I spoke with UIW today, the lady told me they are the highest level of accreditation that they can be at with NOT having a graduating class yet. She said for any school to be accredited they HAVE to HAVE atleast ONE graduating class. So they will be accredited after their first class graduates which is spring 2013!
No. It means that after they graduate their first class, they will then be eligible to receive full accreditation status. It does not mean that they absolutely will be accredited, regardless of what a salesperson in the admission department tells you.
Mark my words - at least one of these new OD insta-schools will meet a brick wall when they pump out their first load of ODs. If a school cannot provide enough patient counts, it will not accredit the program. You can't train ODs without patients and even some established programs have difficulty providing enough counts to their students.
I got to thinking about all the new programs and I realized something. What's holding anyone else back from starting a new OD program. Heck, maybe I'll start one in my basement? Why should UIW, MCPHS, WesternU, and AZCOPT, etc get to have all the fun and cash? What if I want a piece of the action? Then I realized, there's really nothing holding me back, except funding, but that's easy. Here's my recipe for a brand-spanking-new OD program, should anyone be interested. I'm thinking of calling mine something like "Jason K's Super Awesome College of Optometry and/or Physician Assisting in Case We Don't Get Accredited." It would be abbreviated "JKSACOPACWDGA." (Pronounced: Jay-Kay-Sac-oh-pack-wad-guh." It's got a nice ring to it, I think.
Ten Step Recipe for Instant OD Program (should anyone wish to start their own)
1) Find 10 or 20 million dollars laying around. If you don't have it yourself, hit up your local pharmacy school as they probably have money to burn. It worked well for MCPHS so why not for anyone else?
2) Round up some hungry ODs who just completed their residency training and effectively, have no real-world experience, and hire them as your FT faculty and course developers.
3) Hire a couple of ODs with grey hair on their heads so the website can have some experienced-looking ODs for students to gaze at and be impressed by.*
4) After you get your first class' student loan bonanza, throw a bunch of really cool-sounding, expensive optometry toys in the clinic so you can impress the parents when they do the tour. Don't skimp on the clinic equipment since this is one of the main tools by which you will lure, I mean attract, your students.
5) Hire a really good CPA as your controller. You'll need him/her to handle the tens of millions of dollars in tuition that will roll in each year. You'll likely need to spend many millions of dollars on fluff every year so you can maintain "non-profit" status. Note that, it's perfectly acceptable to hire some deans and other senior administrators from other programs and pay them outrageous salaries to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars each. They already know how to fire up an OD program so they can really save you some time. A few highly-paid senior admin people can really work in your favor since they'll be charged up to go out and recruit new students. It worked perfectly for MCPHS so I suggest modeling your efforts after their setup.
6) Add students, the more the better. I suggest 80 -100 per class to maximize profits. Don't worry if your program can't support that many students, you can figure that out later. What's important is getting that cash, baby!
7) Sit back and watch the excitement. You'll have a front row seat to the continued destruction of a profession and, let's face it, that's not something you get to see every day.
8) A final suggestion. Hire Robert Shapiro as your attorney. You'll likely need him to rescue your program from the slew of lawsuits that will ensue when your students realize they've been scammed. He's not cheap, but with all that revenue, it won't be a problem.
9) Have a contingency plan. If optometry implodes on itself spontaneously due to the massive glut of practitioners, the last thing you need is to be left with nothing but a useless building with millions of dollars of equipment. I suggest a PA program. It's cheap and can be tacked onto the OD program without too much trouble.
10) Enjoy the many fruits of your hard labor!!
* Note that the grey-haired ODs need not be experienced in actuality since their presence is merely for show. If there are currently enrolled 4th year students who are older, say in their 50s, locate them and recruit them heavily. Tell them the school is seeking non-traditional faculty members. Since inexperienced, older ODs are non-traditional faculty members, it's a match made in heaven.
Maybe we complain more hmm....
