Editing Herzing Issues: Clinical Intensives and Simulation (section)

=== HU-104: VSIM virtual clinical sessions scheduled during business hours on weekdays; not all available on weekends; 50 hours of required VSIM hours incompatible with full-time employment the program markets itself to ===
{| class="wikitable" style="width:100%"
! style="width:14em" | Severity
| Medium
! Status
| CONFIRMED
|-
! Issue type
| Schedule Incompatibility / Marketed Flexibility Misrepresentation
! Date added
| 2026-05-05
|-
! Owner
| colspan="3" | Clinical Coordinator / Program Chair
|}
'''Finding.''' Per the tracker's evidence, the MSN-DE program is marketed as compatible with full-time employment, but required VSIM virtual simulation sessions, totaling approximately 50 hours per clinical semester, are not all available on evenings or weekends, and students have consistently used PTO or altered their employment to attend them.

'''Evidence.''' Herzing Direct Entry MSN Facebook Group Export, Dec 2022 to May 2026, Exhaustive Line-by-Line Review of 34,887 lines, 1,350 posts, and 14,112 comments across 8 passes, Volume 7, including statements dated October 26, 2025 through February 16, 2026, among them Anonymous member 840's statement on cohort clinical hour totals and an anonymous member's statement about needing to finish the program before being able to leave a job.

'''Reported statement.''' Student B said VSIM sessions had no set day and had fallen on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays throughout the program. Student BG said the 50 hours of VSIM cannot all be done on weekends. Anonymous member 104 said 40 hours of annual PTO would not be enough and that leaving a corporate job for a Tech/CNA role, despite the pay cut, was necessary for schedule flexibility. Student BF said quitting full-time Monday-through-Friday work and taking on multiple part-time jobs became necessary to keep up, and that they expected to graduate in December 2026. An anonymous member said they could not afford to get fired before finishing the program. Anonymous member 840 said their cohort's Clinical 2 requirement was structured as 50 VSIM clinical hours and 85 in-person clinical hours.

'''Standards.''' 34 CFR 668.71-75 (Misrepresentation): marketing a program as compatible with full-time employment when 50 hours of mandatory synchronous VSIM sessions are scheduled on weekdays during business hours constitutes a misrepresentation of program structure. ACEN Standard 5: clinical learning requirements must be reasonable in relation to student obligations. Requiring full-time working students to use all of their annual PTO for one semester's VSIM sessions, or to leave their jobs, is not a reasonable clinical design for a program marketed to working adults. Consumer protection principles: students who left jobs or took pay cuts to accommodate VSIM scheduling suffered material financial harm based on a program design that was not adequately disclosed.

'''Impact.''' Students forced to leave professional employment lose income, employer-provided benefits including health insurance, and career continuity. Anonymous member 104 took a significant pay cut moving from a corporate role to CNA. Student BF left full-time work and is working multiple part-time jobs while struggling financially. These are documented, concrete financial harms attributable to a program design incompatibility that was not disclosed at enrollment. The VSIM scheduling issue also compounds {{HU|HU-079}} (135 hours not divisible by 12-hour shifts), since students face both the VSIM scheduling constraint and the extra-shift requirement simultaneously during clinical semesters.

'''Notes.''' VSIM sessions require synchronous attendance during scheduled windows, unlike asynchronous assignments that can be completed at the student's convenience. The marketing of the program as "flexible" and compatible with full-time work specifically targets career-changers with existing employment. The documented pattern of students leaving jobs, reducing to part-time, or exhausting PTO indicates the marketed flexibility does not extend to the clinical components of the program. Cross-reference: {{HU|HU-096}} (extreme workload), {{HU|HU-079}} (clinical hour structure), {{HU|HU-071}} (Spring 2025 placement crisis), {{HU|HU-046}} (enrollment misrepresentation).

<span id="HU-108"></span>