Quick answer: This is the rare clinical-adjacent degree that genuinely works at a distance. The credential runs through a CCNE-accredited MSN with a nursing education focus. Programs, the careers this degree opens, and what they pay are covered below.
What Do Online Nursing Education Degree Programs Actually Look Like?
This is the rare clinical-adjacent degree that genuinely works at a distance. Students already hold an RN license and are already working, curriculum design, assessment and teaching-practicum coursework transfers to online delivery cleanly, and the practicum is often completed at the student’s own employer or a local nursing program.
Before you request information anywhere, confirm CCNE or ACEN accreditation for the specific program and ask how the teaching practicum is arranged - and whether it can be completed at your current employer. With that filter set, compare online nursing education programs enrolling now:
Colleges Offering This Degree
Every school listed is verified in federal IPEDS data both to award this degree and to offer programs that can be completed entirely by distance education at this level. Whether this exact degree is delivered fully online varies by school, so confirm the format before you apply.
How we rank schools – graduation rate, graduate earnings, cost and retention.
Advertising plays no part.
This page lists 10 schools, closest group first, then ordered by
BOC Score with the highest at the top.
10 of them carry a score.
LOCAL RANK
Location / proximity to this page
Defines the local group
Graduation rate how often students finish
30%
Median earnings, 10 years after entry whether it paid off
25%
Average net price what students actually pay after aid; lower ranks higher
20%
Retention rate how many come back for year two
15%
Fully online availability whether you can study while working
10%
Scores come from IPEDS (2024) and the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard.
Earnings are for all graduates of a school, not one program, so treat them as a signal
about the institution rather than about this subject.
Sponsored listings are paid placements and are labelled as such; they are separate from
this ranking and never change it. Read the full methodology.
Confirm the program itself carries accreditation from CCNE or ACEN, since faculty-qualification standards at the programs that hire nurse educators reference accredited preparation. Ask how the teaching practicum is arranged and whether it can be completed at your current employer. If a faculty position is the goal rather than hospital staff development, ask what terminal degree the institutions you are targeting expect, because tenure-track expectations differ sharply from community-college instructor roles.
Why CCNE Accreditation Decides the Outcome
Nursing programs carry accreditation from CCNE, the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, or by ACEN. That matters twice here: the graduate degree should come from an accredited program, and the programs that hire nurse educators are themselves accredited and have faculty-qualification standards to meet. An RN license is a prerequisite throughout.
Separately from programmatic accreditation, the institution itself should hold accreditation from a recognized institutional accreditor. Credit transfer between institutions is decided by the receiving school and genuinely varies, so get any transfer evaluation in writing before enrolling.
Questions to Ask an Admissions Office
Ask these before an application fee, and get the answers in writing rather than over the phone:
Is the program currently with accreditation from CCNE, and has its status changed in the last three years? Verify the answer against CCNE directly rather than the program’s own page.
Who arranges the required in-person hours, the program or the student, and what happens if no site is available in my cohort year?
Which prior coursework or credentials transfer in, and will you evaluate my transcript in writing before I enroll? Transfer is decided by the receiving institution and genuinely varies.
What is the total time to completion for someone in my situation, including prerequisites, and how many students in the last cohort finished on that schedule?
Before you shortlist schools, it also helps to be precise about the job this degree points at.
What Does the Job Involve Day to Day?
Nurse educators teach in the programs that produce the nursing workforce, and in hospital staff-development departments. The work splits between classroom instruction, clinical supervision of students on real units, curriculum and assessment design, and the accreditation reporting that nursing programs live under. It is one of the few routes out of bedside shift work that keeps a nurse inside the profession.
What You Will Study
Coursework typically moves away from clinical content and into curriculum design, instructional strategy, assessment and measurement, educational technology, and the theory behind how adults learn clinical reasoning. Most programs include advanced content in one clinical area so that graduates can teach credibly in it, plus coursework in program evaluation and accreditation standards, which is a substantial part of the actual job in an accredited nursing program.
Licensing and Credentialing
The national framework is the constant: a CCNE-accredited program, then the credential required by employers. What sits on top of that framework is set jurisdiction by jurisdiction, and this site does not hold a sourced dataset of per-state rules, so confirm the specifics with your state board of nursing before enrolling.
How Fast Is the Field Growing?
Employment is projected to change by 16.8% between 2024 and 2034, with roughly 8,600 openings a year (BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34). Openings come from growth and from replacing people who leave the occupation, which is why the annual figure can look large relative to the percentage.
What to Weigh Before Committing
The candid framing is that this is a lateral or slightly downward move in immediate pay for many bedside nurses, and it should be chosen for the reasons that actually motivate it: predictable hours, no night shifts, reduced physical demand, and a career ceiling that keeps rising rather than flattening. The upper percentiles of the instructor range run substantially above the median, and academic positions carry schedule structures that hospital nursing does not. The demand side is favorable because the faculty shortage is itself the constraint on how many nursing students programs can admit. The gap against staff nursing pay is documented in the pay section below.
Where This Sits on the Ladder
This is the licensed tier above credentials many readers already hold. The rungs run:
Licensed practical nurse - state licensed, works under RN or physician direction
Registered nurse - ADN or BSN, state licensed, delivers and coordinates care
Nurse educator - graduate nursing degree, teaches in a nursing program or a hospital education department
The pay gap between the rungs is documented in the pay section below.
What These Careers Pay
Nursing instructors and teachers, postsecondary earn a median $80,250 per year (BLS OEWS, May 2025). For scale, registered nurses show a median of $97,550 against $80,250 for nursing instructors and teachers, postsecondary (BLS OEWS, May 2025).
Nursing Education at a Glance
Measure
Value
Median annual wage
$80,250
Employed nationally
77,960
Bottom 10 percent
$48,800
Top 10 percent
$129,500
Middle half
$63,510 to $101,090
Projected change, 2024-34
16.8%
Annual openings
about 8,600
Wage and employment figures: BLS OEWS, May 2025. Growth and openings: BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34.
Where Do Nursing instructors and teachers, postsecondary Earn the Most?
State
Median annual wage
Employment
Hawaii
$129,530
1,890
District of Columbia
$107,770
110
Delaware
$98,170
240
Nevada
$96,500
870
Connecticut
$95,500
1,380
Highest-paying states, BLS OEWS, May 2025. Cost of living is not held constant, so a higher median does not automatically mean more disposable income.
Cost, Time and Whether It Pays
This site does not publish tuition figures, because there is no sourced dataset behind them and the number varies enormously by institution and residency. What can be stated is the wage structure the degree can lead into. The middle half of nursing instructors and teachers, postsecondary earn between $63,510 and $101,090, with the bottom 10 percent at $48,800 and the top 10 percent at $129,500 (BLS OEWS, May 2025). The gap between the 25th and 75th percentile is the honest range to plan against - not the median alone, and not the top figure.
Against the tier below, registered nurses show a median of $97,550. The difference is what the additional education is buying, and it should be weighed against the years out of full-time earnings that the program requires.
Where the Jobs Are
State
Employment
Median annual wage
Texas
6,830
$84,930
New York
6,340
$82,950
California
5,610
$81,960
Illinois
4,940
$79,150
Florida
4,320
$82,410
Largest employing states, BLS OEWS, May 2025. Employment concentration and pay do not track each other, which is why the highest-paying states above are not the same list. State and metro pages linked below carry the full distribution.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you earn a nursing education degree online?
Largely yes, and this is one of the few nursing pathways where that is true. Students already hold an RN license, and the coursework is pedagogy rather than clinical skills. A teaching practicum is still required, but it is frequently arranged locally, often at the student's own workplace.
How much do nurse educators make?
The national median annual wage for postsecondary nursing instructors and teachers is $80,250 (BLS OEWS, May 2025). The bottom 10 percent earn $48,800 or less and the top 10 percent earn $129,500 or more, across 77,960 nursing instructors nationally. The spread is wide because it covers community-college instructors through university faculty.
Do nurse educators earn less than staff nurses?
Sometimes, and it is worth being clear about. The median for postsecondary nursing instructors is $80,250, against $97,550 for registered nurses (BLS OEWS, May 2025). The trade is schedule, physical demand and career ceiling rather than an immediate raise, and the upper percentiles of the instructor range run well above the median.
What degree do you need to teach nursing?
The common entry point is a graduate nursing degree with an education focus, on top of an active RN license. Tenure-track university positions frequently expect a doctorate. Requirements are set by the hiring program and its accreditor rather than nationally.
Is nursing education a growing field?
It is among the faster-growing teaching occupations covered on this site. Employment of postsecondary nursing instructors is projected to change by 16.8% from 2024 to 2034, with about 8,600 openings per year (BLS Employment Projections, 2024-34). The driver is the faculty shortage that limits how many nursing students programs can admit.
Do I need to keep my RN license active as a nurse educator?
Yes in essentially all cases. Teaching nursing requires clinical credibility and, for anyone supervising students on a live unit, an active license is a practical necessity. The specifics are set by the hiring program and its accreditor, so confirm with your state board of nursing and the institutions you are targeting.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025, SOC 25-1072 Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections program, 2024-34.
About this guide: Researched and written by the TradeCareerPath Editorial Team. Our editorial team researches and sources every trade school and career guide using federal labor and education data, including BLS OEWS and Employment Projections, DOL apprenticeship records, IPEDS, College Scorecard, and state licensing boards. We follow the editorial standards documented at /editorial-policy/.
