Anyone Want To Be An Instructor

Schools would have plenty of instructors if they would pay them a competitive wage. As long as the compensation for faculty is so low, many people will stay away. Graduate degrees aren't cheap. Those of us who have them need to make a decent living -- and enough to cover the expenses of those graduate degrees.

ST Johns's Mercy Hospital in St louis Mo will put you to work teaching while you work on your Masters that they will pay for...Thy need teachers that bad and I know there are other institutions doing the same for those who want to teach and get their masters at the same time. You have 5 years to finish.
Bel

PS..They offered to start me out out 3 years ago at over 32 dollars an hour.

I would think twice about rushing back for that MSN degree in order to get a job teaching. I am graduating from my MSN, MHA degree in 3 weeks. I will be about 35000.00 in debt (never had student loans before - I had a scholarship for my BSN). I am graduating with honors, Sigma Theta Tau... and I don't see alot more opportunity on the horizon yet. I have been looking for positions that require an MSN, and there doesn't seem to be alot of them. I think its a bit of a vicious cycle, the nursing schools can't accept more students without qualified instructors, but they can't hire more instructors unless they accept more students.

Even worse, I have found that as you increase your "credentials" there seems to be alot more difficulty fitting in as "one of the girls". It is harder to gain acceptance when co-workers and people over me feel threatened by me, and it is hard to make friends. Plus if you are working as a "staff nurse" with an MSN, people think there must be something wrong with you.

With all of this, I think I am now going to have to go even higher and spend another 20,000 to get the credentials to take the nurse practitioner test. This will also be another 1.5 years.... .

I only hope that this isn't another expensive mistake, because I am beginning to think that the MSN was...

I have an ADN and over 30 years experience in several areas, A few years ago I took a job in a new LPN program doing lectures and clinicals. I did a ton of work at home such as preparing course outlines and tests, and helping to choose appropriate textbooks. I LOVED every minute of it. But the pay was AWFUL! I was going to the "poorhouse" I would go back in a flash if I could make a living at it. It was so rewarding! I remember one time a student came up to me and said, "Ms.Bedpan, I felt a FUNDUS!"

The reason for the shortage of nursing faculty is not because of a lack of people capable of doing the job. As Genabrie's post above indicated, there are people out there who are qualified and interested ... but there are no funded positions!

Schools staff those clinical instructor positions with a lot of "adjunct" faculty -- people who are hired "by the class" as opposed to being given a contract as a full time or even part time position. It's the academic equivalent of working PRN as opposed to working in a budgeted FTE position.

Adjunct faculty are usually paid significantly less than regular facutly -- with no benefits. That means no health insurance, no retirment plans, etc. And with the economic situation squeezing the budgets of colleges, schools are even limited as to how many adjuncts they can hire. An adjunct faculty member never knows from semester to semester whether or not they will be rehired to teach any courses. Then add in the fact that even people lucky enough to get a budged full time or part time faculty position at a good school have to take a significant pay cut compared to what they can make in a hospital.

I know many people with MSN's (now working in staff development, CNS roles, etc.) who would really like to work for a school of nursing. But they either can't afford to take the pay cut ... or they can't find a budgeted position that will give them the job security and employee benefits that they need.

Personally, I have a PhD and work in a hospital full time for the money and employment benefits. Then I teach an ocassional non-clinical course for a local university to earn a little extra money and to satisfy the academic portion of my soul. If that university would offer me a full time job, I would probably take it and adjust my lifestyle to accommodate the pay cut. But they won't offer me a full time job because they would rather underpay me and not have to make any committments to me. They get my expertise and labor for about $3000 per semester, no benefits, no committments. Given the number of students I teach, their tuition payments equal approximately $10,000 per semester. You can see why the schools prefer the status quo.