Another local experiment with for-profit higher education gets underway Jan. 2, as Arizona College of Nursing opens its campus on Milwaukee’s far west side.
There has already been months of controversy over the nursing school, including during the city approval process for its location inside one of the Honey Creek Corporate Center buildings along I-94, west of 84th Street.
Arizona Nursing official Tamera Poole told Milwaukee’s Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee in June that Wisconsin continues to have a nursing shortage. Poole says hundreds of qualified student applicants have been turned away from existing nursing programs, and some would-be students give up.
“For those who abandon their nursing dreams, we continue to lose out on future health care providers. So to address this nursing shortage, there’s a critical need for additional educational opportunity in the community, and Arizona College of Nursing can help with that,” Poole says.
But critics of the private nursing school remain. Michael Rosen, with the Committee for Equity in Nursing Education, says the group of local health care, union and educational leaders is concerned about legal complaints regarding the Arizona-based school in other states. He also raised concerns about the recent history of some for-profit schools in Wisconsin that have closed.
“Our most poor citizens have been preyed on by schools like ITT Tech, Everest College, Sanford-Brown. The Arizona College of Nursing is just another in a long list of these organizations that look at low-income students as another profit opportunity,” Rosen says.
Rosen says there are viable alternatives for nursing school that are more cost-effective. He advises potential Arizona College students to consider the full three-year tuition cost of about $90,000 and not be lured in by Arizona’s offer of a $5,000 scholarship.
Rosen also says state government should develop more rigorous standards for approving nursing schools and allocate more resources to expanding nursing programs at UWM, MATC, Alverno College, UW-Madison and other institutions in the state.
Arizona College of Nursing did not respond to WUWM's request for comment on Rosen’s remarks.
