Miami College Fights State Move To Close Nursing Program

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TALLAHASSEE (CBSMiami/NSF) - A Miami college is fighting a decision by the Florida Board of Nursing to shut down a nursing program because not enough graduates passed licensure exams.

The Board of Nursing issued an order July 29 to terminate the professional nursing program at Mattia College. The college was placed on probation in 2014, but the Board of Nursing said in the order that it found Mattia had not "demonstrated adequate progress towards the graduation passage rate goal by meeting a majority of the benchmarks" in a remediation plan.

But in a challenge sent to the Division of Administrative Hearings, the college disputed that the Board of Nursing had grounds to terminate the program.

"The board failed to fully and properly discuss and consider the benchmarks set forth in the remediation plan and whether the petitioner (Mattia) had satisfied a majority of those benchmarks,'' the challenge said.

Mattia is at least the third college in recent months to challenge decisions by the Board of Nursing to shut down programs.

The News Service of Florida contributed to this report.