American Association of Colleges of Nursing

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) released survey data on vacant faculty positions for 2023-2024. The response rate covered 84.5% (922 schools). The data showed that the vacancy rate decreased from 2022 to 2023 by 1% so is now at 7.8%. 79.8% of vacancies required or preferred a doctoral degree. The most common issues schools reported related to faculty recruitment were noncompetitive salaries (642 schools, 69.6%) and difficulty finding faculty with the right specialty mix (527 schools, 62.0%).

Major barriers to hiring additional full-time faculty for the academic year 2023-2024 included:

• insufficient funds to hire new faculty
• the unwillingness of the administration to commit to additional full-time positions
• the inability to recruit qualified faculty because of competition for jobs with other marketplaces
• qualified applicants for faculty positions are unavailable in our geographic area

Top issues related to faculty recruitment for the academic year of 2023-2024 included:

• non-competitive salaries
• finding faculty with the right specialty mix
• a limited pool of doctoral-prepared faculty
• finding faculty willing/able to teach clinical courses
• high faculty workload
• finding faculty willing/able to conduct research

Byrne, C., Keyt, J., & Fang, D. (2023). Special Survey on Vacant Faculty Positions for Academic Year 2022-2023 [Report]. American Association of Colleges of Nursing. https://www.aacnnursing.org/Portals/0/PDFs/Data/Vacancy23.pdf.