College of Central Florida nursing program ranked one of the nation’s most affordable

The Ewers Century Center on the College of Central Florida campus in Ocala on June 30, 2020. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2020.

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Posted November 26, 2021 | By Matthew Cretul
matthew@ocalagazette.com

The College of Central Florida’s (CF) Registered Nurse to Bachelor of Science in Nursing (RN-BSN) program was recently ranked 6th nationally for Most Affordable Online Nursing Programs in 2021 by EduMED.org, an organization that helps students connect with the best and most affordable online degree programs in more than 60 medical and health fields.

CF President Dr. Jim Henningsen was excited about the ranking and said it’s a good recognition of what CF has tried to accomplish.

“It just goes back to one of our goals of being one of the most affordable colleges nationally. We’re in the top 1% overall nationally, and to have the sixth lowest cost program in the nation with the quality we have I think is just a great opportunity for students,” he said.

According to Dr. Stephanie Cortes, CF Dean of Health Sciences, the program was started about seven years ago and has seen over 200 RNs earn their BSN.

“The RN-BSN program began in fall 2014, graduating its first class in Dec. 2015,” said Cortes. “To date, 214 students have graduated from the RN-BSN program,” she continued.

To qualify for the rankings, educational institutions were selected for the ranking based on governmentally-supplied data provided by the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System and Institutional accreditation from an organization recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.

Once the data was compiled, schools were then ranked based on a mix of affordability, support services, and online program availability metrics. Of all the metrics, affordability received the heaviest weighting.

Henningsen pointed out that the groundwork was actually laid a few years ago for programs such as the RN-BSN to be successful today.

“Over the past three years, we’ve taken a hard look at programs that we may have liked, but that may not have been the highest in demand locally. They didn’t have great placement rates for grads, or they weren’t the best return on investment for the community. So, we allocated some of those resources into the high-demand programs that are producing graduates who are getting average salaries between fifty to seventy thousand their first year out of school.”

While plans for the RN-BSN program and others like it were laid a few years ago, plans are continually being made for the future of the nursing program at CF, as the school just secured local funding from both the Marion County Board of County Commissioners and the Marion County Hospital District for an expansion of the program to include renovations to existing buildings as well as a new Health Science Technology Education Center.

Henningsen pointed out local partnerships such as the ones CF has with the MCBOCC and the MCHD go a long way when getting state legislators to commit to moving forward on funding expansion projects, and accolades such as the new ranking don’t necessarily hurt either.

“What I can tell Tallahassee now is that we’ve got two multi-million dollar partners on the new nursing building…that goes a long way in terms of getting them [legislators in Tallahassee] excited about putting us on the high on the priority list.”

Currently, Cortes says there are 80 students enrolled in the RN-BSN program with space for more.

“There is no waitlist to begin CF’s RN-BSN or Associate Degree Nursing program,” she pointed out. “Applications are available online and are currently being accepted to start in the RN-BSN program January 2022”.

General information, as well as information on the RN-BSN program, can be found here.