either a master’s or doctoral degree) average just over $85,000 (see Table 4-4). Section 5311 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) offers an incentive designed to offset lower faculty salaries by providing up to $35,000 in loan repayments and scholarships for eligible nurses who complete an advanced nursing degree and serve “as a full-time member of the faculty of an accredited school of nursing, for a total period, in the aggregate, of at least 4 years.”⁷ However, the ACA does not provide incentives for nurses to develop the specific educational and clinical competencies required to teach.

Projections of future faculty demand To establish a better understanding of future needs, the committee asked the RWJF Nursing Research Network to proj-