UMN pharmacy school cuts class size

[UCSF2021]

Pharmacy school bubble looks like it is finally beginning to pop, UMN pharmacy school cut its class size by 20 students to 150 from 170. Hopefully others follow soon..

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[WVUPharm2007]

The for-profits won't cut class sizes.

 

[PharmDBro2017]

~11.7% cut is better than nothing, but akin to a 1cm sized bandaid on a gunshot wound.

 

[lgrw16]

Thank god! Yes! We had 150 in my class and it’s still too much. So many people fall off through the years and honestly I feel like just about anyone can become a pharmacist these days.

 

[Pharmacy is a Scam]

Pharmacy school bubble looks like it is finally beginning to pop, UMN pharmacy school cut its class size by 20 students to 150 from 170. Hopefully others follow soon..

Since there projects to be around 18,000 jobs created over the next 10 years, let’s just round up and say 2000 new jobs are being created each year. With 15,000 new grads being graduated each year, you’d need an 87% reduction in class sizes sustained through the next 10 years to come anywhere near equilibrium. And that’s not even considering the currently unemployed pharmacists. So a 12% decrease in this school’s enrollment is still nowhere close to where it should be to make an impact.

 

[steveysmith54]

Jesus, 170 is a crap load of students. Wonder if it was done in part due to accreditation issues.

I think we are at least 5-10 years from seeing schools beginning to shake in their boots

 

[alpha12]

Pharmacy school bubble looks like it is finally beginning to pop, UMN pharmacy school cut its class size by 20 students to 150 from 170. Hopefully others follow soon..

So how will they make up for lost revenue? Increase tuition?

 

[Actinomycin]

Since there projects to be around 18,000 jobs created over the next 10 years, let’s just round up and say 2000 new jobs are being created each year. With 15,000 new grads being graduated each year, you’d need an 87% reduction in class sizes sustained through the next 10 years to come anywhere near equilibrium. And that’s not even considering the currently unemployed pharmacists. So a 12% decrease in this school’s enrollment is still nowhere close to where it should be to make an impact.

The number of pharmacists retiring, staying home to raise kids, etc also needs to be accounted in your equation. In addition to 2000 new jobs created, you would expect the 6000-7000 pharmacists who graduated ~40 years ago to leave the workforce. This still does leave an extra 7000-8000 new grads per year. Since most new grads are being offered 30 hours instead of 40, ~3000 new grads will be taking the 2000 new FT jobs that will be created.

In addition, as salaries continue to stagnate or even go lower and conditions in retail keep getting worse, more old timers (who have saved, have high earning partners) who can will call it a day will just leave. Again 3 old-timers leaving will create jobs for 4 (30 hour/week) new grads. I think you would still get at least a ~25-30% unemployment in new grads (exactly what Dr. Brown from Palm Beach predicted 5-10 years back) and the remaining will be getting a sub 100,000k salary (between decreased salary/hour and reduced hours).

 

[Momus]

The number of pharmacists retiring, staying home to raise kids, etc also needs to be accounted in your equation. Not to say that is a very large number, but in addition to 2000 new jobs created, you would expect the 6000-7000 pharmacists who graduated ~40 years ago to leave the workforce. This still does leave an extra 7000-8000 new grads. Correct me if am missing something.

They didn't graduate 7000 pharmacists 40 yrs ago. Not even half that.

 

[Actinomycin]

They didn't graduate 7000 pharmacists 40 yrs ago. Not even half that.

That is what I had thought too. But check out the exact numbers in Figure 2 of this article - Trends in the Numbers of US Colleges of Pharmacy and Their Graduates, 1900 to 2014. By the way that article has the official numbers for pharmacy graduation trends and is a good source of information for making speculations.

 

[Actinomycin]

Oh and I should share another article where the Dean of the Maryland School now suggests that Schools should start limiting enrollments and worry about the total number of graduates. Again as WVU suggested, some of these state schools like UMN may be able to reduce enrollment but I dont see this happening to for profit schools. But quite interesting that UMN did decrease enrollment and other Deans are starting to publish about this issue.

For some reason, the link to the article is not working. It is the following article -

Help Wanted: Trends in the Pharmacist Workforce and Pharmacy Education
Lisa Lebovitz, JD
University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, Baltimore, Maryland

Natalie D. Eddington, PhD
University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, Baltimore, Maryland

Corresponding Author: Lisa Lebovitz, University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, 20 North Pine St., PH S303, Baltimore, MD 21201, Tel: 410-706-3457. E-mail: [email protected]



Objective: This commentary is an observation of longitudinal trends in national data on the pharmacist workforce and pharmacy education.

Findings: Data indicate seismic shifts in supply and demand, from critical shortage to imminent oversupply. The change in the profession to employing more patient-care focused jobs has been observed as slow and minimal, although academia has focused on the clinical training and rapidly increased enrollments.




Read More: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie

 

[Momus]

That is what I had thought too. But check out the exact numbers in Figure 2 of this article - Trends in the Numbers of US Colleges of Pharmacy and Their Graduates, 1900 to 2014. By the way that article has the official numbers for pharmacy graduation trends and is a good source of information for making speculations.

They need to reduce it to 10k grads/yr or it won't matter. The rate we are heading, we are going to be just like law graduates. Feast or famine, select few make a lot. No jobs for the rest. At least with law, they can work independently with their degree in an empty office. We can't.

 

[Modest_anteater]

The number of pharmacists retiring, staying home to raise kids, etc also needs to be accounted in your equation. In addition to 2000 new jobs created, you would expect the 6000-7000 pharmacists who graduated ~40 years ago to leave the workforce. This still does leave an extra 7000-8000 new grads per year. Since most new grads are being offered 30 hours instead of 40, ~3000 new grads will be taking the 2000 new FT jobs that will be created.

In addition, as salaries continue to stagnate or even go lower and conditions in retail keep getting worse, more old timers (who have saved, have high earning partners) who can will call it a day will just leave. Again 3 old-timers leaving will create jobs for 4 (30 hour/week) new grads. I think you would still get at least a ~25-30% unemployment in new grads (exactly what Dr. Brown from Palm Beach predicted 5-10 years back) and the remaining will be getting a sub 100,000k salary (between decreased salary/hour and reduced hours).

excellent predictions. I would also like to add my own personal prediction:

17,4001 expected jobs to be created over ten years /10 years = 1,740 new full time pharmacy jobs created a year. Roughly 3,000 pharmacists retiring/dying a year. 1,740+3,000=4,740 new pharmacy jobs a year.

14,872 (New pharmDs in 2018) - 4,740 jobs = 9,347 new grads unemployed a year This is 9,347 students that will not have a pharmacy job each year... in 10 years that is 93,000 unemployed pharmacists...
Ref 1 from government bls.gov which pulls data directly from IRS data

 

[CNJ_Anon]

They didn't graduate 7000 pharmacists 40 yrs ago. Not even half that.

In 1979, the number of degrees conferred was 7556. Of that, 461 were PharmD and 7095 were Bachelors.

Pharmacy degrees peaked in 1977 at 8011. The average for the decade (1970-1979) was 6306. Interestingly, those graduates from 1977 should be about 65 years old now; which means we should be seeing the highest number of pharmacists retiring this year

That is what I had thought too. But check out the exact numbers in Figure 2 of this article - Trends in the Numbers of US Colleges of Pharmacy and Their Graduates, 1900 to 2014.

Figure 2 is a nice chart, but for the specific numbers you can see Table 3 (Number of Pharmacy Degrees Conferred 1965-2017 by Degree and Gender) from Am J Pharm Educ. 2018 Aug; 82(6): 7188. The Pharmacy Student Population: Applications Received 2016-17, Degrees Conferred 2016-17, Fall 2017 Enrollments

 

[Pharmacy is a Scam]

excellent predictions. I would also like to add my own personal prediction:

17,4001 expected jobs to be created over ten years /10 years = 1,740 new full time pharmacy jobs created a year. Roughly 3,000 pharmacists retiring/dying a year. 1,740+3,000=4,740 new pharmacy jobs a year.

14,872 (New pharmDs in 2018) - 4,740 jobs = 9,347 new grads unemployed a year This is 9,347 students that will not have a pharmacy job each year... in 10 years that is 93,000 unemployed pharmacists...
Ref 1 from government bls.gov which pulls data directly from IRS data

The number of pharmacists retiring, staying home to raise kids, etc also needs to be accounted in your equation. In addition to 2000 new jobs created, you would expect the 6000-7000 pharmacists who graduated ~40 years ago to leave the workforce. This still does leave an extra 7000-8000 new grads per year. Since most new grads are being offered 30 hours instead of 40, ~3000 new grads will be taking the 2000 new FT jobs that will be created.

In addition, as salaries continue to stagnate or even go lower and conditions in retail keep getting worse, more old timers (who have saved, have high earning partners) who can will call it a day will just leave. Again 3 old-timers leaving will create jobs for 4 (30 hour/week) new grads. I think you would still get at least a ~25-30% unemployment in new grads (exactly what Dr. Brown from Palm Beach predicted 5-10 years back) and the remaining will be getting a sub 100,000k salary (between decreased salary/hour and reduced hours).

Agree with both since my definition of a “job” here was a 40 hour workweek (sad that there is even a need to specify this). Technically one can make an argument that there are plenty of “jobs” to go around today if everyone got 16 hrs/week as “FTEs.” It just comes down to how you slice the data.

 

[alpha12]

They need to reduce it to 10k grads/yr or it won't matter. The rate we are heading, we are going to be just like law graduates. Feast or famine, select few make a lot. No jobs for the rest. At least with law, they can work independently with their degree in an empty office. We can't.

Yep. You can't ambulance chase if you are a pharmacist.

 

[ornithoptor]

State schools which attempt to do the right thing won’t be enough to balance the supply and demand. For every public school reduces the size of class, another for profit school will either open up or increase in size.
The cure is to have the pharmacy profession bottoms out first.

With the news of wage cut, deteriorating working condition, reduced hours and high amount of student loan; it should lead to a sharp reduction of pharmacy school applicants.

Then, Hopefully, Accreditation board step in, NABP make tests harder, and a few for-profit schools close down due to lack of students. That is how this profession can turn around.

This cycle will take about 10 years, now that first school has fired the first shot. However, as long as there are naive applicants who keep buying into the sales pitch, this turn around will drag on for a lot longer......

As for pharmacist who have graduated between 2015 to 2025, there will be a lot of suffering until pendulum swings back.

 

[mentos]

They should cut the whole program.

 

[Gombrich12]

They need to reduce it to 10k grads/yr or it won't matter. The rate we are heading, we are going to be just like law graduates. Feast or famine, select few make a lot. No jobs for the rest. At least with law, they can work independently with their degree in an empty office. We can't.

I agree, that unless the number of grads goes to 10k or below for a sustained period of time we're in big trouble. I can only shake my head at the prepharms who suggest that maybe the job market will be better when they get out in 4 years. They can't seem to understand that they and their fellow 15000 graduates are the reason the market is as bad as it is.

 

[alpha12]

They should cut the whole program.

That is a good idea, but they should grandfather the people that already started.

 

[lord999]

You should understand that state schools don't make a "profit" from their undergraduate students. They are heavily subsidized by the state who drive the admission numbers.

As for the numbers, if you read my other posts saying that this isn't the first time pharmacy has been in this position, now you know it's cyclical. It took about 15 years to normalize, which is why I can say both that I came from a pharmacist family and that we were barely making it in our early childhood. Doesn't matter at this point if we limit grads, we've locked ourselves into a credential escalation scenario like medicine without medicine's government subsidies(and when CMS cuts residencies, the medical school sizes become a higher competition ground for feast and famine like Big Law and some specialties are there already).I

For our careers, this is it. For the normal length of time left, it's going to be more competitive until you're forced out of the game. The average pharmacist will be managed out into a more equal situation with new grads in the coming years as experience isn't rewarding (even in hospitals) by perception. Hope you have your side hustle in order or have a government job...

Also, my finance and IT colleagues and friends grouse about similar job tightening and management issues in their fields. There is a question of apocalypse from the IT high payworld like ours due to the constant influx of financially motivated, high debt holding code camp grads. Unlike us though, experience does matter to employers, but those code camp grads being down wages better than H1B workers (and look better too from the jokes). Most of the hardware guys are getting killed by outsourcing to the cloud or automation, where if AWS hires them, they get 20 % less for more servers. Capitalism and productivity at their finest!

The question left for me is when all that funny money QE goes away and loans dry up, who is left standing?

 

[Balls on the Line]

. Interestingly, those graduates from 1977 should be about 65 years old now; which means we should be seeing the highest number of pharmacists retiring this year.

The veteran bench jockeys have been run off long ago. This is no country for old pharmacists. If anything they represent the U6 component of pharmacist unemployment. A huge latent supply that isn't counted in the headline numbers. Even if schools underwent a multi-year moratorium, this deep compartment of old pharmacists will keep the "blood levels" of the labor market saturated for decades.

I agree, that unless the number of grads goes to 10k or below for a sustained period of time we're in big trouble. I can only shake my head at the prepharms who suggest that maybe the job market will be better when they get out in 4 years. They can't seem to understand that they and their fellow 15000 graduates are the reason the market is as bad as it is.

The market has been in trouble since 2008. It's not the recent gads that have glutted the market, it's been the influx the last 10-15 years. The chains stopped expanding a decade ago, but the rate of increase in the number of new rx schools and the class size of existing programs had already accelerated since 2000. The damage was done long ago and is irreparable.

 

[croquemonsieur]

Did they cut class size or did fewer people accept their offer of admission? Link?

 

[UCSF2021]

 

[WorthlessOxygen]

We should close this thread and discuss it in the job market thread.

Do these types of threads really bother y'all that much? I hate how cluttered that job market thread is now

 

[Actinomycin]

Do these types of threads really bother y'all that much? I hate how cluttered that job market thread is now

Agreed.......when the new grad salary thread was merged..we have now gotten no more replies on that and it is so hard to find some of the posts where new graduates listed that information.

 

[WorthlessOxygen]

Agreed.......when the new grad salary thread was merged..we have now gotten no more replies on that and it is so hard to find some of the posts where new graduates listed that information.

I never really liked the idea of the job market being a single thread but that merger was really what pushed me over the edge. I can maybe get on board with having it be a sub-forum but definitely not a single thread.

 

[mentos]

Yup that job market thread is a dumpster fire at this point, people bickering back and forth. I don't even bother to read it. Just took a peak and the latest reply was an argument with modestanteater about reproductive starvation, wtf?

I don't know why the mods want to merge every thread into one. The point of a forum is to have separate organized topics that people can choose to talk about. The retail new grad rate thread is important to a lot of people and that merge killed it. I'm sure that hospital rate thread would have been great information too but that got killed with a merge too.

You can't talk about pharmacy without mentioning the job market, pretty soon the entire forum will be merged into that one thread.

 

[BC_89]

This is being discussed on the admins / mods side of the forum concerning the merge-issue with the pharmacy job market. You have new mods taking over this section of sdn (myself included) that are looking it over and bringing it up for further review.

We should close this thread and discuss it in the job market thread.

Do these types of threads really bother y'all that much? I hate how cluttered that job market thread is now

Agreed.......when the new grad salary thread was merged..we have now gotten no more replies on that and it is so hard to find some of the posts where new graduates listed that information.

I never really liked the idea of the job market being a single thread but that merger was really what pushed me over the edge. I can maybe get on board with having it be a sub-forum but definitely not a single thread.

I was actually being sarcastic. I hate the way the mods are managing the threads.

Yup that job market thread is a dumpster fire at this point, people bickering back and forth. I don't even bother to read it. Just took a peak and the latest reply was an argument with modestanteater about reproductive starvation, wtf?

I don't know why the mods want to merge every thread into one. The point of a forum is to have separate organized topics that people can choose to talk about. The retail new grad rate thread is important to a lot of people and that merge killed it. I'm sure that hospital rate thread would have been great information too but that got killed with a merge too.

You can't talk about pharmacy without mentioning the job market, pretty soon the entire forum will be merged into that one thread.

Yes I was interested in the hospital rate thread as well..... But they killed it so great. One less reason to read the forums. Do the mods not see that their decisions to merge don't make anyone happy???

 

[Gombrich12]

Please make a job market subforum so we can at least have organized threads

 

[nutripharma]

About 50 people fail out at my school every year... but they accept those people back and some of them end up failing again....