Nearly one-third of newly licensed nurse practitioners in four states were educated at for-profit programs in 2024, up from 2.4% in 2010, a recent study found.
The study, published Oct. 6 in Annals of Internal Medicine, analyzed 117,156 nurse practitioners licensed in California, Florida, Iowa and Texas from 2010 to 2024.
For-profit-trained NPs were most common in California at 40.9%, followed by Florida at 35.1%, Texas at 21.1% and Iowa at 14.8%.
The number of for-profit nurse practitioner training programs grew 400% between 2007 and 2016, according to prior research cited by the authors. The number of NPs graduating from for-profit programs rose from 2.4% in 2010 to nearly 33% in 2024.
For-profit nursing programs have faced scrutiny over whether they adequately prepare NPs to treat patients, and prior research has linked for-profit nursing education to lower NCLEX pass rates. The concerns come as the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the number of NPs will grow 35% over the next 10 years, compared with 3% for physicians.
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