As Florida rebounds from its shortage of nurses, the Gainesville-based University of Florida's College of Nursing enrolled a record number of nursing students for fall 2023 — and a few other nursing programs are noting the same.
Since its inception about 70 years ago, University of Florida's College of Nursing has its largest class with 1,150 people set to pursue a BSN, a DNP or a PhD, according to an Aug. 22 news release. The incoming fall PhD cohort will have 10 students, which is 25 percent higher than a typical semester, and the number of RN-BSN students has grown by nearly 100 percent.
Another school in Florida, Miami Dade College, reported a 6 percent size increase in its incoming class compared to the previous school year partly because of its nursing program.
"The medical campus [...] has grown about 20 percent in enrollment over last fall," Malou Harrison, PhD, the college's executive vice president and provost, told Miami Today News. "And again, that's due to us opening up opportunities in our nursing program, as well as our health sciences programs, such as EMS and dental hygiene."
The trend isn't subject to Florida's borders. In Alabama, enrollment for the nursing program at Enterprise State Community College nearly doubled since fall 2022, from 17 to 31, according to CBS affiliate WTVY. And in Visalia, Calif., the College of the Sequoias more than doubled its incoming RN class, from 50 students in 2022 to 110, Valley Voice reported.