Looking at the figures below, it’s easy to see where Excelsior’s enrollment growth is happening. Undergraduate nursing students accounted for about 70 percent of all Excelsior students in 2003 and the growth has been dramatic over the past three years. Inside Excelsior’s January 2004 publication, titled "Ever Upward," new Associate Dean for the Excelsior College School of Nursing explains that "we are in the throes of another nursing shortage. The average age of practicing nurses is mid-forties, which means the current workforce will be retiring about the same time that the baby boom population will be in the greatest need of health care. Fewer people are entering the nursing workforce to replace those nurses. The same phenomenon is occurring in nursing education, with the average faculty hovering in the mid-fifties. So, when the need to educate nurses is greatest, there are fewer and fewer faculty to teach those newcomers." Excelsior is well placed to address such issues.