The College of Charleston and the Medical University of South Carolina are teaming up on a brand-new four-year nursing degree, with the first class of students expected to arrive on campus in fall 2027. The joint program keeps students at the College of Charleston for all four years while threading in MUSC's nursing instruction and clinical training, aiming to reach future nurses heading straight from high school into college.
A New Pipeline Aimed at Traditional Freshmen
According to Live 5 News, the program is built specifically for traditional first-time college students entering directly from high school. The outlet reports the degree offers a path to earn a Bachelor of Science in Nursing while providing a traditional four-year undergraduate experience. MUSC already runs an accelerated bachelor's program that serves many students who arrive with a prior degree or completed prerequisites from another school, but this new partnership is pitched at 18- to 22-year-olds, a group the station notes is not currently among MUSC's largest markets on its own.
The structure splits neatly in two. Live 5 News reports the first two years focus on general education and basic science courses, while the third and fourth years bring upper-division nursing coursework taught by MUSC faculty, along with simulation and clinical experiences. Students don't get there automatically, though: admission to the College of Charleston's lower-division pre-nursing program does not guarantee progression into the upper-division nursing track, the station's report notes. Students admitted to the lower-division program may apply for upper-division nursing during their third semester, provided they've completed the first three semesters of required coursework laid out in the program's plan of study.
Applications Open Now, Renovations Planned
Applications are open now, per the same account, with a Jan. 15 deadline for prospective students. The two institutions are developing the curriculum together and plan to renovate space on the College of Charleston campus to house the program. Graduates will walk away with a single diploma bearing the seals of both institutions — a detail that underscores how unusual this arrangement is nationally, since the article describes it as one of only a few nursing degrees jointly offered by two major universities anywhere in the country.
MUSC College of Nursing Dean Catherine Durham said increasing enrollment is key to addressing South Carolina's nursing shortage, according to the station's report. Wes Dudgeon, dean of the College of Charleston's School of Health Sciences, said the collaboration reflects a shared commitment to serving the region. John V. Marymont, MUSC's executive vice president for academic affairs and provost, said the partnership could have a lasting impact on families and patients.
The Shortage Behind the Push
The timing lines up with a workforce gap state officials have been sounding alarms about. As of December 2025, South Carolina had nearly 12,000 fewer nurses than needed to meet health care demands, per the Health Resources and Services Administration. A separate December 2025 report by The State found that federal projections point to a shortfall of 11,860 full-time nursing positions in South Carolina by 2037, or 19% of the state's projected need. The same report quoted Teshieka Curtis-Pugh of the South Carolina Nurses Association saying, “We've turned away 80,000 qualified nursing candidates, because we don't have enough nursing instructors to teach them.” A separate account from Colorado State University, citing the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, put the national figure at 78,200 qualified applicants turned away last year for lack of nursing faculty — a different number from a different source, underscoring how hard the instructor shortage is to pin down with one figure.
Other South Carolina institutions have tried their own fixes. The State reported that Lexington Medical Center partnered with the University of South Carolina's College of Nursing on a facility projected to graduate 400 additional nursing students over five years, an 80% increase. The state's BOLD Nursing Faculty Program, meanwhile, offers nursing graduate students up to $90,000 in tuition reimbursement if they agree to teach at a state university afterward, addressing the instructor bottleneck directly rather than just adding student seats.
Similar Partnerships Taking Shape Elsewhere
Charleston isn't alone in experimenting with joint-degree structures to grow the nursing pipeline. Presbyterian College and Mercer University built a five-year 3+2 pathway in which students complete three years of undergraduate coursework in Presbyterian's biology-with-nursing-concentration major before transferring to Mercer's Georgia Baptist College of Nursing for two years of nursing coursework, according to Presbyterian College. Out west, Colorado State University's Fort Collins and Pueblo campuses launched what Colorado State describes as the first-ever collaborative academic program between two campuses in the CSU System, an accelerated five-year track that leads to a master's degree in nursing leadership from CSU Pueblo while students complete their coursework in Fort Collins, per Colorado State University.
MUSC's College of Nursing already educates more than 600 students each year, according to MUSC College of Nursing. Whether the new joint pipeline meaningfully narrows South Carolina's projected shortfall will depend on how many of those Charleston freshmen make it through to the upper-division nursing coursework — but for now, the first application deadline is already on the calendar, and the first class is set to arrive in under a year.
