Faculty shortages are especially visible in nursing education, where schools report thousands of open positions alongside a shrinking pipeline of doctoral students. The 2025 AACN faculty vacancy survey found 1,588 full-time vacancies among responding nursing schools, while other AACN data show declining enrollment in master’s and PhD programs. These figures describe the United States and use the measurement periods identified by each source.
Contents
- 2025 nursing faculty vacancy snapshot
- How long vacancies remain open
- Credentials, ranks, and teaching assignments
- Where schools report the greatest need
- Why schools struggle to add faculty
- The faculty pipeline and retirement pressure
- Related physician workforce projections
2025 nursing faculty vacancy snapshot
The AACN Faculty Vacancy 2025 Report surveyed 1,075 nursing schools and received responses from 863 schools. The response rate was 80.3%, so the results represent responding schools rather than every nursing school in the country.
Across those responding schools, the survey counted 21,993 budgeted full-time faculty positions for the 2025–2026 academic year. The mean school had 25 budgeted full-time positions, while the median had 14. That gap shows how differently faculty positions are distributed: the largest reported school had 373 budgeted positions, while the minimum reported count was zero.
The same report found 1,588 full-time faculty vacancies in 2025. A total of 478 schools reported at least one vacancy, equal to 55% of responding schools. The average reporting school had 3.32 vacancies. Measured against all budgeted full-time positions, the overall vacancy rate was 7.2%. Among schools that reported at least one vacancy, the rate was 9.6%.
| 2025 measure | Reported figure |
|---|---|
| Schools surveyed | 1,075 |
| Responding schools | 863 |
| Response rate | 80.3% |
| Budgeted full-time positions | 21,993 |
| Full-time vacancies | 1,588 |
| Schools with at least one vacancy | 478 |
| Overall vacancy rate | 7.2% |
| Vacancy rate among schools with vacancies | 9.6% |
These measures should not be read as interchangeable. The 7.2% rate uses the full pool of budgeted positions, whereas the 9.6% rate focuses on schools that reported vacancies. Likewise, the average of 3.32 vacancies applies to schools reporting vacancies, not to every responding school.
How long vacancies remain open
Length of time matters because an unfilled position can affect course capacity over multiple academic periods. Of the 1,588 vacancies reported in 2025, 471 had been open for more than one year. The AACN Faculty Vacancy 2025 Report identified those long-term vacancies as 29.7% of all vacancies.
That proportion indicates that the issue is not limited to short hiring cycles or temporary delays. Nearly three in ten reported vacancies had already remained open for more than a year. The figure is a duration measure for the vacancies in the 2025 survey; it is not a forecast of how long future vacancies will remain open.
The survey also identified schools that needed additional faculty even though they had no budgeted vacancy. In that group, 150 schools said they still needed more faculty. Their reasons point to a difference between a position being formally open and a school having enough staffing capacity to meet its needs.
Credentials, ranks, and teaching assignments
Qualification requirements were prominent in the 2025 vacancy data. Overall, 80.9% of vacancies required or preferred a doctoral degree. By stated degree requirement, 772 vacancies required an earned doctorate, 512 required a master’s degree in nursing but preferred a doctorate, and 289 required a master’s degree in nursing. Another 197 required a research-focused doctoral degree in nursing or a related field, 124 required a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree, and 451 required a doctoral degree such as a PhD or DNP.
The report also described the appointments by tenure status. There were 587 tenure-track vacancies and 708 non-tenure-track vacancies. A further 293 vacancies were at schools with no tenure system. These categories describe the institutional context reported for the positions and are not a ranking of the relative quality of the appointments.
Vacancies appeared across the academic ranks. The report counted 43 professor-level vacancies, 100 at the professor or associate professor level, 28 at the associate professor level, and 277 at the associate or assistant professor level. It also counted 373 assistant professor vacancies, 157 at the assistant professor or instructor/lecturer level, 256 instructor or lecturer vacancies, and 354 open-rank vacancies.
Teaching scope varied as well. There were 603 vacancies for baccalaureate-only teaching, 59 for master’s-only teaching, 36 for doctoral-only teaching, and 84 for DNP-only teaching. The report counted 198 vacancies spanning baccalaureate and master’s teaching, plus 173 spanning baccalaureate, master’s, PhD, and DNP teaching.
The instructional mix shows why a single faculty count does not capture every staffing challenge. Some positions involved didactic, clinical, and lab/simulation teaching: 673 vacancies fell into that category. Other vacancies were didactic-only (329), didactic and clinical (306), or didactic and lab/simulation (137).
Where schools report the greatest need
Most vacancies were not assigned a narrow specialty. The AACN report counted 962 vacancies with no specialty or a generalist specialty. It also recorded 44 nurse-anesthesia vacancies, 101 family nurse practitioner vacancies, and 218 vacancies in other specialties.
The regional figures in the AACN Future of Faculty Forum Summary Report provide a separate comparison from the 2022 forum. That forum represented 10 member school groups in its like-school discussions. Its reported vacancy rates were highest in the West at 10.0%, followed by the South at 9.8%, the North Atlantic at 8.1%, and the Midwest at 6.9%.
| Region in the 2022 forum report | Vacancy rate |
|---|---|
| West | 10.0% |
| South | 9.8% |
| North Atlantic | 8.1% |
| Midwest | 6.9% |
The 2022 regional rates and the 2025 national vacancy figures come from different AACN reports and measurement periods. They can show how reported rates vary across the named groups, but they should not be treated as a single time series.
Why schools struggle to add faculty
Funding and institutional hiring decisions were recurring barriers. Among schools that needed additional faculty but had no vacancies, 61% cited insufficient funds to hire new faculty. Another 51% cited administrative constraints around hiring additional full-time faculty. In addition, 37% preferred adjunct or part-time faculty rather than hiring full-time faculty with benefits.
Recruitment competition was another issue: 32% said they could not recruit qualified faculty because of competition with other marketplaces, and 23% said qualified applicants were unavailable in their geographic area. These percentages describe responses from the subgroup identified in the 2025 AACN vacancy report, not the share of all nursing schools.
The 2022 Future of Faculty Forum Summary Report gives similar but not identical results for schools with no budgeted vacancies but a need for faculty. In that report, 63.3% cited insufficient funds, 47.7% cited an administration unwilling to commit to additional full-time positions, 38.3% cited competition from other marketplaces, and 21.9% said qualified applicants were unavailable in their geographic area.
The forum also recorded several recruitment problems. Noncompetitive salaries were cited by 66.7% of participating schools, difficulty finding faculty with the right specialty mix by 59.2%, and a limited pool of doctorally prepared faculty by 51.4%. Another 38.7% cited difficulty finding faculty willing and able to teach clinical courses, 24.5% cited high faculty workload, and 15.5% cited difficulty finding faculty willing and able to conduct research.
Salary differences help explain why recruitment can be difficult. The AACN Nursing Faculty Shortage Fact Sheet reported a median salary of $129,480 across advanced practice registered nurse roles, compared with $93,958 for master’s-prepared professors in schools of nursing. These are median figures for the roles named in the fact sheet, not a comparison of every nursing job or every academic rank.
The faculty pipeline and retirement pressure
Age and preparation data point to longer-term pressure on the nursing faculty workforce. The AACN Nursing Faculty Shortage Fact Sheet reported average ages for doctorally prepared nurse faculty of 61.2 years at the professor rank, 55.6 at the associate professor rank, and 49.6 at the assistant professor rank. For master’s-prepared nurse faculty, the corresponding average ages were 55.0, 54.7, and 47.5.
The fact sheet also said that one third of the current nursing faculty workforce in baccalaureate and graduate programs were expected to retire by 2025. That statement is an expectation reported in the fact sheet, rather than a count of retirements confirmed in the vacancy survey.
The education pipeline was contracting in the periods reported. From 2022 to 2023, enrollment in master’s nursing programs fell by 0.9%, or 1,176 students. PhD nursing program enrollment fell by 3.1%, or 137 students, over the same period. Compared with 2013, PhD program enrollment was down 17.5%, from 5,145 students to 4,244 students in 2023.
At the same time, qualified applicants were being turned away. In 2023, the fact sheet said 5,491 qualified applications were turned away from master’s nursing programs and 4,461 qualified applications were turned away from doctoral nursing programs. In 2024, U.S. nursing schools turned away 80,162 qualified applications from baccalaureate and graduate programs. The 2024 AACN enrollment report covered 951 schools of nursing in the United States.
Taken together, these figures describe pressure at several points: open faculty positions, difficulty financing or approving additional positions, a limited pool for specialized and doctoral roles, and students who qualify for programs but are not admitted. Each number refers to the source’s stated year and population, so the figures should not be added together as one measure of shortage.
Related physician workforce projections
Physician workforce projections provide a broader health-education context, although they measure physicians rather than nursing faculty. The AAMC physician workforce shortage projection projects a physician shortage of up to 86,000 by 2036. Separately, the HRSA Physician Workforce Projections 2023–2038 projects a shortage of 141,160 full-time-equivalent physicians in 2038.
The AAMC figure is a projection through 2036, and the HRSA figure is a projection for 2038. They use different organizations, endpoints, and stated measures, so neither is a direct estimate of nursing faculty vacancies. They are relevant here because they show that workforce planning pressures extend beyond the classroom roles measured in the AACN faculty reports.