PETITION TARGET: Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences Administration, Dean of Nursing, and Post-baccalaureate Nursing Program Leadership

 
WHY THIS PETITION MATTERS

We are students of the Post-baccalaureate Bachelor of Science in Nursing program at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, currently approaching the halfway point of our summer semester. What should be a rigorous yet supportive learning environment has become a deeply distressing experience that our entire cohort believes is setting us up to fail. Despite our repeated efforts to raise concerns professionally through the appropriate chain of command, we have not seen meaningful change. We are now turning to this petition because our education, mental health, and future as safe, competent nurses are at stake.

We are paying $1,210 per credit hour for this program. For this single 6-credit Maternity course, each of us is paying $7,260—a collective amount of at least $450,120 for our cohort. In return, we are receiving a disorganized, unsupported course that does not prepare us for its own exams, let alone the NCLEX.

 

Our Core Concerns

1. Exams Do Not Reflect the Teaching
The exams are clearly not written by faculty members who teach our course, and our own current instructor does not have access to view the exam content or our results. This only creates fundamental mismatches:

• PowerPoints, lectures, and assigned readings do not cover the content tested on exams.
• We have been told specific topics (e.g., math titration, fetal heart monitor grading) would not appear, yet they have appeared on multiple exams.
• Questions have been drawn from material not taught in class, and from minuscule, obscure textbook details - some of which were not in the assigned readings because, yet again, our instructor does not have input or access to our exams.
• Critical maternity concepts like fetal assessment, maternal role attainment (taking in/holding on/letting go), and prioritization of nursing interventions are either absent or so poorly emphasized that we cannot answer NCLEX-style questions correctly.
• Even provided materials contain errors: students have identified wrong answers in the Week 4 question bank and incorrect GTPAL teaching in the math PowerPoint.

 

2. Severely Inadequate Instructional Support

• Our maternity content is being taught entirely by a professor whose content was prepared for paediatrics, not maternity. This is unfair both to her and to us—as we have little recourse for help, and she is placed in a position where she needs to salvage a situation with the 'wrong equipment'. 
• We were not given foundational skills in the critical first three weeks. Instead, we were forced to “adjust” while precious time in an already-accelerated, shortened summer semester was wasted.
• We took a second exam on postpartum content before building any foundational knowledge, leaving us perpetually catching up rather than being able to develop the strong base we need.
• We are told to “ask questions” about content we don’t understand, but the instruction is so disjointed that we often cannot formulate a clear question.
• Being directed to the textbook as a supplement feels hollow when, once again, exam questions later pull from obscure lines we were never guided to prioritize.
• There is no additional tutoring or supplemental instruction available after class or online. 

 

3. Broken Communication and Disrespect 

• We have been called “guinea pigs” on multiple occasions. We did not pay for this program to be test subjects.
• When we brought concerns forward individually by email, many of us received no response, or were told we would hear back by morning and then never did. We were told to “trust the process” while watching the semester continue to deteriorate.
• We are told to be professional, yet we are not being treated with the respect and urgency this situation demands.

 

4. Lasting Impact on Our Education, Health, and Futures

Before this course, our cohort consistently achieved high and even occasionally perfect scores in Medical-Surgical and Pharmacology. Now, almost no one can pass a Maternity exam. Our overall course grades have dropped dramatically, and we further question whether the Blackboard grading system is even accurate. This is damaging our GPAs and closing doors to future advanced practice roles (NP, CRNA) that many of us have dreamed of and worked tirelessly toward.

We are being set up for failure on the HESI, Exit Exam, and ultimately the NCLEX. If we cannot be taught well enough to even pass these in-house exams, how are we expected to become safe, competent nurses?

The mental and physical toll is severe. Stress, anxiety, and thoughts of dropping out, joining the next cohort, or leaving the program entirely are widespread. We are human beings, not robots, and the dismissive refrain that “this is an accelerated program” ignores the fact that an accelerated program demands even more structure and clarity, not less.

 

OUR DEMANDS

We call on Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences administration and Post-baccalaureate Nursing program leadership to take immediate, concrete action on the following items:

 

Fair Academic Relief:

Implement a Pass/Fail grading option for both this course, and our NUR 422 Health Participant III course, given the mental, physical, emotional, and cognitive toll due to extreme instructional and institutional failures. THIS IS A REQUIREMENT.

Otherwise, if this simple request cannot be met, which many other accredited schools have already set a precedent for, then the school must offer a tuition credit, partial refund, or reimbursement toward the Fall semester that reflects the quality of education we have received and the collective $450,120 paid for this course.

 

Immediate Exam Review and Grade Adjustment:

Provide a thorough, timely exam review (not at the end of the semester) and correct any grading or exam errors, including the already-identified wrong answers and grading anomalies in Blackboard.

Expert Instruction and Structural Overhaul for the Remainder of the Semester:

• Provide a qualified maternity nursing expert to co-teach or fully support the course immediately.
  Restructure the remaining schedule to properly build foundational maternity knowledge.
• Consider the option to pause maternity content for the rest of summer, focus fully on paediatrics, and retake/restart a corrected maternity course in the fall without financial or academic penalty.

 

Full Transparency and Alignment of Exams:

• Guarantee that all exam content for the remainder of the semester is directly covered in lecture slides, course materials, and instructor-led guidance.
• Give our current instructor full access to exam content and student performance data so she can actually teach to the required standards.
• If no qualified instructor can be provided on our campus, immediately make available the recorded lectures and aligned exams from another MCPHS campus cohort.

Respectful, Responsive Communication:

• Acknowledge any further “test subject” comments as unacceptable and commit to respectful treatment.
• Ensure student emails and concerns reach the actual decision-makers, with a clear timeline for responses, not silence.

Long-Term Safeguards:

Commit to an external review of this summer’s maternity course to ensure that the failures in organization, content delivery, and assessment are identified and permanently corrected for future cohorts.
 

We are not asking to coast through a difficult class.

We are demanding the basic elements of any legitimate educational program: coherent teaching, fair testing, access to help, and respect for the enormous investment of time, money, and heart we bring every day. We simply want to be good, safe nurses. Right now, that dream is being threatened by a course structure that is academically unfeasible and profoundly unfair.

 

Please sign this petition to show MCPHS that you stand with the students who are fighting for the education they were promised.