California and the nation are facing an acute shortage of nurses, and Cal State San Marcos plans to do something about it. The Academic Senate of North County's only four-year college has unanimously endorsed a plan to create the campus's fourth academic division, tentatively called the College of Health and Human Services, to offer master's degrees in nursing and the allied fields of human development and physical therapy.

That's great news for the college. It makes sense academically, economically and for our society at large. The United States will need as many as 450,000 new nurses in the next five years, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. California alone is expected to need more than 20,000 nurses. The need will become even more acute in July, when a new state law will require hospitals to have one nurse on duty for every six patients.

Cal State San Marcos' 11-member academic blueprint committee produced the plan to guide the campus through the 2010-2011 academic year. If approved by the Cal State University Board of Trustees ---- and it should be ---- the College of Health and Human Services would join the Cougars' colleges of arts and sciences, education, and business administration. The blueprint calls for the new division to offer a degree in health-care administration in tandem with the College of Business Administration.

"That does deserve an 'attaboy,'" said Chuck Idelson, spokesman for the California Nurses Association, who pointed out that our aging population should increase the demand for trained nurses in years to come.

We congratulate Cal State San Marcos' blueprint committee for its foresight.