The nurse's professional practice presents conflicts and contradictions due to divergence of standards between formative institutions and practice developed in health units. So, he is prepared directly to attend to patients and the employing institutions expect the profissionais to take on administrative responsabilities. Preoccupied with this dichotomy between assisting and administering, the authors propose to exame the perception of nursing undergraduate students envolled in the last year of the course, about this nurse's administrative function as well as to verify their perceptions as for the qualification to exercice administration in nursing. The study consists an inquiry by students from two colleges of Ribeirão Preto, where divergences is sought by academic speech and the nurse's profissional practice.