health Services to go towards addressing the state’s nursing shortage. With those funds, the college created 158 scholarships to cover the cost of tuition and fees for students completing the college’s MS-MEPN program.
“Master's level education strengthens the workforce by enabling nurses to lead health-care teams to improve patient and population health outcomes in the state of Arizona,” said Connie Miller, DNP, RNC-OB, CNE, a clinical professor and the principal investigator for the ADHS grant. “These nurse-leaders will provide excellent, evidence-based nursing care and potentially use their graduate education as future faculty members to teach the next generation of nurses.”
Historically, the College of Nursing has received far more applications than the number of new student openings. However, with the significant growth of the nursing programs, the college is now more actively recruiting students to keep the pipeline of new nurses flowing into the expanded program capacity.
“We work very hard to proactively recruit new students to fill the larger cohorts,” said Jill Hagaman, director of student and academic affairs at the College of Nursing. “A very popular new program we have launched to recruit nursing students is a guaranteed admission for UArizona graduates with bachelor’s degrees in health sciences fields if they meet GPA requirements.”
Hagaman estimates that about 60% of the college’s enrollment growth has been in Gilbert with the remaining 40% in Tucson. She said they have also increased enrollment in the Tucson BSN program by about 20 students a year.
