I am a recent BSN grad, with prior BS in Biology in 2000. I graduated from my college in May 2010 with 3.5 GPA and departmental honors. Have applied to Vet Admin and they responded that they got my resume but nothing else. Have applied to many other facilities and have received either no response or been told no available positions for new grads. Like many, I have spent a good deal of money getting through the program and now have no income and may become homeless if this drags on much longer. I am contemplating suing my college. We were informed in our last semester of school in an off-handed way by one professor that it costs $22,000 to train a new RN. i still have my notes from this class and it is right there in black and white. (In fact it was a test question on the first exam, so it must have been important information). Yet the college itself never informed us in a timely fashion about this. I remember when the teacher told us this info in class we all looked at each other in horror, knowing full well what this meant. As it stands now, of my graduating class of 47 students only about 10% have found positions and are working. Of those, all of them either had worked at the facility as a CNA during school or had parents who already worked there.
I have spoken to an attorney about this potential lawsuit and he claims it would go nowhere because colleges are not required to provide such info about costs of hiring on the other end. I don't believe this. And just because it has never happened in the past, that they are required, does not mean that it should not be required. That is what legal precedents are for. To establish things in law that have not been established before. I feel that, if the cost of hiring was important enough to put on an exam, then it should have been important enough for either nursing or university admin to provide us with up-front. Colleges do financial planning way in advance and do not wait til the last minute to figure out how much financial aide they can anticipate, how many students, etc. No one can tell me that the college was unaware of problems re: nurses getting hired.
I feel that colleges should properly DISCLOSE information to students that is relevant to their continuing in the program. Appropriate disclosure is something that everyone does by law. Why are colleges and universities exempt? Had we known this info as soon as possible at least some of us might have elected to either postpone nursing or find another career. The particular college I graduated from runs about $15,000 per semester for a full course load. That is $120,000 for a full 4 years. This, of course, is very good for the school in that they get loads of tuition money and get to keep THEIR JOBS. I would be interested to get some feedback from others on this forum. Most of the people I have talked to about this seem terrified to even approach the subject. I guess we are all so conditioned to think well of our schools or perhaps, by conditioning, we are all afraid to speak out.
