10 Nursing Master's Programs With the Highest Enrollment
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An aging population, expanded opportunities for people to have health insurance and other changes in health care have led to a shortage of nurses in the U.S. Some nursing organizations and schools are scrambling to get more students into this field. Some institutions, however, already stand out for having high enrollment numbers for students seeking a master's degree in nursing.
Chamberlain College of Nursing, for example, had 4,963 master's students enrolled in fall of 2014. It had the highest number of master's students among the 246 ranked master's nursing programs that submitted data to U.S. News.
[Learn about the 2016 Best Nursing Schools.]
The for-profit school also had the highest total graduate nursing enrollment, which includes doctoral students.
No other school had even half Chamberlain's enrollment numbers at the master's level. A handful had student bodies that exceeded 1,000, including the University of Alabama--Birmingham with 1,636 master's students and the University of Cincinnati, which had 1,572.
Among all ranked schools, the average number of master's students was 243. Chamberlain's high enrollment pushes the average enrollment for the 10 schools with the most master's students to 1,545.
[Get a salary and career boost with a master's degree in nursing.]
The school with the lowest enrollment at the master's level was the University of Mary, with 20 students.
Below is a list of the 10 nursing schools with the highest master's enrollment for fall 2014. Unranked schools, which did not meet certain criteria required by U.S. News to be numerically ranked, were not considered for this report.
School | Total master's enrollment (fall 2014) | Total graduate nursing enrollment (fall 2014) | U.S. News rank |
|---|---|---|---|
4,963 | 5,454 | RNP* | |
1,636 | 1,818 | 13 (tie) | |
1,572 | 1,648 | 54 (tie) | |
1,525 | 1,604 | 90 (tie) | |
1,376 | 1,478 | 137 (tie) | |
1,236 | 1,315 | 90 (tie) | |
850 | 999 | 48 (tie) | |
846 | 970 | 38 (tie) | |
726 | 787 | RNP | |
719 | 961 | 6 (tie) |
* RNP denotes an institution that is ranked in the bottom one-fourth of all nursing schools. U.S. News calculates a rank for the school but has decided not to publish it.
Don't see your school in the top 10? Access the U.S. News Nursing School Compass to find information on enrollment, complete rankings and much more. School officials can access historical data and rankings, including of peer institutions, via U.S. News Academic Insights.
U.S. News surveyed 503 nursing schools for our 2014 survey of nursing programs. Schools self-reported myriad data regarding their academic programs and the makeup of their student body, among other areas, making U.S. News' data the most accurate and detailed collection of college facts and figures of its kind. While U.S. News uses much of this survey data to rank schools for our annual Best Nursing Schools rankings, the data can also be useful when examined on a smaller scale. U.S. News will now produce lists of data, separate from the overall rankings, meant to provide students and parents a means to find which schools excel, or have room to grow, in specific areas that are important to them. While the data come from the schools themselves, these lists are not related to, and have no influence over, U.S. News' rankings of Best Colleges, Best Graduate Schools or Best Online Programs. The enrollment data above are correct as of April 7, 2015.
Delece Smith-Barrow is an education reporter at U.S. News, covering graduate schools. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at dsmithbarrow@usnews.com.
