With on-campus recruiting right around the corner, Nursing students may have an easier time than other seniors in the job hunt.
There is currently a national shortage of about 150,000 nurses in the country, and, by 2015, that figure is expected to reach about 700,000 as today's nurses reach retirement age.
"The current shortage is worrisome, but it's the longer-term shortage that is of greater concern," Nursing professor Linda Aiken said.
As a result, Penn's School of Nursing hopes to provide its students with the tools to become faculty and leaders who can conduct research and develop strategies to solve the shortages.
Ironically, interest in the profession has recently been on the rise.
Enrollment in nursing schools across the country has been on the upswing, Hospital of University of Pennsylvania chief nurse executive Victoria Rich said.
With better wages, job security, improved working conditions and a chance to partake in a meaningful occupation, the nursing profession has become an attractive one for many people.
The root of the problem lies more in the fact that nursing education programs are just not big enough.
"Our trouble is that lots of people don't go into becoming [nursing professors] because your salary is not as high as when you work in health care," Rich said.
What happens next is often rejection - tens of thousands of qualified applicants being turned away because there is not enough capacity in the nursing schools that currently exist, Aiken said.
One way HUP is helping to alleviate the situation is by sending its nurses who are prepared at the master's level to work part time at universities - including Penn - to help teach students who are interested in becoming nurses.
"Of course, we do produce a significant number of nurses. [But] I think our better strategy is to try to target the leadership necessary to solve these problems and also to contribute to faculty," Aiken said.
Other nursing schools see working to educate future faculty members as a major role as well.
For instance, University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing has expanded its doctoral program and is currently in the process of hiring people to assist expanding its master's program.
"Our main contribution is to address the problem of shortage of faculty," UCSF Nursing professor Joanne Spetz said. "We have a shortage of nurses with graduate degrees who can become faculty to help our program expand."
Rich said an important solution to the crisis is increasing the salaries of faculty so that more people will be interested in educating.
Another is the extra funding to increase educational opportunities for students.
"We'll have to expand nursing school enrollment by 20 percent, and that will require some additional federal and state subsidies in order to do that," Aiken said.
