As California faces one of the nation’s most severe nursing shortages, more than 5,000 distance-learning nursing students are being forced to leave the state each semester for required clinical training—a financial and logistical hurdle critics say worsens the crisis.
“Over the last 10 years, California schools have turned away 250,000 qualified applicants,” said Blake Halladay, director of regulatory and legislative strategy affairs at Nightingale College. “Limited enrollments are driven by regulation and keep qualified people from going to nursing school.”
Nightingale College, a Utah-based accredited program, enrolls more than 5,000 California residents in its distance program—accounting for roughly 25 percent of all nursing students in the state. Yet current California law blocks these students from completing required in-person clinicals in their own communities…