Laboure College of Healthcare

The academic offering at Labouré is tightly focused and pragmatic, designed to get students into the healthcare workforce efficiently. The college offers associate and bachelor's degrees in nursing, as well as multiple healthcare certificate programs. Its Associate of Science in Health Science program provides a strong foundational knowledge of healthcare delivery, with courses in ethics, law, and public health. However, the academic landscape is currently in a significant state of transition. Labouré College and Curry College have reached an agreement to transition Labouré's nursing programs to Curry's School of Nursing and Health Sciences. This move will shift the core of Labouré's historic identity to another institution, leaving Labouré's future academic portfolio somewhat in flux. The existing programs emphasize a hands-on, practical curriculum grounded in a "tradition of care and compassion," preparing students for specific roles in acute care settings and beyond.

Forget raucous football games and sprawling dormitories. Student life at Labouré is defined by its commuter, adult-learner population. The college explicitly states that its students are "local adults" and that the majority of its population is made up of "adult learners looking to transition to a career in the health science field." This creates a focused, no-frills campus environment where students come to learn and then return to their communities. Historically, students did live on campus and built a residential community, but that is no longer the case. The most distinctive feature of the student body is its remarkable linguistic diversity: 45% of students are multilingual, speaking languages including Haitian Creole, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Mandarin, and Cantonese. This diversity directly reflects and serves the surrounding communities in the Greater Boston area. The vibe is one of shared purpose and resilience, with students often balancing coursework with work and family responsibilities.

Outcomes are where Labouré's focused mission pays off most clearly. The college reports strong performance for its nursing graduates. For the Associate of Science in Nursing (ASN) program, the NCLEX-RN pass rate was 94% in 2022, with 49% of graduates employed in acute care settings. Data for 2023 is pending but shows an 88.7% pass rate. More broadly, the college boasts a powerful return on investment. It was ranked #2 in the nation for salary potential among associate degree holders by Payscale in 2024, placing it in the top 3% of colleges nationwide for ROI. The canonical figure for median earnings 10 years after entry is $62,200, though other sources report a median salary of $64,815 six years after graduation and a remarkable $90,473 median earnings figure from the College Scorecard. The graduation rate is 100% per the canonical figure. Crucially, the college emphasizes that its graduates "stay to deliver care here in their own communities," creating a direct pipeline of diverse, trained healthcare providers for the region.

The cost of attendance at Labouré is significant, with an average net price after aid of $36,863. Financial aid is available through a mix of scholarships, grants, and loans. The college offers scholarships based on academic merit, talent, or, in some cases, financial need. There is also a unique work-study scholarship: degree students who work between 8 and 15 hours each week receive a scholarship covering 10% of their course costs, though this cannot be combined with other institutional scholarships. Average aid packages are reported variably, with one source citing $5,500 and another $2,833 per year. Unlike elite liberal arts colleges, Labouré does not have a "no-loan" policy that meets full need with grants alone. The financial aid office explicitly states that a student does not have to demonstrate financial need to qualify for an unsubsidized federal loan, and independent students may borrow up to $6,000 annually in such loans. This indicates that financing an education here often involves a combination of grants, scholarships, and personal loans.

Laboure College stands out as a rare breed: a hyper-specialized, single-purpose institution with a deeply local and community-embedded mission. Its defining characteristic isn't a sprawling campus or famous research, but its student body—composed almost entirely of adult learners from the surrounding communities, nearly half of whom bring multilingual skills crucial to Boston's diverse healthcare landscape. This creates an intensely practical, career-focused environment devoid of traditional undergraduate trappings. The college's outsized outcomes are its strongest selling point; ranking #2 nationally for associate-degree salary potential demonstrates a stunning return on investment, turning its focused training into immediate economic mobility for its students. Even amidst the significant transition of its flagship nursing programs to Curry College, Labouré's core value proposition remains: a direct, efficient, and compassionate pipeline that takes local residents and turns them into highly employable healthcare professionals who then fill critical staffing needs in the very neighborhoods they call home.