MILWAUKEE — Another for-profit college could come to Milwaukee as soon as this year.
The final barrier preventing the Arizona College of Nursing from occupying a space at the Honey Creek Corporate Center on Milwaukee’s west side was removed last week.
The City of Milwaukee’s Common Council approved a zoning change, adopted by the city’s zoning committee a week earlier. It adds “college” to the list of permitted uses at Honey Creek. The building has housed two colleges in the past: Lakeland University, a nonprofit college and Strayer University, a for-profit college that closed in 2013.
The zoning change came amid apprehension about a nationwide nursing shortage. Gov. Tony Evers created a task force on Jan. 29, 2024 to study the workforce challenges facing Wisconsin’s health care system and come up with a plan for retention and recruitment.
“Wisconsin needs more nurses and there are students who are not getting into nursing programs there,” Nick Mansour said, chairman of the Arizona College of Nursing.
On June 11, when the Common Council adopted the zoning change, alderpeople mentioned the fear of a lawsuit as being a reason to move forward.
“If there are legal repercussions, I would keep them in mind, lest a protest vote turn into a policy that gets us sued,” Ald. Scott Spiker said.
“We get sued every day, so what’s new?” Ald. Mark Chambers said. “We’ve been through this too many times. You have individuals who are paying $70,000 to $80,000 for a piece of paper that’s sometimes not even accredited.”
The adoption came after a decision was tabled at the zoning committee meeting on March 14, 2024. The possibility of another for-profit college coming to Milwaukee has been under scrutiny for months. Health care workers, union leaders and educators spoke out at multiple zoning committee meetings in opposition, including the meeting on June 4 when the committee adopted the zoning change.
A petition by the Wisconsin Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals has 820 signatures opposing the Arizona College of Nursing.
“This was a difficult vote for all of us on the committee,” Ald. JoCasta Zamarripa said at the Common Council meeting.
There have been a handful of for-profit colleges in the Milwaukee area that have closed in the past due to predatory practices, including hefty student loans, the inability to find jobs and credits that were not transferable to other institutions. The most notable were ITT Tech, Sanford Brown and Everest College. All were entangled in a slew of lawsuits.
Edna Hudson-Kinzey taught at Everest College and Sanford Brown. The registered nurse and president of Milwaukee’s National Black Nurses Association chapter said it’s the reason she’s wary of another for-profit college setting up shop in a city that has a high minority population.
“There is no support for the barriers that sometimes keep poor people impoverished and for the Black and brown communities,” she said. “Show the support to me, show me how it’s going to work for me.”
Kinzey said, from her experience teaching in for-profit schools, getting admitted is never the challenge.
“They may be able to get admitted, but for them to progress and graduate from nursing programs, that’s where it gets very challenging,” she said. “Once they’re enrolled and once the Department of Education disperses the money to the school, the student is on their own.”
Tamara Poole, Arizona College of Nursing’s associate provost, listed off support that she said the college has for students.
“We have what we call success coaches, student achievement coaches, as well as NCLEX success coaches,” she said. “We have learning resource coordinators where they work with the specific academic pieces.”
She said the student achievement coaches also connect students with housing, transportation, food and resources within the community. Poole cited an NCLEX (the examination for the licensing of nurses) pass rate of 89.74% for the college in 2023. She also cited a 91.7% job placement rate within the first six months of graduation. Chairman Mansour touted the school’s retention rate. Click here to view the college’s demographics.
“According to the Department of Education, our retention rate is better than 13 out of 15 schools in Milwaukee,” Mansour said. “We’re looking at a 30-year history with no closures.”
What the Arizona College of Nursing does have is an ongoing lawsuit in Dallas, Texas. Eighteen former students are suing the college for misleading practices, including dishonesty about transferrable credits and being overcharged for credit hours, which the students claim is a breach of their signed enrollment agreement.
“Two different agencies looked into what the students are alleging and found nothing,” Mansour said, citing the Texas Workforce Commission and the Accrediting Bureau of Health Education School. “It is an ongoing lawsuit and we can’t really comment on it.”
The for-profit college is also on a 3-year probation in its home state of Arizona until May 2025. Per the consent agreement, the Arizona State Board of Nursing said it received 14 complaints between May 6, 2021 and Nov. 3, 2021, including from students and faculty. Among other things, they allege non-compliance with program policies and standards, a high number of program and course changes without adequate notice to students, inadequate clinical faculty, and a decline in BSN completion rates.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Nursing Dean Kim Litwack voiced concerns about yet another thing: the location and availability of clinical sites for students who enroll at for-profit schools.
“Often what happens is they start looking for clinical sites that are further and further away or that are evenings, nights and weekends,” Litwack said. “If you’re already bringing in at-risk students and complicating their access by making them drive further to clinical sites and making them do clinical evenings, nights and weekends, it makes it harder to find faculty and harder to find a good fit for a student.”
Litwack also questioned whether clinical spots and faculty would be readily available for another nursing school.
“We need to partner with our health care agencies to make those clinical sites available for students,” she said. “A new player in the mix dilutes that pool further, so it actually works against us rather than supporting the workforce.”
Poole spoke to Alderpeople at the June 4 zoning committee meeting, assuring them that clinical sites were already secured without taking spots away from other institutions. She said 42% of those clinical sites are located within 10 miles of the college’s intended Milwaukee campus. She said the majority of them are within 18 miles. She cited less than 10% as being further than 35 miles. Some of the furthest locations include Racine and Watertown.
“We do have supports in place to offer transportation if it is beyond that 50-mile radius, if students will have to go further than that, but we don’t anticipate that as an issue,” she said.
The Higher Education Regional Alliance submitted a letter to Milwaukee’s Zoning Committee prior to its March 14, 2024 meeting. The letter is signed by 17 chancellors and presidents of private and nonprofit colleges in Wisconsin, opposing the Arizona College of Nursing.