Healthcare training spans medical school, residency, nursing education, professional development, and programs designed to strengthen the wider health workforce. The latest figures supplied by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and World Health Organization (WHO) show both expansion and uneven participation across pathways.
Contents
- Medical school demand and enrollment
- Representation and access
- Graduate medical education
- Nursing education at scale
- Nursing applications, enrollment, and graduates
- Training outcomes and workforce needs
Medical school demand and enrollment
The AAMC 2024 applicants/enrollment release describes a mixed picture for U.S. MD-granting medical schools in the 2024–25 academic year. First-year enrollees, also called matriculants, increased 0.8%. At the same time, total medical school applicants declined 1.2%, reaching the lowest level since 2017–18. These figures describe U.S. medical school applications and enrollment for one academic year; they are not a global measure of medical education.
First-time applicants moved in the opposite direction from the overall applicant count. They increased 2.3% and represented 74.3% of all applicants in 2024–25. Together, those figures indicate that the applicant pool included a larger first-time share even as the total number of applicants fell.
The AAMC release also reports changes by race and ethnicity among applicants. Black or African American applicants increased 2.8%, while Hispanic, Latino, or of Spanish Origin applicants increased 2.2%. American Indian or Alaska Native applicants declined 15.4%. These are changes in applicant counts, not acceptance rates or shares of the applicant pool.
The AAMC describes the scale of its member institutions as well. They included more than 210,000 full-time faculty members, 99,000 medical students, 162,000 resident physicians, and 60,000 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in biomedical sciences. Those counts cover AAMC member institutions and combine several stages of education and research.
Representation and access
Applicant growth did not translate uniformly into matriculant growth in the AAMC 2024–25 figures. Black or African American matriculants declined 11.6%, Hispanic, Latino, or of Spanish Origin matriculants declined 10.8%, and American Indian or Alaska Native matriculants declined 22.1%. Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander matriculants declined 4.3%.
The same release provides a longer comparison for the share of medical students. The share of Black or African American medical students rose from 7.9% in 2017–18 to 10.3% in 2024–25. Over that period, the share of Hispanic, Latino, or of Spanish Origin medical students rose from 9.9% to 12.3%. These are multi-year share comparisons, while the matriculant figures above compare changes reported for the 2024–25 cycle.
Socioeconomic measures also shifted downward in the latest year reported. The number of first-generation applicants fell 1.6% compared with 2023–24, and first-generation matriculants declined 2.3%. Applicants whose parent had less than a bachelor’s degree or held a service, clerical, skilled, or unskilled occupation declined 2.2% versus 2023–24. Matriculants from that same lower-parent-education group fell 2.1%.
| Measure | Reported figure | Period or comparison |
|---|---|---|
| First-time applicants as a share of applicants | 74.3% | 2024–25 |
| Black or African American medical students | 7.9% to 10.3% | 2017–18 to 2024–25 |
| Hispanic, Latino, or of Spanish Origin medical students | 9.9% to 12.3% | 2017–18 to 2024–25 |
| First-generation applicants | -1.6% | Versus 2023–24 |
| First-generation matriculants | -2.3% | Versus 2023–24 |
Graduate medical education
ACGME reported 13,762 accredited programs in 2024–2025. Of these, 6,029 were residency programs and 7,733 were fellowship programs. ACGME newly accredited 457 programs during the academic year and reported 914 sponsoring institutions. Among sponsoring institutions, 65.7% sponsored multiple programs, 28.2% sponsored a single program, and 6.1% had no accredited programs.
Rural training was represented by 43 Rural Track Programs. ACGME reported that these programs covered six specialties or subspecialties and were distributed across 24 states plus Puerto Rico. The figures identify the geographic reach of the designation, but they do not quantify the number of residents in those tracks.
ACGME also granted Initial Accreditation to 130 combined programs covering 28 combined formats. This adds another structure to graduate medical education beyond the headline residency and fellowship counts. The program totals should therefore be read as a description of accredited program types and organizational structures, not as a count of individual trainees.
Leadership and professional development activities formed another part of the ACGME 2024–2025 report. ACGME held 12 Leadership Skills Training Programs for Chief Residents, drawing about 500 registrants and representing 20 specialties. It also ran 10 monthly MUA/P interest group sessions virtually. Those sessions averaged 40 participants per month and included 21 external speakers.
The ACGME annual educational conference featured 102 exhibitor booths, 9 sponsors, and 61 posters on graduate medical education research and innovations. ACGME Learn at ACGME accounts grew 20%, and the organization awarded 6,641 completion certificates. Across all courses, the average course rating was 94 out of 100.
Nursing education at scale
AACN’s 2024 annual survey covered 964 nursing schools, representing 89.4% of the schools surveyed. It reported 869 entry-level baccalaureate nursing programs, 681 RN-to-baccalaureate programs, 655 master’s nursing programs, 439 Doctor of Nursing Practice programs, and 149 research-focused doctorate nursing programs.
Enrollment varied substantially by program type. Entry-level baccalaureate programs enrolled 267,889 students, compared with 90,369 in RN-to-baccalaureate programs and 136,476 in master’s programs. DNP programs enrolled 42,767 students, while research-focused doctorate programs enrolled 4,223 students.
The enrollment figures show the scale difference between broad entry-level and advanced research pathways. Entry-level baccalaureate enrollment was more than six times the reported research-focused doctorate enrollment. That comparison uses the AACN-reported counts for the 2024 annual survey and does not estimate enrollment in programs outside the survey coverage.
AACN also reported demographic measures for several pathways. Male students represented 11.9% of entry-level baccalaureate enrollment, 11.2% of RN-to-baccalaureate enrollment, 14.5% of master’s enrollment, and 11.0% of DNP enrollment. Underrepresented students made up 48.2% of entry-level baccalaureate enrollment, 45.8% of master’s enrollment, 43.5% of DNP enrollment, and 38.3% of research-focused doctorate enrollment.
Nursing applications, enrollment, and graduates
The AACN 2024 annual survey recorded application growth in most listed nursing pathways. Entry-level baccalaureate applications increased 8.5%, master’s applications increased 4.5%, DNP applications increased 18.5%, and research-focused doctorate applications increased 7.2%. RN-to-baccalaureate applications declined 0.7%.
Enrollment changes were also generally positive, though smaller in several pathways. Entry-level baccalaureate enrollment increased 4.9% year over year, RN-to-baccalaureate enrollment increased 1.6%, master’s enrollment increased 4.8%, and DNP enrollment increased 2.2%. Research-focused doctorate enrollment declined 0.5% year over year.
| AACN pathway | Applications | Enrollment change | Graduates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry-level baccalaureate | +8.5% | +4.9% | 91,541 |
| RN-to-baccalaureate | -0.7% | +1.6% | 52,220 |
| Master’s | +4.5% | +4.8% | 50,157 |
| Doctor of Nursing Practice | +18.5% | +2.2% | 12,336 |
| Research-focused doctorate | +7.2% | -0.5% | 725 |
Graduation totals provide another view of annual training output. AACN reported 91,541 graduates from entry-level baccalaureate programs, 52,220 from RN-to-baccalaureate programs, 50,157 from master’s programs, 12,336 from DNP programs, and 725 from research-focused doctorate programs. These are reported graduate counts for the pathways covered by the 2024 annual survey.
The contrast between application growth and enrollment change is especially visible in DNP education: applications increased 18.5%, while enrollment increased 2.2%. In the research-focused doctorate pathway, applications increased 7.2% even as enrollment declined 0.5%. The figures describe percentage changes, not the number of applications behind each percentage.
Training outcomes and workforce needs
HRSA’s predoctoral training outcome report covers an earlier period than the AAMC, ACGME, and AACN figures. Between academic year 2015–16 and academic year 2019–20, HRSA’s predoctoral training programs increased course offerings from 136 to 321. Participants trained rose from 3,606 to 21,128 over the same period.
Courses developed or enhanced through those HRSA programs reached more than 23,000 students. Oral-health courses represented 38% of all students trained, and 18% of students trained in those courses participated in interprofessional education and community-based collaboration. HRSA reported a predoctoral training cohort totaling 61,849 students across academic years 2016–2020.
These HRSA figures measure program activity and participation across specified academic-year windows. They should not be combined directly with the 2024–25 medical school or 2024 nursing survey figures because the periods, populations, and program definitions differ.
The WHO frames healthcare training against a global workforce challenge. WHO says health workforce education and training must help address a global gap of 18 million health workers. That is a global gap estimate presented by WHO, not a count of trainees in a particular country or academic year.
WHO Academy’s 2024 annual report says the Academy is designed to equip the world’s 65 million health and care workers. The 65 million figure describes the intended global workforce audience for the Academy, while the 18 million figure describes the workforce gap cited by WHO. They are related context, but they measure different things: one is the size of the audience to be equipped and the other is the stated gap in health workers.