Is Online nursing school a bad idea?

juillet
Mon, 14 Dec 2015 06:10:11 +0000

Online nursing degrees for your pre-licensure nursing degree is a bad idea. If you don’t already have some kind of degree, diploma, or licensure in nursing, any online program is unlikely to provide you with the coursework and experience you need to get licensed. First of all, you’re going to have to do clinicals anyway, so there will be some in-person components. Second of all, pre-licensure nursing curricula have classes with laboratory components that need to be completed in-person. I’ve never seen a pre-licensure nursing program that you could complete completely online. (Western Governors University has a partially online pre-licensure program, but it’s only available in four states, and that’s because you have to complete some of the coursework and all of the clinicals in-person.)

And yes, it does make a difference - you don’t want to go to a diploma mill or a for-profit university for your degree. You want a degree from a reputable university. In nursing it’s also important to be sure you’re getting a degree from a university that is actually authorized to do pre-licensure education, because otherwise you can’t sit for the NCLEX and get your license to practice as a nurse.

One option could be for you to get an associate’s degree an an RN, and then do an online RN-to-BSN program while you work. Those programs are very common, and a lot of reputable universities offer online RN-to-BSN programs. (You already have the license, so a lot of the coursework can be done online, and they are assuming that you will fulfill your clinical duties at your workplace.)