Some Pittsburgh-area universities are encouraging the state to consider lowering the number of credits required for select bachelor’s degree programs as a solution to healthcare workforce shortages.
The proposal was discussed Thursday during a Senate Labor and Industry Committee roundtable at Carlow University, where university presidents, hospital leaders and lawmakers explored ways to address growing workforce shortages in healthcare.
State Sen. Devlin Robinson, R-Bridgeville, who chairs the committee, organized the meeting to examine staffing challenges facing private universities and healthcare providers and identify strategies to strengthen the pathway from higher education into healthcare careers.
The conversation comes as state Sen. Lynda Schlegel Culver, R-Northumberland, prepares legislation that would allow Pennsylvania colleges and universities to offer three-year bachelor’s degree programs. The bill has not yet been formally introduced.
A 2025 Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania survey found that state hospitals reported 14% of nursing positions were unfilled, leaving existing nurses stretched thin and working longer hours. The survey also projected the state would face a shortage of 20,000 nurses by 2026.
Local hospitals stressed how much the shortages were being felt on Thursday.
Independence Health System Chief Human Resources Officer Ken Mittra said the health system has 646 job openings, including about 200 registered nurse positions.
“If you ask me what keeps me up at night – recruitment,” Mittra said. “There’s just not enough folks in the market, in the communities that we serve to fill these openings.”
Mittra said the shortage stems in part from a lack of qualified nurses completing the clinical training and licensing requirements needed to enter the profession.
“At St. Clair, we are seeing similar trends, and I think the most important thing is to understand is that we also want a workforce that wants to stay with us,” said Andrea Kalina, senior vice president of St. Clair Hospital.
Carlow University President Kathy Humphrey said the proposal would give colleges and universities greater flexibility to reduce the time and cost required to earn certain degrees while preserving longer programs that require additional coursework.
She noted that not all bachelor’s degree programs could be completed in three years, but some could be shortened if institutions had the authority to do so.
Under current Pennsylvania law, bachelor’s degrees must include at least 120 credit hours, Humphrey said.
Under the Pennsylvania Code, the state mandates that all bachelor’s degrees – both public and private – require a minimum of 120 semester credit hours. Private universities determine those details internally, provided they meet strict standards set by national institutional accreditors.
Several states officially allow or are developing a 90-credit accelerated programs designed to fast-track students into in-demand careers, including Ohio, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah and Hawaii.
After listening quietly through much of the discussion, Chatham University President Lisa Lambert cautioned against reducing higher education to job training alone, emphasizing the importance of coursework that broadens students’ perspectives and strengthens critical-thinking skills beyond the requirements of a specific career.
“I’m sorry, I have to spit in a word here for the value of critical thinking. This is why we have things that are not simply training students in a narrow specific field,” Lambert said. “We have got to include courses that expand their knowledge.”
Duquesne University President David Dausey added that often the college environment is where students begin to mature.
“Ninety percent of what happens in colleges is outside of the classroom, and it’s how you’re learning to interact with other people, and that’s hard to replace,” Dausey said. “It’s something that you can’t substitute.”
State Sen. Nick Pisciottano, D-West Mifflin, said he needed to learn more about the proposal before supporting it.
“My knee-jerk reaction is I would be against watering down the kind of credentials we already have, just because we’re in a tight market,” Pisciottano said.