Typically, a three-year commitment after completion of an undergraduate program, making the call to attend nursing school is a big decision. So, who’s taking the plunge to see if nursing is the right career for them?

We quickly see that nursing is a female-dominated industry, with just 12.80% of baccalaureate students, 11.70% of master’s students, 10.50% of research-focused doctorate, and 14.20% of doctor of nursing practice students being male.3

The crown for the most popular nursing programs across the U.S. in 2020 goes to baccalaureate programs with 251,145 enrolled students. Research-focused doctoral programs had only 4,626 enrolled students in 2020.3

This isn’t surprising though, as the number of enrolled students in the programs we analyzed loosely matched the number of available programs themselves. While there were only 147 research-focused doctorate programs available in 2020, there were 805 entry-level baccalaureate programs.3

We love seeing so many students enrolling in the many available nursing programs across all levels of study, from entry-level baccalaureate to doctoral programs. But are students following through and graduating? Yes! According to the data above, more than 82,000 students attained baccalaureate degrees in 2020.3 Nearly 70,000 attained RN to baccalaureate degrees, and likewise, 51,386 students obtained master’s degrees.3
The relationship between these values is similar to what we saw when we measured the number of enrolled students in the same programs. That suggests that the decline in graduations for higher levels of education is more likely due to fewer students attempting the program rather than students dropping out.


Although we saw earlier that the number of available nursing jobs is much higher than the level of employment in 2020, things are looking up for the nursing industry. Every educational program we analyzed saw an increase in 2020 applications. Standouts include research-focused doctorate programs, which increased by 24.30%, and doctor of nursing programs, which increased by 14%.3 Additionally, the percentage of nursing school students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups saw a hefty increase across the board in 2020.