Hi Paul,
Congratulations of your daughter's BSN graduation and to her proud parents too! A most noble profession. More and more hospitals are requiring nurses to possess a BSN degree, especially if the hospital has Magnet Status.
It depends in what part of the country one lives that is experiencing a shortage of nurses. There are states that the starting pay for a RN is around $25 an hour and it is those states that seem to experience a "shortage". Here in California, the starting pay is around $40 an hour and there are plenty of RNs that are out of work because there are more RNs than jobs. In fact in the past five years, there's been a number of California hospitals that have laid off a large number of 20+ year RNs without BSN degrees in favor of new grad BSN degree RNs. The states that have lower starting wage do not have many foreign graduate nurses, but the states that have higher starting RN wage, the hospitals are manned by an extreme large majority of foreign graduate nurses; California included (and all of those foreign grad nurses posses BSN degrees). Interestingly, the one state that never experiences a nurse shortage is Hawaii. Many RNs want to live and work in Hawaii, so it's an employer's market, and the RN pay is very low compared to the cost of living there.
Regardless of they pay, if a nurse is there strictly for the patient, then that is a great nurse to have take care of you.
I know many of nurses who truly are angels in scrubs.
Wayne