Nurses play an important and sometimes thankless role in the health of every nation.
Recently, due to the increase in demand for nurses, there have been initiatives to raise the level of college education of American nurses. This includes the Institute of Medicine's goal to reach an 80 per cent level of registered nurses (RNs) who hold a bachelor's degree in nursing.
What kind of Nursing Degree in Pennsylvania should you get?
In short, you should earn an affordable nursing degree! Given the short-term importance of the Institute of Medicine's goal in particular, we're kicking off a series on the most affordable bachelor's of nursing programs by state (and have ranking the Most Affordable Online Schoolsas well), to help students seeking suitable programs in a particular state. Schools are ranked in each state by increasing value of the sum of the published in-state tuition and mandatory fees. We're starting with Pennsylvania!
How much money can you make with a Nursing Degree in Pennsylvania?
Not surprisingly, nursing is one of the fastest growing fields for job growth in the United States into the near future. In fact, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates a 16 percent job increase between 2014 and 2024 for registered nurses alone.
According to BLS data, the state of Pennsylvania is #5 in the number of employed Registered Nurses, with 136,090 compared to #1 California's 255,010 such nurses. However, Pennsylvania employs more nurses per thousand jobs than the top four states for employed RNs (CA, TX, NY, FL). Even more, Registered Nurses in Pennsylvania make on average $34.44/hour, which is 6 percent higher than the national average.
What are the Most Affordable Nursing degrees in Pennsylvania?
A query of NCES CollegeNavigator shows that Pennsylvania has 57 colleges/ universities listed as offering a bachelor's degree in nursing. In actual fact, some programs may be temporarily or permanently closed. Others had their host institution merged with another college. Finally, if a nursing program was only available at a branch campus significantly far away from the main campus, it was also excluded. Our data comes from online sites, the National Center for Education Statistics' IPEDS database, U.S. News and World Report, and PayScale. So look no further. Here are the Most Affordable Nursing Bachelor's Programs in Pennsylvania!
Most Affordable Nursing Degrees in Pennsylvania
See our rankings methodology page.
