Online nursing degrees are growing in popularity as more people rush to enter the lucrative, highly in-demand field of nursing.
Online degrees offer some wonderful advantages. You can take classes at whatever time of day is convenient for you. You can work full-time and still earn a salary while getting your degree. You can bring your laptop with you and study and send in homework assignments while you are on the bus or subway, at the beach, or at the coffeeshop. You don’t have to spend time and gasoline driving to a college campus, looking for parking, walking half a mile to your building, walking back….
However, online nursing degrees do have their limitations.
First of all, there is currently only one online program in the country that we know of – the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh – that allows a person with no healthcare degree or certificate to get their nursing degree. They take a limited number of students, they require you to have a previous bachelor’s degree, you must have completed a number of science and other prerequisites, and they grant an accelerated second bachelor’s degree. Most of the program is online, but you must go to the campus in Oshkosh several times, AND not every state offers the clinicals that are required for the program.
What is much more common are programs that allow an LPN or a paramedic to take a “bridge” program which allows the LPN to complete their associate degree and become a registered nurse. An example of this is Chamberlain College of Nursing. Excelsior College and many others offer these opportunities as well.
You can also, after you get your associate’s degree in nursing, take online classes to get a bachelor’s of science in nursing. This frequently will result in a higher salary, and also, if you want to progress into managerial positions, you generally need at least a BSN.
There are online nursing degree programs which grant master’s degrees in nursing as well.
Also, you can take many of your prerequisites online – English, psychology, nutrition, etc. You need to have those completed before you are accepted into an LPN to RN bridge program.