Nursing bill will become law
Colorado measure, opposed by governor, lets two-year colleges offer bachelor’s degrees
A bill allowing Colorado’s community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees in nursing will become law Saturday, over objections of Gov. John Hickenlooper, who said the measure lets the state’s two-year institutions to bull their way into an arena already occupied by four-year colleges and universities.
In a letter released Friday afternoon, Hickenlooper said two-year schools were guilty of “mission creep” but that he would allow House Bill 1086 to become law without his signature. He took that unusual step, he said, to help head off the state’s looming nursing shortage.
Colorado already is short each year about 490 nurses with fouryear degrees, and that could rise to a cumulative shortage of 4,500 nurses by 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
The shortage of nurses is expected to be especially acute in Grand Junction, Pueblo, Colorado Springs and Fort Collins, all areas served by two-year institutions that can now offer four-year degrees.
The bill properly takes aim at that problem, Hickenlooper said, but a more comprehensive approach to address the shortage is needed. He wants the Commission on Higher Education to begin a long-term study of the issue and align educational programs to address nursing education trends.
Meanwhile, Hickenlooper said the new law is full of flaws, including allowing the State Board for Community Colleges and Occupational Education to widely overstep its authority.
Granting authority to the community college board — rather than the Commission on Higher Education — to determine the classes needed to get a four-year bachelor of science degree in nursing, is a “highly questionable expansion of the role of the Colorado’s community college system board,” he said.
State law places strict boundaries around the role and mission of each college and college system. That ensures a strong post-secondary system that meets the needs of students and provides accessible, cost-effective programs, he said.
By law, the community college system is limited to providing “general, person, career and technical education programs,” Hickenlooper said. The new law would allow an expansion of the role of the community college system that could lead to a duplication and inefficiencies in the higher education system, the governor said.
Proponents of the bill, including Colorado’s community colleges, said a precedent was made
when lawmakers in 2013 allowed Red Rocks Community College to provide a graduate program in physician assistant studies.
Hickenlooper said he found this argument unpersuasive. “A second instance of questionable mission expansion is not made more reassuring by a first,” he said.
He also said he was troubled by the limited efforts made by the bill’s proponents to reach out to Colorado’s four-year colleges and universities to help craft the legislation. “All legislation benefits from broad and robust engagement. Such collaboration would certainly have benefited this bill,” Hickenlooper said.
He asked legislators not to permit further erosion of the oversight provided by the Colorado Commission of Higher Education and accept encroachment by the Colorado Community College System.
This comes in spite of the “laudable goals that may conceal such expansions,” Hickenlooper said.
House Bill 1086 received bipartisan support from lawmakers and from the CCCS. The bill “by no means will end the nursing shortage but it will significantly help,” said CCCS spokeswoman Fiona Lytle.
Most universities at first objected to the bill, echoing the concerns made by Hickenlooper. But later they decided not to oppose the measure, saying it appeared to be expanding existing two-year programs and not creating new ones.