What closed at Aspen, and what did not
Search for Aspen and nursing together and you will find headlines about a programme being shut down by a state board. Those headlines are accurate. They are also about a different programme from the one most nurses are considering, and the two get conflated constantly.
Two very different things called “Aspen nursing”
Aspen ran a campus-based pre-licensure BSN in Arizona: a programme for people who were not yet nurses and were training to sit the NCLEX for the first time. It had physical locations, clinical rotations and a cohort structure.
Aspen also runs online post-licensure programmes — the RN to BSN, the MSN, the RN to MSN bridge and the DNP. These are for people who already hold a licence and are adding a qualification. Different students, different delivery, different regulator relationship.
It was the first that closed. The second is what this site is about.
What happened in Arizona
The pre-licensure programme's NCLEX pass rate fell to 58%, below the Arizona State Board of Nursing's required minimum. In March 2022 the programme was placed on disciplinary probation with new admissions suspended. In September 2022 Aspen entered a consent agreement with the Board and voluntarily surrendered the programme's approval, with a teach-out for students already enrolled. That teach-out concluded and the programme closed.
Why it still matters to your decision
Not because it makes the online programmes unsafe, but for two narrower reasons worth weighing honestly:
- It is evidence a regulator was willing to act. A state board suspended admissions and required a teach-out. That tells you oversight functioned, which is reassuring, and it tells you the institution had a programme fall below standard, which is worth knowing.
- It shapes what people around you believe. Colleagues and managers who half-remember the headlines may assume your degree came from a closed programme. Being able to explain the difference in one sentence is genuinely useful.
If you are looking to become a nurse
Aspen is not your route. The pre-licensure programme is gone and the remaining nursing programmes all require an existing licence. You need a pre-licensure ADN or BSN somewhere else first, and that is a different search with different criteria — NCLEX pass rate at the top of them.