Graduates from two state university nursing programs who take the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) early next year may feel added pressure. The fate of those programs could hinge on whether they pass.
Alan Levine, vice chair of the Florida Board of Governors (BOG) overseeing the state’s public universities, said last summer that he’d be willing to end nursing programs at Florida A&M and Florida Atlantic universities if they don’t dramatically improve first-time passage rates on the nursing boards.
FAMU saw 82% of its graduates pass the exam earlier this year. Graduates from FAU’s main campus passed at an 81% rate. While each school saw double-digit gains over 2023, they still fell well short of the BOG’s 90% benchmark.
“An 18% failure rate is a high failure rate,” Levine says.
FAMU President Larry Robinson resigned in July. Since the board’s June meeting, Levine says he’s had encouraging conversations with FAMU trustees and interim President Timothy Beard. “Sometimes somebody that comes in new will perhaps ask more difficult questions of the people at the institution, and I think those questions are being asked by the new president,” Levine says.
That doesn’t mean he’s changed his mind about ending programs that don’t come within 5% of the state’s benchmark.
“I’m of the opinion that if you can’t do it right, then you’re doing the students a disservice by offering it and not preparing them to pass their boards,” says Levine, who led health care transition teams for Florida governors Jeb Bush, Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis and now is CEO of Tennesseebased Ballad Health. “If you can’t do that, and there’s no urgency in getting that corrected, then the logical question is, is there a better place for those students to get their degree for that particular program?”
He included FAMU’s law school in his June comments about closing underperforming programs. Only about half of FAMU law graduates pass the bar on their first try. Florida has no shortage of attorneys but does lack for nurses. If FAMU and FAU can’t achieve an NCLEX pass rate of at least 85%, Levine predicts that other nursing programs could absorb their students.
“There’s an (institutional) obligation that when they finish their training, they’re prepared to pass their boards,” he says. “It’s really not more complicated than that from where I sit.”
Graduates who take the exam within a month of graduating fare much better than those who wait, a report from the Florida Center for Nursing at USF shows. “The more time that passed from graduation to dates of test, the lower the pass rate,” it says.
More than 21,000 people in Florida took the NCLEX in 2023, representing 9% of all participants nationally, the report shows. That includes all nursing graduates, not just those from the state university system. Only 77% passed, well below the nation’s 88.5%. It’s the fourth year Florida’s passage rate trailed the national average.
All Florida Gulf Coast University nursing graduates passed the exam last year. UF, UCF, USF and FSU graduates passed above 95% of the time, data from BOG staff shows.