An Iowa Senate subcommittee moved ahead legislation Wednesday to set a residency requirement in the University of Iowa nursing program — with no guarantees of it even coming to the full Education Committee without members seeing more information.
House File 2226 passed the House with other higher education legislation Feb. 24. It would require the UI’s bachelor of science in nursing program to establish a 70% residency requirement and prioritization of Iowa students for enrolling applicants, with reporting requirements to the General Assembly.
Iowa Senate Education Committee Chair Lynn Evans, R-Aurelia, chaired the subcommittee alongside Sen. Molly Donahue, D-Marion, and Sen. Mike Pike, R-Des Moines.
Iowa Board of Regents State Relations Officer Jason Chapman told the subcommittee the board has concerns about “what the bill would do for the nursing profession in the state.” There is a “limited pool” of graduating high school students who turn to a nursing education every year, he said, and if the UI is needing to draw in more in-state students, that could harm programs at Iowa’s private universities and community colleges as well as at the University of Northern Iowa.
“Some of those already have vacancies and seats they’re trying to fill, and so if there’s less candidates available to go to them, then some of those programs might be in jeopardy of (losing) long-term sustainability,” Chapman said.
The UI recognizes the goal of the bill, Chapman said, and has already started looking into assigning an earlier admission date and lowering the required minimum ACT score for Iowa residents to 24, rather than the 26 score requirement for out-of-state applicants.
One of Donahue’s main issues with the legislation was the “huge” fiscal impact it could have. A fiscal note on the bill states the UI College of Nursing would see decreased revenues by as much as $1.3 million by fiscal year 2030. She added that she wants “the best students admitted to all medical fields, not just Iowa kids.”
Pike agreed that the university shouldn’t lower its standards just to get more Iowa students in, and questioned what the process would be if the UI does fail to meet the 70% threshold — would an exception be made to fill seats, or would the university not be allowed to bring any more out-of-state students in?
“You don’t want to have open seats when we have need for these areas,” Donahue said. “We want to be able to fill them, and if you can only fill them from Missouri, then fill them with Missouri.”
Evans and Pike both signed off on the legislation, with the caveat from Evans that he won’t make any promises about bringing it to committee until he receives more information on the program’s current admission requirements and efforts to recruit Iowan students.
“There’s questions I need to answer before I make a value determination on this,” Evans said. “I have had conversations during the interim with Representative Collins, who helped author this, but since that time, I haven’t had a lot of conversations with him, so I plan on moving it along today.”