How Proactive Remediation Builds a Strong Nursing Pipeline

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This article is part of The State of Nursing Education, the authoritative ATI series examining key issues affecting today’s academic nursing programs, deans and faculty. The insights shared here and in all State of Nursing Education content reflect extensive research, evidence, and interviews, along with perspectives from leaders throughout the nursing industry. To read more from the series, click here.  

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Every workforce depends on a pipeline that consistently delivers professionals who will keep that workforce competent and sustainable. In the nursing ecosystem, that pipeline is nursing education, and it’s directly supported by systems of retention and remediation.

 

When academic programs fail to reach their at-risk students, the result is often attrition. When these students exit their programs, the losses are significant. A future nurse. A future educator. Another piece of the pipeline that could support the nursing workforce.

That's why strong retention and remediation are precursors to strong nursing pipelines. Retention is about more than individual success and failure. It affects program viability and long-term institutional outcomes—not to mention the ongoing supply of qualified nurses. Simply put, retention isn’t a secondary metric. It’s a defining measure of program success.

Unfortunately, current systems of retention and remediation can’t match today’s need for practice-ready nurses. Attrition rates are high.¹ Enrollment is rebounding, but faculty shortages are straining program capacity.^2,3 Meanwhile, the demand for healthcare workers won’t stop growing.⁴

This means simply adding more students to the pipeline will never fix the problem. What will? A more comprehensive understanding of the student retention story. Holistic systems that not only sustain enrollment, but also improve completion rates. Proactive remediation that solves problems before they even start.

These types of retention systems do exist. It’s how many successful programs are responding to the crisis. But the first step to any response is understanding the reality you’re facing.

Today's Retention Reality

Attrition rates in nursing programs are consistent—consistently high. Ranging between 15% and 30%, these rates have been a pressing problem for decades.⁵ And that's just one small part of the student retention story.

Nursing programs are facing pressure at nearly every point in the education pipeline. Enrollment in several nursing pathways is stabilizing at best, even as healthcare systems struggle to fill workforce needs, especially in rural and low-income communities.² At the same time, nursing schools are turning away tens of thousands of qualified applicants each year due to faculty shortages, limited clinical placements, and budgetary limitations.⁶

What’s more, many students who do enter nursing programs are often at an immediate disadvantage. An informal ATI survey of faculty in ATI-supported programs found that 71% of faculty are concerned about the preparedness of first-year students, indicating growing challenges with learning loss, stress, confidence, and overall academic readiness.⁷ Consequently, a large portion of student attrition occurs early in the education journey.⁸

Meanwhile, demand for nurses continues to accelerate. Workforce projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimate nearly 195,000 registered nurse openings will be added to the market each year.⁴ For nursing programs, this creates a significant challenge: the need to simultaneously enroll more students, support their success, and avoid attrition at all costs.

Because the financial impacts are very real. In fact, with 50-student cohorts and an average tuition of $50,000 per year, ATI estimates that a 20% attrition rate means approximately $375,000 in lost revenue for a program—every year.

Why Nursing Is Deeply Affected

Some of these retention realities are uniquely challenging for nursing education.

All healthcare education is cumulative, which makes consistency a necessary part of professional growth. Unlike many academic disciplines, nursing students are evaluated not only on theoretical understanding, but also on their ability to apply knowledge in a clinical environment.⁹ Small gaps in understanding can quickly compound, and clinical realities can accelerate the consequences of falling behind or taking time off.

All healthcare education is high stakes, which means educational outcomes are directly linked to critical human services. High-quality healthcare demands a robust workforce, and there is little margin for inconsistency or recovery. As such, student attrition impacts not only short-term supply, but also long-term workforce sustainability.¹

The Right Types of Solutions

Increasing student retention isn’t about focusing on one metric. It isn’t a singular quest to stamp out attrition or enroll the most students. Instead, successful retention models are built around a fundamental shift from reactive to proactive thinking. Why? Because such strategies are proven to be more effective at producing successful students.¹⁰

What do those strategies look like? The table below provides an outline.

 

The Right Types of Partners

Obviously, retention at scale requires much more than isolated interventions. It requires a fully realized retention system.

The most successful programs rely on strategic partners that can extend faculty capacity through technology, provide empirically tested insights, and consistently deliver the personalized support nursing students need. As retention strategies become more data-driven and proactive, partners like ATI and its purpose-built AI engine are becoming a big part of how programs build the retention systems that push students to succeed.

Simply put, it’s about doing more. Patty Knecht, PhD, MSN, RN, Chief Nursing Officer for Ascend Learning, describes this “more” as a comprehensive crusade to increase retention and prepare the nursing workforce for the future: “We need to address the specific retention issues of both students and faculty. We need to diversify the population of nursing students. And we can’t overlook the need to increase the overall capacity of nursing programs.”

ATI and the New Systems of Nursing Retention

When more enrollments can’t solve the problem, it becomes more obvious how critical student retention can be to the nursing workforce. Such stability is necessary for prolonged learning and practice-ready transitions. As such, it’s also essential to the competency of the nursing workforce as a whole.

Unfortunately, today’s faculty are often working with fixed budgets and limited resources. On top of that, students arrive at programs with increasingly complex support needs, both inside and outside the classroom. Is it really all that surprising that traditional reactive remediation models are no longer sufficient?

Conversely, many programs are moving beyond isolated interventions and adopting comprehensive retention systems that identify risk early, personalize support, and give faculty greater visibility into student progress. That's where ATI can help. By combining predictive assessments, data-driven insights, targeted remediation, and AI-powered learning support, ATI helps nursing programs build proactive retention models that improve student outcomes and empower educators.

“If you don't start thinking about tracking and retention from day one, you're behind the eight ball the rest of the time,” said Amy Edmison, DNP, RN, CNE, a former academic program director who is now a Nursing Education Consultant for ATI. “Nurse educators can have a great impact on increasing retention by knowing and using the resources available, identifying students’ strengths as well as opportunities for improvement, and tracking student progress closely.”

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References

1. Sheikoleslami RL, Princeton DM, Hansen LIM, Kisa S, Goyal AR. Examining factors associated with attrition, strategies for retention among undergraduate nursing students, and identified research gaps: a scoping review. Nursing Reports. 2025;15(6):182. doi: 10.3390/nursrep15060182.
2. American Association of Colleges of Nursing. Schools of Nursing See Enrollment Increases Across Most Program Levels, Signaling Strong Interest in Nursing Careers. May 7, 2026. https://www.aacnnursing.org/news-data/all-news/article/schools-of-nursing-see-enrollment-increases-across-most-program-levels-signaling-strong-interest-in-nursing-careers-1480
3. American Association of Colleges of Nursing. Fact Sheet: Nursing Faculty Shortage. https://www.aacnnursing.org/Portals/0/PDFs/Fact-Sheets/Faculty-Shortage-Factsheet.pdf
4. Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Department of Labor. Registered Nurses. Occupational Outlook Handbook. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/registered-nurses.htm
5. Spector N, Silvestre J, McIntosh Q, Kaminski-Ozturk N. National Nursing Education Database: 2023–2024 Aggregate Data. National Council of State Boards of Nursing; June 2025. https://www.ncsbn.org/public-files/2023-2024-AggregateData-digital-v2.pdf
6. American Association of Colleges of Nursing. New AACN Data Points to Enrollment Challenges Facing U.S. Schools of Nursing. April 15, 2024. https://www.aacnnursing.org/news-data/all-news/article/new-aacn-data-points-to-enrollment-challenges-facing-us-schools-of-nursing
7. ATI Nursing Education. Data collected in a survey of faculty in ATI-supported nursing education programs, March to November 2024.  
8. Park EO, Chang K, Koduah S. Structured Assessments: Enhancing Success in Early Nursing Education and Student Retention. Nursing Reports. 2025;15(9):335. doi:10.3390/nursrep15090335.
9. Fooladi E, Karim MN, Vance S, Walker L, Zanjani ME, Ilic D, Brand G. Factors Associated With Undergraduate Nursing Students' Academic and Clinical Performance: A Mixed-Methods Study. Frontiers in Medicine. 2022;9. doi:10.3389/fmed.2022.793591.
10. Jadhav RA, Parekh R. Literature Review on Early Intervention Strategies to Address Student Attrition With Predictive Analytics. International Journal of Creative Research Thoughts. 2025. https://ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT2507276.pdf

 

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About the author: Ryan Garrett is a freelance writer specializing in healthcare and clinical research. With 15 years of experience as a writer and developmental editor, he helps organizations share their evidence and expertise through content.