How the Largest Health-Care Education Company in U.S. Is Addressing a Growing Jobs Gap
•February 11, 2026
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Why It Matters
The initiative directly tackles the acute health‑care staffing shortage, protecting care quality and sustaining the industry’s growth as the population ages.
Key Takeaways
- •Covista rebranded from Adtalem to emphasize health‑care focus
- •24,000 health‑care grads yearly, ~10% of U.S. nurses
- •8.4 million open health‑care jobs, two openings per worker
- •Partnerships create tuition‑support pipelines, e.g., 400 nurses annually
- •AI credentials program launched with Google Cloud for clinicians
Pulse Analysis
The United States faces a historic health‑care talent deficit, with Covista’s data pointing to 8.4 million unfilled positions—more than two jobs for every unemployed clinician. This imbalance threatens patient outcomes and strains hospital margins, especially in rural markets where specialty roles are hardest to fill. By graduating 24,000 health‑care professionals annually, Covista supplies a sizable share of the pipeline, including roughly one‑tenth of the nation’s nursing workforce and the highest output of MDs among private providers.
Covista’s strategic pivot began in 2021, when CEO Steve Beard redirected the company’s portfolio exclusively toward health‑care education and shed legacy business lines. The recent rebrand underscores that shift, aligning the corporate identity with a mission to expand “day‑one‑ready” talent. Key initiatives include a partnership with Google Cloud to deliver AI‑focused credentials, equipping clinicians with data‑driven decision tools, and tuition‑support agreements such as the Chamberlin University‑SSM Health program, projected to generate 400 new nurses each year. These collaborations create a virtuous cycle: students receive financial aid and guaranteed employment, while health systems secure a reliable talent pipeline.
Policy headwinds, notably the One Big Beautiful Bill’s tighter loan caps for nursing degrees, add complexity to enrollment forecasts. Nonetheless, Beard argues that the high‑earning potential of health‑care roles justifies the investment, even under stricter borrowing limits. As demographic trends push demand for services higher, innovators like Covista are positioned to influence both workforce supply and the broader economics of care delivery, offering a template for for‑profit education entities to contribute meaningfully to a sector in crisis.
How the largest health-care education company in U.S. is addressing a growing jobs gap
How the largest health‑care education company in U.S. is addressing a growing jobs gap
By Ian Thomas
Published Wed, Feb 11 2026 2:00 PM EST
Key Points
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Covista, formerly known as Adtalem Global Education, is leaning into health‑care education at a moment when a worker shortage is already hitting the industry.
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There are more than 8.4 million open health‑care jobs in the U.S., Covista data suggests, representing more than two job openings for every unemployed health‑care worker.
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Health‑care jobs led gains in the latest national non‑farm payrolls report released Wednesday, and CEO Steve Beard said if that health‑care worker gap continues to grow, it will build into a “patient‑care crisis.”
When Steve Beard took on the role of CEO at higher‑education firm Adtalem Global Education in 2021, the company was undergoing a significant strategic shift. It had identified gaps in the health‑care workforce pipeline, which were expected to grow. That led Adtalem to exit its other education business units and focus solely on health‑care education.
In that moment, Beard said the company could have changed its name, allowing it to “claim a different positioning.” However, as it looked at the increasingly fragile health‑care workforce, it wanted to ensure it was a critical part of solving that problem before it planted a new flag.
Last week, Adtalem announced it would be changing its name to Covista, which Beard said reflects what the company has done so far, but also what it sees ahead.
“97,000 students, 385,000 alumni, and 24,000 health‑care students graduate every year,” Beard said. “We’re only getting started; there’s a tremendous opportunity to continue to extend this platform, to grow the scale of these institutions, to bring even more day‑one‑ready talent to U.S. health care, but also to have a more definitive voice in the role that plays in care delivery in the U.S.”
Those student numbers position Covista as a critical player on the health‑care landscape in the U.S. The 24,000 health‑care professionals that graduate each year from its schools is more than any single institution and represents roughly 10 % of America’s nurses. Covista also educates twice as many MDs as any MD‑granting school in the U.S. and is the No. 1 provider of doctors of veterinary medicine to the U.S., according to its data.
Covista’s health‑care ambitions
Beard said the company worked through several ideas of how a new name could help tell the story. “I’m not a marketer by training, I don’t come out of a creative background, so it was fascinating to watch the naming process come together,” he said, adding that discussions varied from the science of using real words versus made‑up words, the ways that certain consonants and vowels create an emotional response when spoken, and how different words would be interpreted by different languages and cultures.
With Covista, Beard said the made‑up word suggests two things: Co, implying community and sharing, and vista, “the idea of creating a shared vision for the future around health care and around access to these careers for folks who have historically been locked out of them.”
A naming‑advisor message stuck out to him: “[They] continued to remind us every step along the way that a brand is only as important as what’s inside it,” he said. “It’s a promise, and it’s only as valuable as the extent to which folks believe that promise has been delivered.”
A name change isn’t entirely new ground for the broader organization. In 2017, DeVry Education Group changed its name to Adtalem Global Education to “represent all institutions in the group,” according to an SEC filing. At that time, the company’s business came from three focuses: medical and health‑care, professional education, and technology and business. That name change also came several months after Adtalem settled lawsuits with both the FTC and the Education Department over charges related to DeVry’s post‑graduate job and salary claims. Adtalem sold DeVry in 2018.
The schools that make up Covista won’t be changing their names, but Beard said the renaming moment will allow them to “connect to a vision at the enterprise level that’s just much broader and much bigger” than what each school could aspire to on its own.
“It’s about setting the aspiration even higher than it’s ever been, giving our folks the permission to think bigger about what they can accomplish individually, and to think bigger about what we can accomplish collectively,” Beard said.
Dealing with major job‑market challenges
Covista is playing a leading role in several of the challenges the health‑care industry faces. Last year, the company announced a partnership with Google Cloud to launch an AI credentials program designed to teach health‑care students and practicing clinicians how to best use the technology in their roles. Covista also launched a new impact program aimed at building and sustaining the health‑care workforce, including working with partners to promote health‑care career exploration and expand mental‑health and wellbeing support for health‑care workers.
In the latest non‑farm payroll report from the Labor Department covering the national jobs market, health‑care positions again led gains among sectors. Beard said that, as he looks out at the health‑care landscape, the opportunities for Covista have him excited.
“I remain optimistic about it, if for no other reason than acknowledging that the demographic trends in American society are such that we’re going to have to rely more and more on the health‑care system,” Beard said. “We’ve got an aging population, we’ve got many more people that need to rely on this system for care and quality of life, and that creates the kind of necessity around innovation.”
However, the scarcity of the clinical workforce and its implications for quality of care are challenges that are only growing more acute.
There are more than 8.4 million open health‑care jobs in the U.S., Covista data suggests, representing more than two job openings for every unemployed health‑care worker. That is putting added stress on the system and the workers within it: 73 % of health‑care executives and 76 % of clinicians say staffing shortages compromise the quality of care they can provide, according to a Covista poll fielded by Gallup of more than 1,300 clinicians and 160 health‑care executives.
The survey was conducted as part of its rebrand, and Beard said it highlights that this is not just a staffing issue, but a patient‑care crisis.
“We’ve talked a lot about the chronic workforce challenges, the asymmetry between supply and demand,” he said. “What does it mean for the quality of care? What does it mean for satisfaction amongst clinical professionals, how they feel about their career, and their intention to stay in those careers? What do people think about the role of technology in solving this challenge?”
Not surprisingly, the data suggests that while shortages are impacting providers across the country, the problem is particularly vexing in rural communities. It also varies by medical discipline, with roles like radiation therapists and cardiovascular technicians being especially difficult to fill.
Covista has tried to help solve some of those issues through partnerships between its institutions and employers, which provide tuition support and clinical‑training opportunities for students, who in return commit to joining the employer’s workforce after graduation. One such program, between Chamberlin University and Midwest health system SSM Health, is projected to produce more than 400 new nurses annually.
“We think that model, which we intend to replicate in other markets where we can actually manufacture new demand for entry into these professions, is one way we get after some of these chronic workforce shortages where they’re most acute,” Beard said.
Policy and funding headwinds
There have been challenges to the for‑profit college industry that could impact the number of students who enter these programs. As part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Trump administration put limits on federal student loans for graduate degrees and removed nursing degrees from the professional‑degree designation, meaning a $100,000 total borrowing limit compared with $200,000 for degrees in other medical fields or law.
“There’s real concern on the part of the administration that folks are over‑borrowing, maybe they’re taking on too much debt, and we share those concerns,” Beard said. “But what we know from experience is that when you’re taking to‑market programs where there’s a high‑earning premium on that investment, that indebtedness becomes a high‑value investment that delivers a handsome return.”
Beard said that while these changes will have “some disparate impacts across higher education,” he believes “the intention behind the policy is sound.”
Trump‑administration policy shifts and cuts in federal health‑care spending are leading to growing concerns around the health of the broader hospital system. While Beard acknowledged those realities, he also said he continues to focus on the needs of an aging population already facing a gap in care.
“We continue to be optimistic that just the sheer magnitude of the need, particularly as our population ages, will bring common‑sense solutions to some of the funding and insurance dynamics, and will also elevate the appetite for the kinds of innovations that allow the health‑care workforce to have an even more positive impact on the people they care for every day,” he said.
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