Becoming a nurse is a great way to enjoy a career that is both financially and professionally rewarding. It is also expensive. Can you reduce those costs by selecting a more affordable degree? More to the point, can you be strategic in how you can use your nursing credentials to enjoy a career that provides the highest possible level of ROI?
The answer? It can be a little complicated. In this article, we take a look at what nursing degrees are the most affordable. We also examine a variety of different career outcomes that you should keep in mind before you begin your journey into the world of nursing.
Do Some Nursing Degrees Cost more than Others?
Not really. That’s the short answer anyway. For a more complete understanding you need to know how nursing degrees work. At the undergraduate level, there is only one standard route to becoming a nurse. You need to acquire your BSN.
This is the standard nursing credential that allows you to work on a hospital floor or a doctor’s office. The price of your BSN will vary based on where you go to school. Like any other degree, the total cost will be broken down based on the price per hour and any incidental charges, including boarding and books.
Getting a BSN is generally not more expensive than any other college degree. The average cost after four years is somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000. If you want to look at the degree in the context of an investment, you may favor programs that are on the more affordable end of the spectrum. While nurses make good money, their pay is fixed on a schedule. Getting a degree from an extremely prestigious school won’t make a difference in terms of salary expectations.
If you already have an undergraduate degree and would like to go back to school to get certified as a nurse, your expenses will generally be significantly less than that.
In this case, you can sign up for either an accelerated program or a certification-only program. You’ll be able to reduce the cost of your new certification by focusing only on classes that are related to becoming a nurse.
Is There Anything Else I Should Know About the Cost of Becoming a Nurse?
There is. While the BSN is the only standard nursing degree, there are endless graduate routes you can take.
Getting your graduate degree in any discipline can cost between $30-$100,000 depending on where you go to school.
Naturally, that’s a lot of money, but it offers many more career opportunities than you would have with only a bachelor's degree.
Nurses with a graduate degree can become nurse practitioners. Nurse practitioners have the benefit of greater autonomy in their chosen field. They can focus on areas of medicine that hold the most interest for them.
For example, if you like working with babies, you can become a neonatal nurse practitioner. If you care very deeply about mental health can become a psychiatric nurse practitioner.
The options are almost endless.
That’s the great thing about nursing graduate school programs. You can zero in on what interests you the most.
Maybe you don’t want to work directly in patient care. In that case, you might go to graduate school to become an informatics nurse. Informatics nurses work primarily with data. They leverage insights to improve processes and achieve better overall patient outcomes.
Or maybe you are more interested in assuming a leadership position. In that case, you might pursue a graduate degree related to hospital administration.
I’m a nurse. I don’t want to Go to Graduate School. What Next?
If you’d like to pivot in your career, but don’t want to do it with graduate school, there are endless certification options that are much easier to acquire. Nurses can often complete certification programs while working in a new job that interests them.
For example, let’s say you want to become a diabetes educator. In this case, your job would be to help manage their diabetes. The job requires a BSN.
In most states, it also requires a special certification that is earned through a combination of classes, tests, and experience.
It can take more than a year to meet all of their requirements, but the good news is that you most likely won’t need to wait that long before you can start working as a diabetes educator.
Hospitals that need a qualified professional will often be willing to work with good candidates. They may even pay you to get your certification while you work for them on a probationary basis.
There are almost endless examples of jobs you can pivot into with a BSN and a specialized certification.
For example, school nurses are just RNs who become specially certified to work in a school.
Certifications are not free, but they also aren’t nearly as expensive as a full college degree. What’s more, as mentioned earlier, you may find that your future or even current employer is willing to help pay for your certification.
Conclusion
To summarize: all nursing degrees cost extensibility the same amount of money. There are variations, but they come not in the form of the degree itself, but in differences in university tuition.
The real variations come in the form of graduate degrees or post-bachelors certifications. Certifications are cheaper than graduate school and they allow you to work in specialty careers.
Graduate school is more expensive, but generally higher income and greater levels of autonomy.
At the end of the day, both options are a great way to further explore your options in healthcare.
There are tons of ways to use your BSN that don’t involve working as a floor nurse. Figure out what interests you the most about healthcare and look for ways to get certified. You may be surprised by how accessible it is.
