NSU Assaf College of Nursing — Dismissal & Appeals

Written by Zachary Gaynor, attorney · The Florida Bar, admitted 2016 · court admissions. Reviewed 26 September 2026.

Who decides whether an NSU nursing student is dismissed?

At NSU’s Ron and Kathy Assaf College of Nursing, failing any course sends the file to the Committee on Student Progress (CSP), which can recommend action up to dismissal; the CSP recommends and the dean decides. The thresholds that put students there are unforgiving: the passing grade is 75 for the B.S.N. programs and 80 for the graduate programs, with no rounding. A 74.6 is a failure, and one failure is enough to put you in front of the committee.

The rules that decide these cases

The Nursing Student Handbook 2025–2026 (Assaf College of Nursing section) sets the framework. Passing is 75 (B.S.N.) or 80 (master’s and doctoral), no rounding, with nurse anesthesiology on its own scale. Any course failure triggers referral to the CSP and “may lead to disciplinary action up to, and including, dismissal” — and even short of dismissal, a failure can force you to sit out until the course is offered again, at additional tuition, on a longer program clock. A student who passes by remediation examination carries a C(E) notation on the transcript. Clinical rotations require completion of all prerequisites first — and a student appealing a course failure may not be allowed to begin a clinical rotation while the appeal is pending, which quietly turns an appeal into lost time unless the schedule is managed.

The college’s standing categories run from academic warning and probation to academic dismissal, and probation is not cosmetic: a student on academic or disciplinary probation will not be cleared to graduate until the sanction is lifted.

Clinical conduct has its own track. A student judged unable to provide consistent, safe care — or who does not follow the clinical site’s policies — can be removed from the clinical area on the spot and referred to the CSP, up to dismissal. When that removal follows a complaint or an accommodation request, read it against the retaliation framework before accepting the school’s characterization.

The appeal: narrow grounds, short windows, exact sequence

Grade disputes at the ACON are expressly limited: evaluations and grades “are the prerogative of the instructor and are not subject to formal appeal unless there is evidence of discrimination, arbitrary or capricious action, and/or procedural irregularities.” That sentence is the whole battlefield. It means a grade appeal written as a disagreement about points will lose by rule — and an appeal written to those three grounds, with evidence, is the one the college’s own handbook obligates it to hear.

The clock is unusual and easy to miss: grievances and grade disputes must be in writing, directed to the course instructor, within five business days prior to any retake. The escalation sequence is fixed — course faculty member, then adviser or program director, then the dean of Academic Programs — and skipping a level is itself a ground for the college to refuse the appeal. Withdrawals are no escape hatch: students get only two withdrawals in the entire program, only while passing, and clinical withdrawals need the program director’s approval.

NSU is a private university, so the case is built on the college’s own written rules: the handbook’s grounds, its sequence, its deadlines — applied exactly, with the record assembled the way a reviewing court would want to see it. That is the work I do in these matters: the written submission, the arbitrary-and-capricious showing, the procedural audit of what the college did against what its handbook says it must do.

The stakes below the surface

Nursing failures compound into licensure timing: the NCLEX application follows program completion, so a semester lost to a failed course or a stalled appeal is a semester added before licensure and income. Repeated courses carry additional tuition. And the B.S.N. programs run across multiple campuses — Fort Lauderdale/Davie, Miami, Fort Myers, and more — with the same handbook governing all of them, so the rules above travel with you between campuses.

Where the governing documents are

The Nursing Student Handbook (2025–2026 edition; the Assaf College of Nursing section carries the grading, progression, CSP, grade-dispute, and withdrawal provisions summarized above) and the NSU undergraduate and HPD catalogs. The edition for your enrollment year governs — check the current one before relying on any deadline.

The federal money on the line at Nova Southeastern

More federal Direct Loan money flows to Nova Southeastern University than to any other school in Florida: $708.3 million in the 2025–26 award year alone. Most of it is graduate and professional debt — 9,762 graduate students borrowed $274.7 million in unsubsidized federal loans, 7,767 took another $384.7 million in Grad PLUS loans, and parents added $24.2 million through Parent PLUS.

Every dollar of it rides on academic standing. A dismissal, a failed Satisfactory Academic Progress evaluation, or a mid-term withdrawal sets off federal rules that decide whether aid continues, whether money already disbursed has to go back, and — under the borrowing caps in effect since July 1, 2026 — whether a student who leaves can still finance a return. For health-professional students the timing rules bite hardest: remediation terms, leaves, and repeated courses all feed the federal pace-of-completion math. The academic fight and the financial aid fight are the same fight, and the windows are short. How those rules work: SAP appeals and academic dismissal.

On the Department’s financial responsibility test, Nova Southeastern’s most recent published composite score is 3.0 (fiscal year 2022–23) — a passing score on the –1.0-to-3.0 scale, where 1.5 and above passes. How to read that number: the federal warning signs guide.

Source: U.S. Department of Education, Federal Student Aid Data Center, Direct Loan volume by school, award year 2025–26 (cumulative through June 30, 2026). University-wide federal Direct Loan totals.

Other NSU and Florida programs

These pages set out the procedure at related programs: NSU College of Dental Medicine, NSU Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine, NSU College of Optometry, and all Florida nursing programs.

Common questions

I got a 74 in a nursing course. Is that really a failure?

Under the handbook, yes — 75 is passing for the B.S.N. programs and there is no rounding. The questions that matter now: was the grading consistent with the syllabus and rubric, was every point audited, and does anything in the record support the discrimination, arbitrary-and-capricious, or procedural-irregularity grounds the handbook itself recognizes.

One failure and I’m in front of a committee?

Any course failure is referred to the CSP. Most referrals do not end in dismissal — but what you submit to the committee, and how the record reads, shapes whether the outcome is a repeat plan or something worse. Treat the CSP submission as the case file it is.

Can I just withdraw before the failing grade posts?

Only if you are passing at the time, only with approval, and only twice in the entire program — and withdrawal from a clinical rotation can significantly extend the program. Spend the two withdrawals like the scarce resource they are.

The appeal is pending but my rotation starts Monday.

The handbook allows the college to keep a student appealing a course failure out of clinical rotations during the appeal. Raise scheduling in the first written submission and push for a resolution date — the delay is often the real penalty.