This 107-page study presents results of a survey of 1,566 undergraduates at 4-year colleges in the United States about how they view the nursing profession and the personal prospect of studying nursing. The report gives detailed data on interest levels in studies for an RN, and for a Bachelor of Science in nursing as a 4-year undergrad degree as well as a separate data set on students interested in nursing as a second undergraduate degree. The study also gives a detailed data set on student interest in MA and PHD programs in nursing.
Data in the report is presented in the aggregate for all 1,566 students and broken out by 18 criteria including but not limited to: gender, age, undergrad major or intended major, ACT/SAT scores, college grades, public/private college status, race/ethnicity, family of origin income level, region of USA or abroad, sexual orientation and other variables. The data enables nursing school faculty and administration to “drill down” and find out – for example – how strong is demand for a potential undergrad degree in nursing as a second undergrad degree – among students from different regions of the country, or by those in various income levels.
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
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Likely applicants to nursing graduate programs were much more likely to grow up in small rather than large cities, and in rural rather than suburban areas; 3.85% of all students who grew up in rural areas felt that it was highly likely that they would one day apply to a graduate nursing program vs. only 1.63% of those who grew up in major cities with more than 350,000 people and 1.52% of those who grew up in suburban areas.
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The South and the Midwest accounted for the vast majority of nursing majors in the sample; 4.38% of native Southerners and 5.34% of native Midwesterners were majoring in nursing vs. for example, only 0.68% of students from the Northeast and no foreign-raised students at all.
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Students with a full time job were enthusiastic about nursing’s purely financial prospects; nearly 84% of them felt the current economic outlook for the nursing profession was good and would stay that way or get better.