Keiser University Jacksonville Student Defense Lawyer — Nursing Dismissal

Keiser University’s Jacksonville campus passed 89.13% of 46 first-time NCLEX candidates in 2025, thirteen points clear of the statutory floor. When a program is that comfortable, a dismissal is almost never about the benchmark — it is about the catalog’s own progression rules, which run tighter than most students realize until one is applied to them.

The 2025 numbers, and what they change

The associate-degree program passed 89.13% of 46 first-time candidates against a floor of 76.05%. Jacksonville’s baccalaureate offering is the RN-to-BSN completion degree, whose students are already licensed, so the campus reports no first-time BSN cohort.

Under Fla. Stat. section 464.019(5)(a)1 a Florida nursing program’s first-time NCLEX passage rate must stay within 10 percentage points of the national average for comparable programs — for 2025 that floor was 76.05% for associate-degree programs and 77.59% for baccalaureate programs. Section 464.019(5)(a)2 puts a program two consecutive years below it at risk of probation and loss of approval. Jacksonville sits well above the line, so the statutory pressure that hangs over a below-benchmark program is absent. That cuts one argument and sharpens another: the program cannot justify a removal as benchmark triage, so the dismissal has to stand entirely on the rule actually applied — the recorded percentage, the repeat count, the SAP arithmetic — and each of those is checkable against the catalog as published. Every Florida program and campus is tabulated on the Florida nursing program pass-rate page.

Keiser is private, so the statute students rely on does not apply

Almost everything written about Florida student discipline assumes a public college, where Fla. Stat. section 1006.60(3) supplies notice, a hearing, the right to be accompanied by counsel and a burden that rests on the institution. Keiser University is private. None of that section reaches its Jacksonville campus.

What governs instead is the enrollment agreement, the catalog and the student and program handbooks, read as a contract. That is a narrower footing but not a weak one. Sharick v. Southeastern University of the Health Sciences establishes that a Florida student dismissed in breach of the institution’s own contractual undertakings has a claim, and that damages can extend to lost future earning capacity rather than a refund of tuition. The practical work is documentary: identify the exact promises the university made about process, and show which of them it did not keep.

Deal with the arbitration clause before anything else

Keiser’s enrollment agreement has contained an arbitration clause. Whether it binds a particular student depends on the version they actually signed, how broadly it is drafted, whether it reaches non-contract claims, whether it is unconscionable in its cost or forum terms, and whether the university has waived it by litigating. That question comes first, because it decides whether there is a courtroom at all.

It also changes the venue analysis rather than removing it. If a claim falls outside the clause, or the clause fails, ordinary venue rules apply. And even inside arbitration, a petition to compel, confirm or vacate under the Federal Arbitration Act is filed in a federal district court — so the district a campus sits in still matters.

Where a Jacksonville case is filed

Duval County is in the Middle District of Florida, assigned by Local Rule 1.04(a) to the Jacksonville Division, together with Clay and St. Johns counties — the courthouse is on the campus’s side of town, a few miles up Southpoint Parkway.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

• Resolve the arbitration question first, from the agreement the student actually signed.
• Assemble the enrollment agreement, catalog, student handbook and program handbook for the correct edition, and identify the specific promises about process.
• Test the progression arithmetic — withdrawals, repeats and clinical failures are often counted in ways the handbook does not authorize.
• Press on the wording of the decision letter, which follows the student into every licensure and transfer application afterwards.
• Preserve every internal appeal, on the shortest deadline any document states, while the contract analysis is developed.

The main university page, which sets out Keiser’s policy framework campus by campus, is here: Keiser University student defense.

What actually runs at the Jacksonville campus

Keiser’s Jacksonville campus is at 6430 Southpoint Parkway, Jacksonville, Florida 32216. Jacksonville runs the ASN and the RN-to-BSN completion degree — not the traditional or accelerated pre-licensure BSN routes, which Keiser lists at other campuses. Its allied-health roster is one of the broader ones in the system: Occupational Therapy Assistant (AS), Physical Therapist Assistant (AS), Radiologic Technology (AS), Medical Assisting (AS) and Medical Administrative Billing and Coding (AS), each governed by the same Allied Health Major Course Repeat Policy that decides most dismissals. The 2025-2026 undergraduate catalog (Volume 25, No. 1) sets out each campus’s roster in its “Programs Offered at Each Campus” table beginning at page 121 — check your program against the edition in force for your enrollment, because the 2026-2027 catalog renumbers these sections.

The catalog rules that decide most Jacksonville dismissals

Three sets of rules do most of the work, and none of them matches the university-wide grading scale a student sees first. The nursing exception (catalog page 352, alongside the general scale at page 114) requires every course in the nursing major to be completed with a “C” at a minimum of 76%; a result between 70.0% and 75.99% is recorded as “CF” — Insufficient to Proceed — while still carrying 2.0 grade points, which is how a transcript can look healthy after progression has already stopped. The Allied Health Major Course Repeat Policy (with the general repeat rule at page 116) allows the same major course to be repeated only once — a second failure of that course means dismissal from the program, and a third failure of any major course means dismissal with no re-entry into that program. And the Satisfactory Academic Progress policy (page 64) tests every semester for a 2.0 cumulative average (1.7 after the first semester) and a 66.67% completion pace; the written appeal must state the reason progress was not made and what has changed, after which the dean checks whether finishing on time is still mathematically possible and, if it is, puts an Action Plan to the campus Appeals Committee.

Attendance is its own trap: absences over 20% of class hours in any course may make a student ineligible to sit the final examination (page 108). Each of these is a written standard. The first task in any dismissal is to lay the decision letter beside the text actually in force for your enrollment year and mark every departure.

Other Florida nursing and health programs

Every school writes its own dismissal, appeal and conduct rules, and the filing deadlines are rarely the same from one campus to the next. These pages set out the procedure at other Florida programs:

• Florida State College at Jacksonville
• Jersey College
• Jacksonville University
• First Coast Technical College
• St. Johns River State College
• Edward Waters University

Common questions about Keiser University Jacksonville cases

What were Keiser Jacksonville’s 2025 nursing pass rates?

The associate-degree program passed 89.13% of 46 first-time candidates against a floor of 76.05%. Jacksonville’s baccalaureate offering is the RN-to-BSN completion degree, whose students are already licensed, so the campus reports no first-time BSN cohort.

The program passed the benchmark — does that matter to my case?

No statutory emergency, which means no benchmark excuse. A program thirteen points clear of the floor has to justify a dismissal on the catalog rule actually applied, and every element of that — the recorded percentage, the repeat count, the SAP arithmetic — can be checked against the published text.

Is Keiser covered by Florida’s public-college discipline statute?

No. Fla. Stat. section 1006.60(3) reaches public colleges. Keiser is private, so the enrollment agreement and handbooks govern as a contract, and Sharick v. Southeastern University of the Health Sciences is the Florida authority on that footing.

Which court covers Keiser Jacksonville?

The Middle District of Florida, Jacksonville Division. Duval County is assigned to Jacksonville by Local Rule 1.04(a), together with Clay and St. Johns counties.

My transcript shows a C in a nursing course, so why was I told I cannot continue?

Keiser’s nursing major uses a different passing line from the rest of the university. Each nursing course must be completed with a “C” at a minimum of 76%, and a result between 70.0% and 75.99% is recorded as “CF” — Insufficient to Proceed — while still carrying 2.0 grade points. The recorded percentage matters more than the letter.