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Another route

Larry Booher looked at five schools in the Sacramento, Calif., area when he decided on a career change to nursing. A businessman, Booher saw immediately that the laws of supply and demand were not on his side.

“The only people you talk to are career counselors, and some of those don’t call back,” he says.

Booher was given a sheet of paper with course and grade point requirements that applicants must meet before being thrown into a lottery.

“It got very discouraging,” Booher says.

So the father of four decided he would pay the $60,000 to $70,000 required for an entry-level master’s program at a private school.

“For me, it was a way of surpassing the lottery,” he says.

Going for a higher degree in nursing also confers benefits above getting into school quickly, Booher points out. But others have noticed a rise in baccalaureate and higher-prepared nurses as the competition to get into nursing schools has increased in the past few years.

Teri Gwin, RN, MSN, GNP, associate professor at the Samuel Merritt College School of Nursing in Oakland, Calif., says applications to the accelerated master’s program have tripled in the past two years. She adds that students do seem willing to pay higher private school tuitions to get into classes.

“Samuel Merritt has a good reputation, but [also] I think people look at a five-year wait list at a community college and say, ‘I’m going to pay the fee for a private college because [I] have a higher chance of getting in,’” she says.

Gwin has seen students make other sacrifices, as well.

She’s had students commute daily from Tracy 50 miles through traffic to the Oakland campus, and one student flew home to Los Angeles to be with her husband every weekend.

Chiyieko Salinas drives 850 miles a week from Stockton to Oakland to attend the school.

“Some mornings it takes three hours to get to school,” says the single mother of two who relies on her boyfriend to take her sons to school in the morning.

Salinas says she could get an associate’s degree in Stockton, but she wanted a baccalaureate degree from a school with a strong reputation that would allow her to choose a focus in her senior year.

“When I got accepted, I almost didn’t accept it because of the strain,” she says. But then her younger son told her not to be a quitter, so now she spends much of each day in her car.

Salinas tapes her classes and reviews the tapes in her car.

She watches education videos before going to her reading because she is often too tired from the drive to grasp concepts through reading alone.

“The hardest thing I’m finding is that I don’t participate in a lot of study groups,” she says.

“I’m not willing to make the drive on the weekends because I do it every day of the week.”

On the edge

While Salinas’ commute may set her apart from her colleagues, her status as a mother does not.

Wermers in Colorado says rising unemployment coupled with effective advertising for the field of nursing may account for the increase in older students who tend to have more responsibilities in their lives.

“I’m seeing an increase in those with prior degrees coming in,” says Wermers, who has arranged for more of the “15-year waivers” required for students to get credit for courses taken long ago.

She knows that pre-nursing students also are taking advantage of new child care centers that opened on two of the college campuses, she says.

To meet the needs of this new batch of students on the edge, the school of nursing has started a crisis fund fed by the local nursing district and health care organizations.

Students who might have had to leave school because they couldn’t pay gasoline bills or mortgages or for books now can get funds, she says.

“I’ve paid a light bill, car repairs, mortgages [using money from the fund],” Wermers says. “I had an LPN last year who says that’s what kept her in school.”

Older students with families and other obligations often sacrifice time with young children just to get through school.

Michael McEwen, a senior in the University of Portland’s baccalaureate program, sold his house and moved his family into a rented townhouse in January when he began the nursing portion of the program.

The father of three — all younger than 5 — works part time to maintain job benefits while attending school full time in the school’s 20-month program.

“The true sacrifice is less time with my young family right now,” he says. “I’m only home one night for dinner during the week and weekends.”

And McEwen knows he is not the only one paying the price to go to nursing school.

“My wife says my long weeks are her long weeks,” he says.

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