New York University President Linda G. Mills’s Oct. 23 online op-ed, “My university is proposing to offer shorter degrees. Others should follow suit,” is right that a four-year program isn’t suited to every student. But Mills’s proposal for shorter degrees is not the right fit for nursing education.
First, Mills pointed to a projected nursing deficit as a reason to offer three-year nursing degrees. But there are currently more nurses than there are jobs available.
It also is ironic that Mills cited high tuition costs as a reason to curtail nursing-degree credits while presiding over one of the most expensive universities in the country. Medical students at NYU automatically get their tuition costs covered, while nursing students pay about $68,500 per year.
I am a proud community-college-educated nurse, and because time was critical for me when I sought my nursing degree, I chose Borough of Manhattan Community College. The nursing profession has multiple entry points: For those in a hurry, associate’s degrees are available.
New York now mandates that a nurse with an associate’s degree must obtain a bachelor’s degree within 10 years, showing the professional nursing community has a commitment to improve education and health care outcomes for all New Yorkers. Mills’s plan disregards the progress to which many of the scholars at the nursing college contributed.
I wish Mills would consult with my colleagues and me about whether a shortened nursing degree would be sufficient, whether we support it and which part of the education that we have dedicated our lives to could be dropped.
Richard Dorritie, New York
The writer is a clinical associate professor at New York University’s Rory Meyers College of Nursing.
I am in profound agreement with New York University President Linda G. Mills that colleges should offer three-year bachelor’s degrees for certain areas of study. New York University is proposing this new curriculum initiative primarily in career fields that require on-the-job training, such as nursing.
To be successful, a university must comply with the need for rapid occupational attainment. Many online colleges already offer degrees that allow students to obtain course credits for related work experience, quickening student degree attainment by bypassing certain curricular electives. Plus, the three-year degree option allows students to avoid a year’s worth of expensive college tuition. High school graduates and those seeking job advancement or a new career must find a new way to obtain a degree without spending a lifetime paying back exorbitant college loans for a traditional four-year bachelor’s.
Gail B. Landy, Gaithersburg
New York University President Linda G. Mills makes a strong case that four years of college should not be the only route to a good career.
Whether three-year bachelor’s degrees are the right answer is a question for four-year institutions, employers and policymakers to consider. But while they do, students who need a faster path now don’t have to wait.
In Virginia, many of the shorter routes Mills describes are readily available, accessible and, most importantly, affordable through the Virginia Community College System.
The goals Mills sets out are the right ones: lower costs, hands-on training and a faster start in high-demand jobs. Community colleges have been meeting these goals for decades. Virginia’s community colleges remain the most affordable and accessible pathway for higher education in the Commonwealth.
Nursing, the field Mills leads with, is a good example. At Virginia’s community colleges, students can earn an associate’s degree in nursing in two years and take the same licensing exam as bachelor’s degree graduates. Through FastForward, our short-term workforce training program, adults can earn industry credentials in fields such as welding, commercial driving and health care in eight to 12 weeks. Ninety-four percent of FastForward students complete their programs, and 93 percent reported working within six months.
As Mills aptly put it, every student deserves every possible path to success. For many Virginians, the fastest, most affordable path is already waiting at a community college.
David Doré, Richmond
The writer is chancellor of the Virginia Community College System.
Lincoln’s sorrow
Regarding Phillip Kennicott’s Oct. 23 Theater review, “Addressing Lincoln’s sorrow”:
George Saunders’s novel “Lincoln in the Bardo” and the Missy Mazzoli opera it inspired are about much more than the grief of a parent whose child has died. These works of art are understandable only in the context of their setting during the Civil War.
Willie Lincoln’s death would have been a tragedy in any circumstance, but it was compounded by the growing slaughter that eventually took more than 700,000 American lives. James McPherson, a Civil War historian, once said that Abraham Lincoln “felt every death. That’s why if you look at the photographs you can see him age. He aged 40 years in those four.”
Kennicott’s comparison of Saunders’s book to Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick,” the greatest American novel, was especially apt. “Moby-Dick” was published in 1851, at the beginning of the decade that closed with Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860.
Melville could not predict the future. However, he imagined how obsession enabled by a position of leadership — Captain Ahab’s command of the whaling ship — could lead to disaster. In the novel, that was a shipwreck. In U.S. history, Southern politicians led the charge to secede from the Union, taking their people into a war that killed hundreds of thousands.
Lincoln rescued the nation, but the human cost was exceptionally high. During the last full year of the Civil War, Willie Lincoln’s oldest brother, Robert, graduated from Harvard and briefly attended its law school. Eager to participate in his generation’s greatest adventure, he joined the Union Army, but the president arranged for him to serve away from the front lines on commanding general Ulysses S. Grant’s headquarters staff. For Lincoln during that terrible war, one trip to the bardo was enough.
Steven Berizzi, Norwalk, Connecticut
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