Giving nurse practitioners more independence is backfiring: they're actually choosing shorter degree programs and spending less time in school.
We usually assume that increased professional responsibility requires more education. However, once a master's degree is legally sufficient to run a private practice, the extra years required for a doctorate become an unnecessary expense with no additional career return.
Occupational Autonomy and Human Capital Investment: Evidence from Nurse Practitioner Practice Authority Reforms
SSRN · 6351539
Regulatory reforms can permanently change the economic returns to education. This paper studies whether individuals adjust costly educational investments when regulatory reforms durably alter occupational autonomy and earnings. I examine staggered adoptions of full practice authority (FPA) laws for nurse practitioners (NPs), which increase legally defined job autonomy and expected returns to NP training. Using institution-level data on graduate nursing degree completions, I find that FPA increas