Excelsior College School of Nursing is the largest in the nation!

[sanantone]

Lots of interesting discussion in this thread. Unfortunately, there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of the politics behind why Excelsior is not unilaterally accepted by all states. It simply comes down to this: money. Nursing schools bring in a lot of tuition money, and states are losing that money to out of state programs. For another example, see North Carolina versus WGU. It has nothing to do with accreditation. It has to do with NC missing out on the tuition money.

Also, there's a fundamental misunderstanding as to how nursing schools operate in general. The CPNE is absolutely a method for Excelsior to keep their NCLEX pass rates up. But, as others have mentioned, traditional nursing schools use a series of HESI exams throughout the program to flunk people out, along with a comprehensive HESI at the end to catch any that may have slipped past the guards along the way. Is it right to intentionally try to wash people out? I'm on the fence. This can be a life-or-death profession. Is this flunk-out process unique to Excelsior? Absolutely not.

Having said that, and speaking as an Excelsior grad, Excelsior certainly is not for everyone. It's a tough ride, and not for those that are not self-motivated. The CPNE is actually pretty easy if you're prepared, but it's absolutely BRUTAL if you are not prepared. Excelsior could definitely do a little better screening earlier on to keep people from flunking out at this critical point.

This would be plausible if it weren't for the fact that Excelsior is simply a bridge program. The vast majority of nursing programs aren't bridge programs, so Excelsior is no competition. There is also a lot of money in RN to BSN programs and, as far as I know, there are no regulatory issues with Excelsior's BSN.

I haven't really been paying attention to the North Carolina/WGU thing, but, from what I've heard, North Carolina rejected having a WGU campus. You can still use WGU degrees there. You can still be a North Carolina resident and attend WGU. Specific to nursing, I haven't heard of any issues with WGU's nursing program that is open to unlicensed applicants.

Edit: There is an issue with WGU being allowed to enroll North Carolina students temporarily, but this has to do with the federal government ruling that states can require state authorization to allow out-of-state schools to offer online programs to their students. Many traditional colleges aren't allowed to offer online programs in some states because they can't afford to pay the licensing fees for every state. To combat this, many states are joining interstate compacts. These laws mostly hurt traditional universities, especially state universities. University of Phoenix had no problem with paying to be licensed in every state. I've also heard that WGU has a history of just paying to be licensed whenever it faces a problem. It's big enough to do that.