Maintaining Momentum in the Recession
To paraphrase Thomas Paine during the American Revolution, “…these are the times that try nursing leaders’ souls.” Like Paine and other patriots, we cannot escape from the difficult decisions facing us in the current economic crunch. However, what we can do is rise to the challenge of finding innovative solutions to the financial challenges that are confronting nursing leaders in both public and private academic institutions as well as healthcare settings across the nation. You will read about some of these solutions in a thoughtful roundtable discussion with four other nursing deans in the spring issue of ASU Nursing magazine.
In Arizona, our public university system has been hit hard with budget reductions due to our state’s financial situation. Given the reductions to our University, our college’s budget was reduced by approximately 9 percent during this academic year. This reduction called for a three part strategy: 1) enhancing revenues from every possible direction, including grants from federal sources and foundations, entrepreneurial initiatives in niche markets, public-private partnerships, and enhanced development efforts, 2) increasing efficiencies across all areas, and 3) reducing costs, through such mechanisms as restructuring our five academic nurse practitioner managed health centers.
As a result of the budget situation, we made the decision to reduce traditional baccalaureate enrollment at both our Polytechnic and West campuses from 80 to 40 students. The decrease in enrollment at these sites will result in our college admitting 220 traditional baccalaureate nursing students instead of 300 every year, which is still the largest traditional baccalaureate program in the state and one of the largest programs in the country. The preparation of traditional baccalaureate nursing graduates is very expensive, in large part due to clinical ratios of one faculty to 10 students. In addition, due to the high acuity level of patients and understaffing in hospitals, many clinical sites are now saying that they will not provide clinical experiences for more than eight of our students at a time. The bottom-line reality is that the costs associated with preparing pre-licensure baccalaureate nursing students are exorbitant, and our state funding only covers approximately 25 percent of the cost of their educational preparation.
In 2005, former Governor Janet Napolitano sponsored a bill passed into law by our legislature to provide the public universities and community colleges in Arizona their share of a total of $4 million for each of five years to double their enrollments. However, the portion of funds that our college received from that bill was substantially less than the cost to educate an additional 160 nursing graduates per year here at ASU. Our university, under the outstanding leadership of our President, Dr. Michael Crow, made a multimillion dollar investment in our college so that we could rapidly grow our program to help reduce the serious nursing shortage in our state. Our faculty worked hard to double enrollment, which resulted in our admitting 300 students per year. Despite the very large number of students being admitted to our bachelor’s program, I am proud to say that our students have maintained a 90-95 percent pass rate on the nursing licensure exam, consistently higher than the Arizona and national pass rates on this exam, due to the outstanding education being provided by our top-notch faculty. Even under the current budget reductions, our college has maintained its tremendous positive momentum in educational innovations (including a newly launched Doctor of Nursing Practice program), research and evidence-based practice initiatives, and healthcare services. We are staying focused on our bold strategic plan, continuing to move forward, and being proactive through these challenging economic times. We also are choosing to stay appreciative of our wonderful college, especially our terrific faculty, staff, students and alums who are determined to continue flourishing and accomplishing amazing things regardless of the current financial “character-builders” that we are experiencing.
During change and uncertain stressful economic times, silver linings can be found, and we are determined to continue to find them. However, I can assure you of a few things that will not change at the ASU College of Nursing & Health Innovation.
We will NOT:
- Produce quantity without quality as each of our students will continue to receive an outstanding education,
- Abandon our dreams and exciting vision to be a world-class enterprise of discovery,
- Slow down our awesome research momentum,
- Discontinue the outstanding evidence-based healthcare services we provide to highly vulnerable populations, and
- We will NOT stop innovating!
Warm Regards,
Bernadette Mazurek Melnyk, PhD, RN, CPNP/NPP, FAAN, FNAP
Dean and Distinguished Foundation Professor in Nursing
