Nursing schools brace for faculty shortage

Over the next few years, the Affordable Care Act will probably boost demand for nurses to take care of the newly insured, she says, "and I need faculty to teach the practitioners that are going to take care of these uninsured." In the last year, more than 76,000 qualified applicants were turned away, in large part because nursing schools didn't have enough professors. Polly Bednash, executive director of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, says nurses comprise the oldest workforce in the nation, and many of them kept working during the recession. Finding professors to teach new nurses will be difficult because faculty members usually need a Ph.D.