Costs stifle nursing schools

Community colleges turn away thousands of nursing students each year, despite a statewide shortage.

TALLAHASSEE - Teresa Roberts registered for the nursing program at St. Petersburg College in May. She was accepted and told she could begin in January - of 2006.

Florida's community colleges are turning away thousands of qualified nursing students like Roberts each year, exacerbating the state's serious shortage of nurses.

The 28 public schools can't afford to educate students in nursing programs, among the most costly ones to administer, because they don't have enough money for classes or faculty members.

That leaves students such as Roberts, 20, of Palm Harbor with few choices.

"I'm stuck," said Roberts, who finishes general education courses next week. "I have nothing to do."

Many of the affected students pick another field to study. Others take classes that don't fit in their nursing degree while they wait for nursing classes to open, slowing their path to graduation. Some try to get into other schools, such as the University of South Florida, only to find similar problems.

About 432 nursing students are on a waiting list at SPC. Another 477 are waiting at Pasco-Hernando Community College.

Officials at Hillsborough Community College, the fourth-largest producer of nurses in the nation, said they turn away three- to-four times as many qualified students as they accept each semester.

"Students are surprised," SPC nursing dean Jean Wortock said. "They have no idea."

The waiting lists are backing up even after the colleges added hundreds of new slots for nursing students in the past two years.

"Three years ago we couldn't find enough people," said Paul Szuch, PHCC vice president for educational services. "Now we can't find enough room for everyone."

The recent nursing shortage is being felt across the nation, but it is particularly critical in Florida because of the state's large number of elderly residents. The state will need 34,000 new nurses by 2006 to keep up with retirements and growing health care needs.

The nursing program crunch is part of the most serious enrollment crisis to hit the community college system in decades.

About 35,000 students expecting to enroll in community colleges last fall were shut out because the schools could not afford to offer them classes that they needed.

Under state law, the colleges must admit most students with a high school diploma. But the state's financial woes have made that impossible.

In May, the Legislature sliced $11-million from the community college budget and provided no money for this year's 48,000 new students, who represent an enrollment increase of 5.8 percent.

"Our resources are tapped," said Robert Chunn, president of the Dale Mabry campus of HCC. "We have reached our maximum."

David Armstrong, chancellor of the state community colleges system, told a Senate education appropriations committee Thursday that he expects enrollment to rise 6.5 percent next year. That, combined with last year's increase, would cost $107-million.

"We cannot let this problem go on one year longer," said Sen. Debbie Wasserman Shultz, D-Weston. "We also can't continue to represent that we have an open-door policy when we don't. ... We are essentially lying to the public."

Armstrong said nursing programs will be especially hard hit if the state fails to pay for enrollment growth at the college because the those programs are so expensive.

"It's critical if we want to increase the nursing production that we look at community colleges," he said.

About 67 percent of the nursing degrees earned in Florida are from the community colleges.

Gov. Jeb Bush and the Legislature have declared Florida's nursing shortage a problem, but colleges say they need more money. SPC officials estimate increasing the school's programs by just 24 students would cost about $250,000.

About 10 percent of all nursing jobs in the state already are vacant, according to the Florida Hospital Association. In the Tampa Bay area, 16 percent of the nursing jobs are vacant.

"The hospitals are desperately short of RNs," said Sen. Anna Cowin, R-Leesburg.

Lawmakers have passed several laws in the past few years that were intended to alleviate the nursing shortage, which is one factor driving up health care costs in Florida.

Last year, legislators passed a bill allowing the state to pay some students' school loans for up to four years if they stayed in Florida after they graduated. Lawmakers also established grants for nursing programs in middle and high schools.

But a bill proposed last spring that would have set aside $1-million for grants for hospitals to recruit and retain nurses did not pass.

- Times staff writer Melia Bowie contributed to this report.

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