Community colleges can boost ranks of rural nurses, but programs are highly competitive; more teachers needed

The pandemic has thrown into sharp relief a long-standing problem: The country doesn't have enough registered nurses, especially in rural areas.

For example, a recent Southern Illinois University Medicine report found that rural Illinois is short as many as 19,100 nurses, Jakob Emerson reports for WICD in Springfield. The reasons cited in the report likely apply in other rural areas: Nurses go for better-paying urban jobs, especially since they likely have large student loans to pay off; medical education is concentrated in urban areas; and rural nurses tend to be older and aren't replaced as quickly as they're retiring. And some rural RNs are being lured away by lucrative traveling nurse jobs.

"Pre-pandemic reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show there were more than three million nurses in the nation in 2019, and an estimated 176,000 annual openings for registered nurses across the country," Morgan Matzen reports for the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. A RegisteredNursing.org data analysis found that nursing shortages in many states are expected to get even worse by 2030.

Another reason for the overall shortage: Nursing schools don't have enough instructors to train more, Yuki Noguchi reports for NPR. The pandemic has worsened this shortage, too: Nursing educators need advanced degrees but typically earn half what they would as a nurse working on the floor. The pandemic increased financial strains for many nursing instructors, forcing them to quit and find more lucrative work. In 2019, colleges and universities turned away some 80,000 qualified applicants because they were short of faculty or other resources.

Colleges in South Dakota and other states, are trying to address the problem by offering more classes, Matzen reports. Community colleges, especially in rural areas, can play a vital role in boosting nursing associate's degree programs, but community-college nursing programs are notoriously competitive, Devon Haynie reports for U.S. News & World Report. Look here to see if your local community college offers an associate degree in nursing.