Tuskegee University School of Nursing and Allied Health

What Tuskegee's School of Nursing and Allied Health actually is

Tuskegee University opened the first baccalaureate nursing program in the state of Alabama in 1948. The program earned initial national accreditation in April 1957 and has since graduated more than 6,000 nurses, according to the School of Nursing and Allied Health (SONAH). The school sits inside one of the most consequential HBCUs in American history, on the campus founded by Booker T. Washington in 1881, the campus where George Washington Carver built his lab, and the campus where the Tuskegee Airmen trained during World War II.

The Department of Nursing offers one degree: the Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN). The structure is two phases. Students complete a Pre-Professional Phase of general education and prerequisite science coursework, then apply into a Professional Phase that runs the upper-division clinical nursing curriculum. Tuskegee does not currently advertise an accelerated BSN, an RN-to-BSN bridge, or a graduate nursing degree.

The broader School of Nursing and Allied Health includes two additional departments. Health Sciences is the pre-professional pathway for students aiming at physical therapy, physician assistant, public health, and similar graduate programs; Tuskegee does not run its own DPT. Occupational Therapy is housed in SONAH as well. Across the school, the stated mission, in SONAH's own words, is to serve "rural, diverse, and vulnerable populations to alleviate health disparity."

Accreditation and licensure standing

The BSN is accredited by the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN). The Department of Nursing's public page describes the current status as "Continuing Accreditation with conditions," which in ACEN terminology means the program is accredited and operating, with specific findings the program is working to resolve before the next site visit. The program is also approved by the Alabama Board of Nursing, which is the state regulatory body that authorizes nursing programs and reports NCLEX-RN pass rates.

The pass-rate picture is mixed and worth being honest about. The Alabama Board of Nursing's public "Pass Rates by Institutions" report for calendar year 2023 lists Tuskegee University's baccalaureate first-time NCLEX-RN pass rate at 65.52%. The Department of Nursing's own program-outcomes panel on the SONAH nursing page cites 83.33% with no explicit calendar-year label. Both numbers come from primary sources. Both should be in front of you before you commit. With a small cohort, one rough year moves the percentage dramatically, and Tuskegee is a small program.

Cost of attendance, 2024 to 2025

Tuskegee is a private university, so the in-state and out-of-state tuition figures are identical. Per the Tuskegee Bursar's official Semester Tuition, Fees, and Expenses sheet (revised May 30, 2024):

• Full-time undergraduate tuition (12 to 18 credit hours): $21,064 per year
• Mandatory fees (technology, activity, ID, health insurance, e-books): $4,322 per year
• Standard double-occupancy residence hall room and board: $11,072 per year
• Renters insurance (required in TU housing): $76
• Published on-campus total cost of attendance: $36,534

Nursing students in the Professional Phase (juniors and seniors) are also charged program fees: $110 per year for lab equipment, $120 per year for cognitive diagnostic testing, and a $420 NCLEX review and testing fee in the second senior semester. Tuskegee reports that 90% of undergraduates receive grants or scholarships, but I can only verify that figure from secondary aggregators, not from a Tuskegee-published primary source, so treat it as directional.

Admissions

For the BSN Professional Phase, the application deadline for Fall 2026 entry is June 1, 2026, and the Department of Nursing has waived the TEAS score requirement for this cycle. University-wide first-year freshman admission goes through the central Office of Admissions; a posted hard deadline for freshman admission is not on the public admissions landing page, so prospective students should contact Admissions directly.

• Office of Admissions email: admissions@tuskegee.edu
• Admissions phone: 334-727-8500, or toll-free 800-622-6531
• Department of Nursing direct line: 334-727-8710

The Tuskegee context, named directly

You cannot talk honestly about training to be a Black nurse at Tuskegee without naming what happened on this campus. From 1932 to 1972, the United States Public Health Service ran the Syphilis Study at Tuskegee, enrolling 399 Black men with syphilis and 201 controls, withholding treatment even after penicillin became standard of care in 1947, and letting the disease progress so researchers could observe. The study ended in 1972 after Associated Press reporter Jean Heller broke the story. President Clinton apologized on behalf of the federal government in 1997. In 1999, the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care was established at Tuskegee, on the same campus as SONAH.

That history is not a footnote at Tuskegee. It is part of how the institution understands its role in training Black clinicians. Students here learn bioethics in a building down the road from where the harm was done, and they graduate into a workforce where Black patients still carry the inherited mistrust of medical institutions that the study produced. For some students that is exactly the reason to come to Tuskegee. For others it is heavy. Both responses are legitimate.

Clinical training and outcomes

The Department of Nursing's named clinical partner is Baptist Health Systems, the Montgomery-based hospital network. SONAH recently launched a paid apprenticeship in partnership with Baptist Health in which Professional Phase students begin earning a salary in their second semester of clinical rotations. The Department of Nursing reports recent on-time completion at 87.03% and employment at 100%, both drawn from the same program-outcomes panel that lists the 83.33% NCLEX figure.

Honest trade-offs

• Cohort size is small. That means faculty mentorship is dense and personal. It also means one rough class shows up in your NCLEX statistic, and a 65.52% CY2023 pass rate is a real signal that prospective students should ask current students and faculty about.
• Alumni network is regional, not national. Tuskegee nursing graduates dominate rural-Alabama and east-central-Alabama clinical settings. If you want to practice in the South, particularly in historically underserved Black Belt counties, that network is unmatched. If you want to credential into a coastal academic medical center, you will be doing more of the door-opening yourself.
• The campus is rural. Tuskegee, AL, has roughly 8,400 residents. The nearest larger city is Montgomery, about 40 miles west. Some students find the quiet generative. Others find it isolating.
• The bioethics inheritance is unavoidable. Choose Tuskegee because you want to train where that history is in the room, not despite it.