For me whenever I explain podiatry schools to friends, family, and friends of the family they first have no clue it is a medical school and then ask where they are and when I say there are only 9 schools they were shocked. Then when I explain where the 9 are they are all confused as to how the three western schools are isolated very close to each other, then all the other schools except Barry are relatively close together.
I am from Michigan and people say stuff like "But there aren't any in-state?" thinking it is like MD school. For me, I have 5 podiatry schools that are within 650 miles of driving from where I live and each is an hour and 40 minute flight or less. Then when I compare it to living in south Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Washington, parts of Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, North Dakota are each areas where they each have at best just ONE podiatry school within 700 miles of a drive from where they live.
Location choices isn't amazing for podiatry, but I think for the profession it is best to keep it at 650 students per class. Another way the AACPM may eventually look at where to add a school in the 2020s if they do ever think they need one more school they may also take a look at the Bureau of Labor Services and notice that in the 4 states with the highest amount of Podiatrists (
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes291081.htm) they each have a podiatry school: New York, California, Florida, and Ohio. Then Texas comes in at 5th, but don't have a podiatry school. Then 6th and 7th are Pennsylvania and Illinois, which each have a podiatry school. There are 10 states that had at least 300 employed podiatrist in their state and only Texas, New Jersey, and Michigan are the ones on that list that don't have a podiatry school inside the state. But like I said, it would be dumb to put a podiatry school in Michigan because there are already enough podiatry schools within a 2 hour flight from the three counties that consist of OVER 50% of employed podiatrist in the entire state. Then for New Jersey, Temple and NYU are maybe a two hour drive maximum from two different podiatry schools.
Like even when you take a look at the BLS.gov image of Employment by Area, there aren't many areas that actually have 30+ podiatrist in that area and many of the places with more than 100 podiatrist in employment are located relatively close to the podiatry school nearby, but again most of the schools are located in some of the more populated cities inside their own state. This could possibly be a reason why Colorado, Oklahoma, or Arkansas may not get a school because according to BLS.gov each of these states had 40 or less employed podiatrist in 2013.
In addition they may go away from the Kent State podiatry school way and find a school that already has a DO school so they wouldn't have to hire a whole new set of professors for the first two years of the medical program. That is what they did with Midwestern, they just added it to the DO program. So right now I think it is Midwestern, Western (CA), and Des Moines are the ones that are affiliated with the DO program. This is my basic statistical and demographic analysis on podiatry schools.
