A healthy exception: community colleges and the nursing crisis

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OPINION—California faces the nation’s most severe nursing shortage. By 2038, the state is projected to face a deficit of 36,000 nurses—the largest in the nation. Nearly 75% of California’s regions are already experiencing a nursing shortage.

Yet nursing programs in California’s public higher education are constrained by limited capacity, forcing students into expensive private programs that can cost up to seven times more than a public option.

The communities hardest hit—low-income, rural, and underserved—face the sharpest consequences.

California can address this crisis. One proven way to do so is to authorize California’s community colleges to offer Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) degrees.

In 2014, California made a quiet but consequential bet. Senate Bill 850 authorized a pilot program allowing community colleges to award bachelor’s degrees in fields where workforce demand was high and access was scarce.

The assumption was straightforward: if you meet students in their communities at affordable prices, you expand who gets to contribute to California’s economy.

A decade later, the community college baccalaureate is no longer a pilot. In 2021, AB 927 expanded these programs, and they have become an engine of economic mobility.

A recent Wheelhouse report at UC Davis found that more than 50% of community college bachelor’s degree graduates say they would not have earned a bachelor’s without this pathway. Approximately 90% say the degrees were affordable and worth the cost.

Now, at least 58 California community colleges have one or more approved bachelor’s options.

This is not a win for community colleges; it is a structural correction to one of California’s most persistent inequities: the geography of opportunity. Community colleges have long served working adults, first-generation college students, immigrants and caregivers.

As community-rooted institutions, they meet students where no other segment of higher education can. That is why it is time for Sacramento to support Assembly Bill 2301.

Authored by Assemblymember Esmeralda Soria, AB 2301 would authorize up to ten community college districts to offer BSN degrees, prioritizing districts in underserved nursing areas. Building upon existing programs, the bill prioritizes students who have already earned an associate’s degree in nursing in the same district. This helps ensure students will have more opportunities to impact their communities locally.

In September 2025, a similar bill, AB 1400, unanimously passed both chambers of the California State Legislature with bipartisan support before being vetoed.

California’s nursing crisis did not stop with that veto.

Other states have already embraced this model. In Florida and Washington, community college BSN graduates consistently rank among the highest postgraduate wage earners—evidence that affordable, locally-rooted pathways produce both economic mobility and a stronger healthcare workforce.

Some opponents will cite California’s Master Plan for Higher Education, a compact assigning missions to the University of California (UC), California State University (CSU) and the California Community Colleges, arguing that its ‘differentiation function’ forbids community colleges from granting BSNs.

But the Plan is not rigid and flexibility has been exercised.

In a 2003 letter to the UC Board of Regents, UC President Atkinson described UC’s doctoral jurisdiction as existing “with the exception that CSUs can award joint doctorates.” Built into the Plan’s architecture was the recognition that California’s needs would not always fit neatly into any single segment’s mission.

CSU has since been authorized to offer doctorates in audiology, educational leadership, nursing and physical therapy. Through AB 656 (2023), CSUs received this authority where “there is an identified workforce or accreditation need that may not be fulfilled through existing education opportunities in California.”

That is precisely the standard AB 2301 meets.

The Plan was, in President Atkinson’s words, “a compact among higher education, the state, and the citizens of California”—never a boundary drawn in permanent ink. Its differentiated structure was a strategy for access and efficient use of public resources.

When state interests and student needs have demanded flexibility, California has always found the wisdom to adapt. AB 2301 asks for that same wisdom, applied to one of California’s most pressing public health challenges.

Sacramento has before it an evidence-based, affordable and targeted solution. We have seen what happens when we trust community colleges to expand their reach in service of California. The workforce crisis is here.

Community colleges and the students they serve are already in these communities. California’s healthcare system and the patients who depend on it are running out of patience.

Allow California’s community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees in nursing. The health and well-being of our state depend on it.

Cecilia Rios-Aguilar is professor and chair of the Department of Education at UCLA’s School of Education & Information Studies. Davis Vo is a PhD candidate at the school.