The national nurse faculty shortage is a growing issue with which hospitals, health systems and states are grappling.
Currently, universities and health systems are opening and expanding their nursing programs to meet the demand of students seeking to enter the profession. However, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing found that more than 80,162 qualified applicants were turned away from nursing programs in the most recent academic year. A lack of nursing faculty was the top reason for turning away applicants.
Here are 10 things to know about the current state of the nursing faculty shortage:
1. The 10-year national average full-time nursing faculty vacancy rate is 7.64%, with nearly 1,700 positions unfilled.
2. The Midwest and the South have the lowest full-time faculty vacancy rates, while the West and North Atlantic regions have the highest, a Feb. 4 study published in PubMed found.
3. Nursing schools said they needed to create an additional 150 faculty positions to accommodate student demand, according to the AACN.
4. About 81% of the vacancies were faculty positions requiring or preferring a doctoral degree.
5. The average ages of doctorally prepared nurse faculty holding the ranks of professor, associate professor and assistant professor were approximately 61, 55 and 49 years old, respectively. For master’s degree-prepared nurse faculty, the average ages were 55, 54 and 47 years old, respectively.
6. PhD nursing programs saw enrollment decline for the 11th year in a row, with a 127-student (3.05%) decrease from 2024 to 2025. Enrollment in PhD programs has decreased by 26.2% since 2013, the AACN found.
7. One of the drivers of the nurse faculty shortage is pay. In 2025, the Bureau of Labor statistics found postsecondary nursing instructors and teachers made a mean annual salary of $86,410, a 2.9% increase from 2024. Registered nurses made a mean salary of $101,420 in 2025.
8. Employed nursing instructors saw a 14.9% decrease in 2025 compared to 2024. The bureau found there are currently 77,960 employed nursing instructors.
9. The top barrier to hiring more nurse faculty were insufficient funds, administrative constraints and inability to recruit faculty.
10. Some systems are trying to close this gap by offering split nursing bedside and faculty roles. States such as Kansas are also cutting some faculty position requirements. On April 6, Kansas legislators passed a law prohibiting the state’s board of nursing from requiring college instructors to have credentials at least one level higher than the degree awarded in the program they teach.
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