Rethinking nursing faculty workforce economics: From single-income appointments to portfolio-based academic roles.
Abstract
The United States nursing faculty shortage is commonly framed as a shortage of qualified educators caused by inadequate salaries. In 2025, nursing schools reported 1,588 full-time faculty vacancies and turned away 92,672 qualified applications from baccalaureate and graduate programs. This structured analytic essay argues that the nursing faculty shortage is also a labor-participation problem: terminally prepared nurses may be qualified for academic roles but unwilling to accept the compensation, workload, and professional constraints of faculty employment. Drawing on workforce data, research, labor economics, practitioner-scholar models, and policy documents, the analysis applies compensating wage differentials theory to academic nursing. It introduces the prestige tax, passion pay cut, and single-income academic model to explain why faculty recruitment and retention deteriorate when salary disadvantages converge with burnout, restricted autonomy, and better-compensated opportunities outside universities. PhD, DNP, EdD, and DNE-prepared nurses enter the same academic labor market despite different expertise and external career options. Expanding doctoral pathways, including the emerging Doctor of Nursing Education, may increase the supply of nurse faculty without correcting the employment conditions contributing to faculty vacancies. The paper proposes portfolio-based academic roles that formally integrate teaching, research, service, clinical practice, consulting, and professional education within a full-time-equivalent appointment. This model requires aggregate compensation, transparent workload allocation, conflict-of-interest oversight, equitable access, and promotion and accreditation systems that recognize contributions across domains. Sustainable nursing faculty workforce policy must address not only how many nurses are qualified to teach, but whether academic employment is designed to attract and retain them.