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My wife teaches at a central PA BSN program. She sees a good number of students who went thru top-notch LACs ($$$$ for a fancy-named school on the back window of the family car), could only find a job that, really, any high school kid could do, in her class. They make great nurses, but why not take a more direct and less costly path. Also look at Hopkins and Georgetown, or 3'2 programs where you begin in one school and end up doing the last 2 years in a BSN program. Hopkins has this arrangement with a number of LACs.
We were encouraging my S to get a BSN, but after he did a stint in ICU, he decided that it was not for him. But while we were looking the question came up, where should he go. If you can afford Penn, etc., great, but if the wealth is finite, a graduate of, say, York College, PA will do just as fine, and there is then money left to get your MSN, MSN/MBA, MSN/JD. PhD (acute shortage of nursing professors - by the way, great vacation time in the academy.
There is a staus stigma with nursing programs (I hear it at my LAC); it is unwarrented and ignorant. Hats off to those universities like Penn and Hopkins that have retained nursing, unlike Syracuse (done in by their female President) and Boston University. By the way, depending on what hours you work, some nurses make more than new GP's.
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