NANDA retired?

From my experience, so long as the nursing diagnosis assignment is observable and can be validated through the assessment skills and scope of practice of the nurse, then it should count and the student will get credit.

If they cannot label the problem/issue/nursing diagnosis, then we can send them to the NANDA to find what most closely relates. We've always used NANDA as a guide and not a set-in-stone grading criteria for care plans because it changes, and most facilities have preset focuses (Nursing Diagnoses) that the nursing staff can choose from, which many are not represented in the NANDA resource books. 

The ultimate goal is to determine if the student understands the implications of the actual or potential problem that they've identified and if they correctly create goals and identify interventions that will meet the needs of the patient. 

Hope this helps!

Damion

IMHO if you didn't assign the students to have the current NANDA-I (which includes information on why some nsg dxs have been retired and an excellent student section), then you can't ding them for using an outdated reference.

Also, please do what you can to get them away from the "choose a nursing diagnosis" mindset that keeps them looking at lists based on medical diagnoses and making assumptions which are often wrong, and move them towards the "observe your patient so you can make a nursing diagnosis for the nursing care you are responsible for developing" gestalt. This is hard for student nurse to grasp because they are novices at the profession. In truth, it's hard for a lot of nurses to grasp because they never learned it, either. But it's a simple concept and bestows great power on those who learn how to wield it.

I look at this as the drivers ED manual. You might get a different one,  but the basics of look where you’re planning to turn, use your signal lights, gas and brake, seatbelts, and obey traffic signals and rules of the road are constant. There’s a reason it’s great for naive students learning to “drive.” 

NANDA-I isn’t “the law” but it is recognized in litigation as authoritative, which means if it was used properly you have cover if your legal rights to do what you do are ever called into question. My practice as a certified legal nurse consultant and life care planner depends in it every day. 
One objective you cite for nursing education is to teach students to think like nurses. Teaching them how to apply their assessment data to a scientifically-validated diagnostic process so they can then decide on nursing interventions sounds like the best way to do that.
As for it disappearing tomorrow or being replaced c another “system,” I doubt that the nursing process will be replaced anytime soon, since it was put in place by Florence her own self, and the practice research that underpins NANDA-I for applying it is under constant scrutiny and revision.
Seriously, if you haven’t read the opening chapters in the current edition (or even the last two editions) you literally do not know what you’re discussing.

Don’t rely on the “nursing diagnosis handbooks” on this. (Full disclosure, I have contributed to the last three editions of a big one that’s in use in a LOT of nursing programs in the US. I hate it that they are indexed by MEDICAL diagnosis, not-so-subtly communicating the false concept that everything nurses do depends on one.) These take a few years to produce, so often nsg dx that have been retired or updated based on research in the field are still in there.