The NLN Calls for Increase in Title VIII Funding

[VickyRN, MSN, DNP, RN]

The NLN Calls for Increase in Title VIII Funding

In testimony dated March 30, 2006, the NLN urged the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees with authority over Title VIII - Nursing Workforce Development Programs - to ensure that these programs are funded at a minimum level of $175 million for FY 2007. As NLN's CEO Dr. Ruth Corcoran stated, "Placing this minimal funding request in perspective, note that during the last serious nursing shortage in 1974, Congress appropriated $153 million for nurse education programs. In today's dollars that appropriation would equate to approximately $592 million, nearly four times the amount the federal government is spending on nurse education now."

In an NLN survey of the 2004-2005 academic year, an estimated 147,000 qualified applications were turned away from nursing programs at all degree levels owing in large part to the lack of faculty necessary to teach this number of additional students - a 17.6 percent increase from the 2003-2004 academic year. Corcoran continued, "With an increasing application pool, a key priority in tackling the nurse shortage has to be scaling up the capacity to accept qualified applicants. Today's undersized supply of appropriately prepared nurses and nurse faculty does not bode well for meeting the needs of a diverse, aging population."

http://www.nln.org/policy/FY_2007_house.pdf

http://www.nln.org/policy/statementsandletters.htm