Kent State University's College of Nursing has more than 1,600 undergraduate nursing students on campus this fall — the most in 10 years — News 5 Cleveland recently reported.
Nursing has become the most popular major at Kent State, and the first-year class of about 400 full-time nursing students on the Kent campus is the largest since 2017. The growth comes as a federal report projects a shortage of more than 267,000 registered nurses by 2028.
"For the first time since COVID, we had more students than we had seats for," Tracy Motter, interim dean of the College of Nursing, told News 5 Cleveland.
To help grow enrollment, the College of Nursing has begun accepting students who may not have completed every prerequisite in chemistry, biology and algebra, provided their grade-point average meets standards, and then works to bring them up to speed. That flexibility alone brought in an additional 55 students.
The report also highlighted the college's use of virtual reality and artificial intelligence simulations to prepare students for clinical settings, and noted that Kent State's incoming class of first-year architecture students — 175 — is the largest in 25 years.
