Top Nursing School in Alaska for 2024

Nursing Degrees & Schools / Best Schools Alaska

Alaska is projected to be short 5,400 nurses by 2030 according to the Health Resources and Services Administration. So, Alaska needs nurses!

Alaska is also known for its nursing program at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Although Alaska may be the biggest state in the U.S., there is only one nursing program available to future healthcare workers.

In this article, you’re going to learn about the state’s top nursing school, how it’s ranked, and the nursing programs offered at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

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Alaska’s top nursing programs:

1. University of Alaska Anchorage — Score 93

Location

The University of Alaska Anchorage is the largest university in the state, perfectly placed in the largest city in Alaska.

Anchorage’s well-established college isn’t the only reason you should attend nursing school in Alaska. With the city’s abundance of wildlife, trails, parks, and nearby glaciers, you have the opportunity to gain more than a nursing degree.

You, and the 11,000 other students enrolled at the University of Alaska Anchorage can see art, listen to music, and marvel at the Northern Lights (which are best seen between August and April).  

Tuition

If you’re an Alaska native, the School of Nursing will have a tuition of $6,768 per semester. However, the out-of-state student tuition is $20,352 per semester. 

The University of Alaska Anchorage is one of the most affordable nursing school programs offered to out-of-staters. 

So when it comes to picking your nursing school, whether you live in Alaska, or have wanted to travel outside your home state, Anchorage may be the place for you. Not just because of location, or the low tuition, but also because of the school’s high NCLEX pass rate.

NCLEX pass rate 

The University of Alaska Anchorage also boasts excellent NCLEX pass rates. With a 93% NCLEX pass rate, the University of Alaska Anchorage has seen more than 400 students get their nursing degrees in the last four years alone. The school offers four different nursing programs (don’t worry, more on that soon).

Additionally, the majority of the School of Nursing’s graduates obtain jobs as RNs or NPs within nine to 12 months of graduation after they take and pass their certification exams.

The University of Alaska Anchorage offers four nursing programs to its students. The university offers a program for every aspiring nurse. The programs are as follows:

• AAS

Students applying for the Associate of Applied Science nursing program for the upcoming fall and spring courses in 2022 and 2023 will be the last to say they got their AAS degrees from the University of Alaska Anchorage. Because of the high volume of applicants seeking their BSN in Anchorage, the university will be transitioning the AAS out of these locations in order to increase the capacity of the BSN. The final class of AAS students will begin in the fall of 2022 (with a spring 2022 application deadline).

• BSN

The BSN program is offered through the University of Alaska Anchorage is based in Anchorage. Additionally, the university also admits students in Fairbanks, Kodiak, and Mat-Su. Students applying to the BSN program will be admitted as pre-majors. 

• MSN

The Master’s program offers online, hybrid, distance, and face-to-face courses. While most courses are taken online, nursing students will go to the Anchorage campus and other on-site clinical rotations throughout the state. 

Students in the clinical practice track can choose between two concentrations: family nurse practitioner (FNP) or psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner (PMHNP). Students in the leadership track can also choose between two concentrations: leadership in nursing education or leadership in nursing administration.

DNP

The Doctor of Nurse Practice program is available to nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, nurse anesthetists, and clinical nurse specialists. Since DNP students are expected to have extensive knowledge in nursing. Knowing how to interpret research, apply the best practices, and having clinical knowledge are all skills needed for the program.

You can attend full-time and finish in four semesters. You can also attend part-time, which could take six to seven semesters to graduate.

Graduation Rate

A school’s graduation rate indicates the school’s resources, time, and investment the program offers. The AAS graduation rate stands at 89%. The BSN graduation rate is 85%, and the MSN graduation rate is 82%.

Next steps

After graduating from the University of Alaska Anchorage, nurses make around $45 per hour or $95,000 a year on average.

If you decide to attend the University of Alaska Anchorage, you can expect to receive a great education in a unique environment. However, if you’re still trying to weigh out other options, feel free to check out other school ratings for Georgia, Texas, California and more.

Methodology

Incredible Health works diligently to get you the information you need on the top nursing schools in the country. We retrieved our data from university webpages, the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, and U.S. News Best Colleges (sources provided below).

• University of Alaska Anchorage webpages
• The US Department of Education’s College Scorecard
• The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 
• The National Council of State Boards of Nursing Exams Page

In other states, Incredible Health calculates the scores from the lowest-scoring schools from each individual metric. From there, we assigned it a number between 1 and 10 in order to create brackets within that range to place each college. 

The University of Alaska has a 93% NCLEX pass rate and has been an accredited school since 1974.

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When it comes to the University of Alaska Anchorage, we retrieved our data from the following locations: