ORLANDO, Fla. — With a recent influx of state money, Central Florida colleges with high-performing nursing programs hired more faculty, built new facilities and expanded their programs to accept additional qualified applicants.

Yet it’s still not enough to end a nursing shortage that is predicted to leave Florida with 21,000 unfilled jobs this year and more in the future.

A 2021 report from the Florida Hospital Association and the Safety Net Hospital Alliance of Florida projected that Florida would face a 59,000-nurse shortage by 2035 amid an aging and growing population.

Florida, the report said, needs to increase sharply the number of nursing school graduates.

Currently, high-quality Florida nursing programs — among them the University of Central Florida’s College of Nursing — turn away qualified applicants because of a lack of capacity. The state also has the lowest first-time pass rate on the national nursing licensing exam, called NCLEX, fueled by poor-performing schools.

In the 2022-23 school year, the average Florida nursing program had about 217 qualified applicants but could only accommodate 148, according to a report by the Florida Center for Nursing, a state center headquartered at the University of South Florida College of Nursing.

The center found 76% of Florida students passed the NCLEX-RN exam on their first try in 2023, compared to about 88% nationwide.

Nursing education leaders say the key to solving this issue is to further increase funding and enrollment at high-quality, accredited schools, where passing rates often exceed the national average, and come down harder on for-profit and nonaccredited schools, which are more likely to produce graduates unprepared to join the workforce. Last quarter, at some of those schools, not a single graduate passed the nursing exam on their first attempt.

Florida has invested hundreds of millions of dollars over the past two years to expand state school nursing programs.

The College of Central Florida, UCF, Seminole State College of Florida, Polk State College and Lake-Sumter College all had 100% first-time pass rates in the most recent quarter, according to the State Board of Nursing. Valencia College’s graduates had an 89% pass rate.

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