A professor with a master’s degree at a U.S. nursing school earns an average of $82,762 a year, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing. Across advanced practice nursing roles, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts median pay at $134,920 as of May 2025.
Not all schools can afford to pay the salaries nursing professors want. In AACN’s 2025 survey of nursing schools, 33.7% named noncompetitive salaries as their most critical obstacle to hiring faculty. The over 860 schools that responded reported 1,588 open full-time faculty positions, and nearly 30% of those jobs had been open for more than a year.
That pay gap shapes who can afford to move into teaching. Most faculty openings call for a graduate degree, often a doctorate, and leaving a clinical job to earn one means giving up a paycheck to train for work that pays less. Online programs that let nurses keep working while they study can lower that cost. Risepoint, a global education technology company that works with more than 100 universities, supports two such programs at regional universities, both built to prepare working nurses to teach.
Faculty nearing retirement
A 2026 study published in the Journal of Nursing Regulation found that the share of nursing faculty aged 65 or older doubled between 2017 and 2024, from 16.9% to 34.2%. AACN data show that doctorally prepared full professors average just over 60, and they’ll be part of a wave of retirees over the next decade.
Their replacements will need advanced degrees. Of the vacancies in the 2025 survey, 80.9% required or preferred a doctorate, and 48.6% required one outright. The national vacancy rate was 7.2%, close to the 10-year average of 7.64% that AACN cites from a March study in the Journal of Professional Nursing. In 2025, it ran highest in the West, at 8.3%, and the South, at 8.2%.
AACN’s annual enrollment survey shows PhD enrollment in nursing fell for an 11th straight year in 2025, to 4,077 students. That’s down from 5,145 students in 2013. But enrollment in Doctor of Nursing Practice programs, the practice-focused doctorate, rose 5.9% to 44,976. For schools trying to fill doctoral faculty lines, the DNP has become the larger source of candidates.
How does the faculty shortage limit nursing enrollment?
The AACN survey found that nursing schools turned away 93,176 qualified applications to bachelor’s and graduate programs in 2025. Faculty shortages are among the reasons schools give most often, alongside clinical sites and preceptors, the practicing nurses who supervise students on hospital units.
Clinical instruction happens in small groups, each led by a faculty member or preceptor. A program that can’t fill a teaching line often can’t open another clinical group, however many applicants are waiting.
Schools without a posted opening feel it too. Of the 385 schools that reported no budgeted vacancies, 150 said they still needed more full-time faculty.
Two online programs built for working nurses
Arkansas State University offers an online Doctor of Nursing Practice in Education for nurses who already hold a master’s degree. The program is 36 credit hours. Most courses run seven weeks, and students can finish in as little as 14 months while they keep working. It includes 540 hours of practice experience across three internship courses and is accredited by the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing. The university lists university nursing faculty, academic administrator, and director of nursing education among the roles it prepares graduates for.
Youngstown State University in Ohio takes students in one step earlier. Its online Master of Science in Nursing in Nurse Education is 33 credit hours with 150 hours of practicum, and it can be completed in as little as 14 months. The university describes it as “designed for experienced RNs,” and it prepares graduates to sit for the Certified Nurse Educator exam, the National League for Nursing credential for academic nurse educators.
Both programs are supported by Risepoint. At each university, curriculum, admissions, instruction, and financial aid are owned exclusively by the university, and the courses are taught by its own nursing faculty. Support from Risepoint covers technology, initial student outreach, supporting faculty, and retention services. Nine in 10 students in Risepoint-supported programs work while completing their degrees, according to the 2025 Impact Report from Risepoint.
Staying employed while studying has a particular payoff here. Schools that lean on part-time clinical instructors can draw them from local hospitals, and a nurse who earns a teaching credential while staying on staff is already there.
What online programs can and can’t fix
Online degrees can widen the pool of nurses qualified to teach. But they don’t close the salary gap, and they don’t create budget lines. In the 2025 survey, 37% of schools that needed faculty but had no vacancies said they preferred adjunct or part-time instructors, and 61% cited insufficient funds.
Those limits sit with universities and the states that fund them. What a working nurse needs from a degree program is narrower: a way to earn the credential that a teaching job requires, at a pace that fits a shift schedule, from a university close to home.
