Best Online Nurse Educator Degrees for 2025

As you get closer to graduation, it’s time to start turning your thoughts toward your first job after graduation. You might have trouble updating and refining your resume, working on individualized cover letters, and setting up interview appointments. After all, you’ll be working on your capstone or thesis and beyond busy. A Career and Placement Services office on campus can help with some of the legwork. You’ll be able to access jobs, internships and, if needed, on-campus jobs. Schedule appointments with career services staff to explore nurse educator careers and positions. Receive resume feedback and assistance in writing a cover letter that will be noticed. Finally, you’ll be able to take part in on-campus job search events.

The schools that are featured in “top 20” lists do tend to lead to the highest employment averages. Students who graduate from one of these 20 colleges boast, on average, an employment rate of 84%. In comparison, the overall average is only 50%.

Within a top 20 school, choices of major also impact employment. Even with the nursing shortage, engineering students claim the second-highest employment rate of 54%. Make note of the top 20 colleges if high probability matters to you.

Well, there are many responsibilities that a nurse educator might have depending on where they work. Generally, they are best known for leading clinical rotations for nurses in training. They walk them through the various responsibilities of being a nurse and ensure that they are performing their duties correctly and in a way that will not cause harm to patients. Not only do they walk students through these tasks and teach clinical skills and patient care, but they often create the curricula that is followed at teaching hospitals. And they do this all while maintaining the required certifications and credentials so that they are properly licensed as nurses themselves. Finally, they may also instruct on hospital research, ensuring that staff understand and incorporate the newest evidence-based practices.

First, you’ll need to have the ability to communicate easily and effectively in order to teach and pass on the knowledge and skills that the next generation of nurses need in order to succeed and care for patients. You’ll also need to be able to lead as leadership and professionalism can help you get through to difficult students and maintain calm in what can be a very stressful environment. Finally, you’ll need knowledge and experience to get you started. You must know what best practices are in order to pass them on to students. This means gaining the necessary education, ensuring that you are a lifelong learner so you can gain new knowledge as it becomes available, gaining experience in a hospital or clinical environment, etc.

Assuming everything goes perfectly, it should take around six to ten years to become a nurse educator. This is because you are likely to need to earn a bachelor’s and master’s degree to get into this specific field. And you’ll need some experience, as mentioned above. So, assuming you take the normal amount of time to graduate, six to ten years is enough time for you to gain all of that and find an open nurse educator position.