I paid for a nursing degree, not a nursing job.
Yet nursing schools act like they’re hiring managers, not educators. They gatekeep access to a profession desperately short on workers. They fail students who might struggle with an exam that isn’t even theirs to give.
This contradiction sits at the heart of America’s nursing shortage. While hospitals scramble for staff and patients wait longer for care, nursing programs eliminate students who could become the nurses we need.
New Hampshire’s Granite State PARTNERS program exposes this broken logic. By covering not just tuition but childcare, utilities, and food for 300 nursing students, they’re revealing what traditional education funding misses entirely.
The Risk Nobody Talks About
Nursing school isn’t just academically rigorous. It’s financially impossible for most people.
Students can’t work during nursing programs. The coursework demands full-time attention. Clinical rotations eat up schedules. Yet programs expect students to somehow pay rent, buy groceries, and keep the lights on.
The math doesn’t work. Students who try to work anyway fail out because nursing programs require passing grades of 73-76%, far higher than the typical 60-65% threshold in other fields.
I lived this impossible equation. Nursing school became a luxury good disguised as public service training.
The system creates a perfect storm. Students invest everything to enter programs that are designed to eliminate them if they can’t afford not to work.
When Schools Moved The Goalposts
Halfway through my program, the board of nursing raised the passing grade.
No warning. No grandfathering. Students who had invested months of time, thousands of dollars, and countless hours of study suddenly faced higher standards.
This reveals how institutions view students. Not as people making massive personal investments to solve a critical shortage. Not as future colleagues joining a profession in crisis. As statistics that might hurt the school’s reputation.
Schools don’t factor in that students are people who have invested time, energy, and money trying to contribute to the common good and tackle the nursing shortage we’re experiencing.
The NCLEX Gatekeeping Scam
Here’s what nobody explains about nursing education. The real gatekeeper isn’t nursing school. It’s the NCLEX exam that determines who becomes a licensed nurse.
NCLEX pass rates dropped to 66.48% in Q4 2024. This test already eliminates plenty of candidates. So why do nursing schools maintain artificial barriers before students even reach the real test?
Because schools are judged on first-attempt NCLEX pass rates. They don’t want to graduate anyone who might fail on the first try because it makes the school look ineffective.
Schools protect their statistics by failing students who might lower their pass rates. Even during a critical shortage.
This creates a perverse incentive system. The worse the shortage gets, the more pressure schools face to maintain high pass rates. So they eliminate more students, worsening the shortage they’re supposed to solve.
What New Hampshire Gets Right
The Granite State PARTNERS program changes the fundamental relationship between schools and student success.
When students know they won’t lose their investment due to financial stress, they become more relaxed during the program. The risk of failing and losing everything declines.
This isn’t just about money. It’s about recognizing that nursing students are whole people with lives outside of school.
Traditional financial aid assumes students can work part-time. Nursing education makes that impossible. New Hampshire’s approach acknowledges this reality instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.
They’re addressing the problem holistically. Not just throwing money at tuition, but understanding that a student worrying about utilities or childcare can’t focus on mastering IV techniques or medication calculations.
The Learning Happens On The Job Anyway
Most nursing knowledge comes from working, not from school. Everyone in healthcare knows this.
Yet schools maintain impossibly high academic standards that serve no purpose except protecting institutional reputation. They’re gatekeeping access to jobs where the real learning happens.
If I were designing a program like Granite State PARTNERS, I’d eliminate the possibility of failing out permanently. Once selected for the program, students would be guaranteed support until they can sit for the NCLEX.
The NCLEX is the real test. Everything before that is artificial barrier construction.
The One Change That Would Fix Everything
Lower the passing grades.
This would make administrators uncomfortable because it threatens their precious statistics. But it would immediately increase the number of students who reach the NCLEX, where the actual competency testing happens.
Schools turned away qualified applications from 65,766 candidates in 2023. Not because these people couldn’t become nurses, but because the system lacks capacity and maintains artificial scarcity.
States that don’t make these fundamental changes will end up with shortages. Not because there aren’t people willing to become nurses, but because the education system eliminates them before they get the chance.
The Real Stakes
This isn’t an academic debate about educational standards. People are suffering because we can’t staff hospitals adequately.
New Hampshire’s population is aging rapidly, like most of America. The demand for healthcare is exploding while the workforce shrinks. Yet nursing schools continue operating like exclusive clubs instead of workforce development programs.
The Granite State PARTNERS program proves a different approach works. Support students as whole people. Remove financial barriers that have nothing to do with clinical competency. Trust that people who want to become nurses and can pass the NCLEX should get that chance.
Other states watching New Hampshire’s success have a choice. They can continue protecting institutional statistics while patients wait longer for care. Or they can redesign nursing education around the reality of students’ lives and the urgency of public need.
The shortage isn’t inevitable. It’s manufactured by a system that prioritizes reputation over results, statistics over service, and institutional comfort over public health.
New Hampshire is showing us how to fix it. The question is whether other states will have the courage to challenge their own broken assumptions about how nurses should be trained.
