Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal and the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs announce three new regulatory actions by the State Board of Nursing to advance the State’s efforts to ensure that career education programs, including those at for-profit schools, provide students with pathways to success in their chosen professions and deliver on their promises to prospective students.
The three rules announced this week will (1) bolster the standards for nursing education programs operating with provisional accreditation or on probationary status, (2) prevent schools from abusing exit examinations to falsely inflate their success rates or garner extra tuition; and (3) establish faculty and administrative standards and guidelines to ensure that nursing education programs teach student nurses to practice with skill, knowledge, care, and competence.
The new rules will apply to more than 60 schools that have obtained or are seeking Board accreditation for their nursing education or training programs.
“Students who pursue career education in order to improve their job prospects or to obtain a professional license should see a return on their investments,” said Attorney General Grewal. “With these new rules in place, nursing students should feel more confident than ever that they are pursuing educational programs that will help them build successful careers in the noble profession they have chosen.”
Consumer Affairs Deputy Director Howard Pine said: "The purpose of these regulations is to establish rules that nursing programs can follow to obtain and maintain accreditation as they implement training that adequately prepares students to become licensed to practice nursing.
New nursing school rules by NJ Dept of Consumer Affairs:
-Under the new rule, nursing programs must inform students if their accreditation status is provisional. They also may graduate only one class per calendar year, and must employ experienced program administrators. Provisionally accredited program will not be granted accreditation unless, within either the first or second calendar year after its first graduates complete the program, 75 percent of the graduates who take the national nurse licensing examination in each calendar year pass the examination the first time they take it. Otherwise they must cease operations, and officers/directors/owners may not reapply for three years.
-One rule proposal seeks to stop schools from abusive exit-exam practices. Requiring students to pass a pre-graduation predictor or exit examination before graduation can inflate a school’s passage rate for the national examination, and result in students unexpectedly paying more in tuition.
Some programs that are in danger of losing accreditation due to graduates’ lower passage rates have required students to take a pre-graduation predictor or exit examination that assesses their likelihood of passing the national licensing examination. Those who do not pass the predictor or exit examination are not allowed to graduate, and instead are effectively held back although they have otherwise met all graduation requirements. As a result, the weaker students cannot take the licensing examination and adversely affect their school’s passage rate or endanger its accreditation status. The proposed rule would end this practice. Although the proposal would allow nursing education programs to require students to take a predictor examination at the end of the program, programs would no longer be allowed to prevent students from graduating or taking a licensing examination based on their performance on the predictor examination.
3. Included in the second rule proposal:
• Improving access to online education;
• Requiring nursing program administrators to have three years of experience with a background in curriculum development;
•Requiring that half of practical nursing program’s faculty hold master’s degrees;
• Expanding the role of registered professional nurses in providing and supervising clinical education.