An estimate of the cost of educating a BN graduate and graduates of other disciplines at a Canadian university: a case study.

Nursing educators are often told that their courses and programs are too expensive. This study was planned because there is little published information available on the cost of nursing education in comparison with other disciplines. After the academic requirements for an honours or professional degree in each of 28 disciplines (excluding Medicine) were listed, and the cost/student of the courses calculated, the individual course costs were summated to provide the cost of each degree. It was found that the cost of the BN degree ($ 45 thousand) was, for example, not significantly different from the mean cost of an honours Arts degree ($ 44 +/- 7.5 thousand) and was well below the mean of an honours Science degree ($ 59 +/- 19.4 thousand). It was therefore concluded that, at this University, the BN was not expensive, and that nurse educators at other universities should be skeptical of unsubstantiated claims to the contrary.