2 pharmacy schools shut down, which ones next

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Marzapan said:
Well if pharmacy is already at a point where the barrier to entry is like trying to break into Trump's White House bunker, then it doesn't really matter if you close down schools because there is enough supply among employed pharmacists to deal with attrition. Given that the pharmacy boom happened in the 2000-2010s, most currently employed pharmacists are likely in their 40s so it'll take 25 years until they retire for there to be opportunities for outsiders.
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Completely agree, that's what I'm saying.
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VA77 said:
Fantastic News!!!
Here are my picks. I wish we could bet on this.
CSU
Larkin
St Joe
Westcoast
Chapman

Honorable Mention
Appalachian
South College
New England
Sullivan
Touro NY
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My Dream: any school with Naplex/Mpje pass rate under 90%=probation

2 years in a row= accreditation removed

5 year wait period to reapply for accreditation
 
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Marzapan said:
Well if pharmacy is already at a point where the barrier to entry is like trying to break into Trump's White House bunker, then it doesn't really matter if you close down schools because there is enough supply among employed pharmacists to deal with attrition. Given that the pharmacy boom happened in the 2000-2010s, most currently employed pharmacists are likely in their 40s so it'll take 25 years until they retire for there to be opportunities for outsiders.
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I would say 30s is the age of most pharmacist. I would say 25-40 is probably half the field. the boom in class sizes started at tail end of 2000s~2010ish.

2010 just over 11k grads
Last few years around 15k

According to bls there were just above 314k pharmacist jobs in 2018. We graduated about 15k that year.

According to below website there’ were about 224k pharmacist in 2001. Number of pharmacists United States 2001-2016 | Statista

That’s an increase of about 5300 jobs a year which is Lower then expected but makes sense based on retirements and other attrition. And the fact about 7k pharmacist were graduating the early to mid 2000-2010 decade.

We have graduated at least 125k graduates this past decade. This is more then half of the total pharmacist in 2001 and close to 40% or current pharmacist jobs (I guesstimated 325k jobs based on prior growth).

I would say 2/3 or more are 40s and below.

I plan to retire the year I turn 57 (federal employee minimum retirement age). That’ll be 25 more years for me. I’ll retire earlier if the stock market returns similar to past 30 years.

What’s funny is below study estimated 10k grads a year in 2020. They are just 50% off and several years off lol. Imagine if we never got above 10k. We’d have at least 40k less pharmacists (25k just over past 5 years) and wouldn’t be crapped on like we are today (of course would still be rapidly approaching that point lol)

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Projected Growth in Pharmacy Education and Research, 2010 to 2015

Objectives. To determine projected growth in pharmacy education and research from 2010 to 2015 and to relate findings to external and internal factors.Methods. An e-mail survey instrument was sent to all US pharmacy deans, and responses were used to estimate ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
 
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NorthTexasPharmacist said:
Texas Southern was a running joke when I was in pharmacy school. We all thought it should've been closed awhile ago. Now that market saturation is an immense problem, not only will Texas Southern have a problem keeping its door opened, Incarnate Word, the only private school in Texas might have a problem too. UT Austin, Texas Tech, U of Houston are probably the only ones that have a legitimate case of staying opened.
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UT Tyler is a joke, also. The couple of students I interacted with were terrifying in their lack of knowledge.
 
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jacksmith228833 said:
My Dream: any school with Naplex/Mpje pass rate under 90%=probation

2 years in a row= accreditation removed

5 year wait period to reapply for accreditation
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In an ideal world, there shouldn't be more than 1 pharmacy school per state and class size should be limited to no more than 100.
 
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Ladyg228 said:
In an ideal world, there shouldn't be more than 1 pharmacy school per state and class size should be limited to no more than 100.
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In a state with 40M people? Man, that sounds like a central planning command economy disaster. We have counties bigger than entire states.

Even then, people will go out of state. Happened before, would happen again. Unless you go full Soviet on us and ban that, too!
 
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I think you should have to submit a certificate of need and feasibility study along with application. Most schools over past 20 years just went to their Trustees and sold them on the 'idea' like Jack and the beanstalk
 
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VA77 said:
I think you should have to submit a certificate of need and feasibility study along with application. Most schools over past 20 years just went to their Trustees and sold them on the 'idea' like Jack and the beanstalk
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But that’s a Sherman Act violation on the part of the accrediting body if they require that. Straight up summary judgment on day 1 that gets in front of a federal judge.
 
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Deja said:
student from that school can still become pharmacists? even without accreditation? I don't really know how that works
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They get to finish out their studies and as long as they pass the boards. It was the promise that ACPE makes when it give precandidate status, that you won't be left high and dry. They shouldn't make that promise which would help slow down these types of schools.
 
mentos said:
Never heard of this school either.
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Just another diploma mill, their claim to fame was that there was a need for more rph in Fresno, which was total crap because UCSF and UOP had sites there and a lot of UOP grads are in Fresno.

The school is a dumpster fire, if you look at the number of professors that left.
 
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AM77 said:
West Coast University is a terrible school. It’s just another paper mill.
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This diploma mill is in better shape than others, just because they are in Los Angeles. The problem with the CHSU is that it's in Fresno.

It's a close call between WC and CHSU on who's APPE students are worse. My vote is for WC, just from personal experience.
 
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moolman said:
This diploma mill is in better shape than others, just because they are in Los Angeles. The problem with the CHSU is that it's in Fresno.

It's a close call between WC and CHSU on who's APPE students are worse. My vote is for WC, just from personal experience.
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The problem with West Coast University is that Los Angeles is completely saturated by the time they opened up the school. Their board exam pass rates are abysmal. I horrible for the students that got duped into going to West Coast.
 
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mentos said:
Never heard of this school either.
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CHSU is one of the newer pharmacy schools to pop up in California. I did my 4th year rotation in Fresno about a decade ago and I heard of talks about opening up a new pharmacy school in Fresno. I feel terrible for the incoming CHSU students this fall who moved to the area only to find out that their program was cancelled for them just days before classes were to begin.
 
With a million people leaving California each year, how are they gonna keep up with more schools opening? haha
 
NorthTexasPharmacist said:
With a million people leaving California each year, how are they gonna keep up with more schools opening? haha
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Most of the money coming into California is foreign money which is what is driving prices up. So schools will still continue to open up despite a mass exodus of longtime residents out of state because there are plenty of international students/foreign grads to recruit from who have no idea about the perils of pharmacy. If you look at pharm school demographics, the % of ESL students have been going up each year...
 
AM77 said:
The problem with West Coast University is that Los Angeles is completely saturated by the time they opened up the school. Their board exam pass rates are abysmal. I horrible for the students that got duped into going to West Coast.
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AM77 said:
CHSU is one of the newer pharmacy schools to pop up in California. I did my 4th year rotation in Fresno about a decade ago and I heard of talks about opening up a new pharmacy school in Fresno. I feel terrible for the incoming CHSU students this fall who moved to the area only to find out that their program was cancelled for them just days before classes were to begin.
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If it takes nothing to get into pharmacy school these days, then you REALLY have to try to end up at a bottom of the barrel school. I have no sympathies for these students - they need to be culled. What's the alternative? Grandfather these students who have no business being pharmacists to get their degrees? That does this profession no service.
 
lord999 said:
My personal guesses:

Chicago State will be the first state school to fail over funding although on probation now. I think it is a certainty that they will fail.

Husson is close to that status.

Funding concerns and not academic issues are a problem at Montana and have been for some time. Rumor mill is that Montana may end up closing theirs and sending their students to WICHE. They had to get a state bailout which I will be curious if that will be fixed or the state will defund it. Montana is a fine school with a great history of being productive for the state (especially given their lack of state support), it's just that they've always had funding troubles. Whether it makes sense to the state to continue to school or send their students to WICHE is one that will also affect Wyoming and Idaho whose population base does not justify their school's existence on normal grounds now.

Touro NY is a mess both on the DO and PharmD sides.

And no, ACPE will cave. Texas Southern proves that amply. Texas Southern should have been closed years ago even before the great expansion.
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When this happened back in 2010, it was shocking.


TSU students: We were unfairly let go

By ABC13
Friday, August 20, 2010
HOUSTON While Texas Southern University is holding on to its accreditation, it has been ranked the lowest-performing pharmacy program in Texas, according to US News and World Report. Now, the school's administration is kicking students out of the program to bolster their standings and their prestige.

"Our goal is just to get out," pharmacy student Andrea Anderson said. "We want to be pharmacists. That is our dream."

Dozens of TSU pharmacy students shoved their way into a board of regents meeting, demanding improvements to their program and answers about why some of their classmates were kicked out of school based on a new set of guidelines in the student handbook.

One major complaint: the new rules straddled one school year.

"You can't hold one section of the class to a higher standard than the first section of the class," student Fred Walker said. "That's unethical."

Walker is one of 11 students that got an email, telling him he can't return to school this fall because he failed four classes in one semester.


"They didn't take into account the human factor," he said. "Some of us had extenuating circumstances."


The same thing happened to Beatrice Tembo-Jackson, who was banking on her starting salary once she got her degree and passed the licensing exam.


"I'm a mother of eight," she said. "So I have a family to feed, so I probably have to go back to work, pay back my school loans."


In the last school year, TSU's College of Pharmacy adopted more specific guidelines about dismissing students. It used to be students could be kicked out for demonstrating "poor overall performance."


Now, any student who receives less than a "C" in four or more classes in one semester -- or "exceeds time allowed to complete (their) degree" can get their white coat revoked.


"We have raised our expectation for student performance, and there's some tension around that," TSU's College of Pharmacy Dean Barbara Hayes said.


While the dean of the school says the stricter guidelines will make for a better batch of pharmacists, students, even those in good-standing, are left wondering whether better teachers and more organized classes would better prepare them to pass in the first place.


"Before you consider dismissing someone, you have to first look, 'Did we as a college support this student enough to help them succeed?'" student Gwendolyn Burgess said.


TSU's pharmacy school has endured a history of problems. One student told me she had 19 teachers for one class in one semester, none of which showed up for reviews, or class sometimes. She also said she just can't be expected to excel in that environment.


There is also a lawsuit against the school and the dean because of these student dismis
 
These schools need to just give new students the following things on admission: 1. a degree and 2. a bill for 300k. Why not cut the bullsh*t? No one believes these schools are teaching them anything, do they? They're just wasting everyone's time by pretending, and students can start working for Uber/ Lyft many years earlier without having to play student for all those years! Think of all that extra earning potential!
 
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Xenophylia said:
These schools need to just give new students the following things on admission: 1. a degree and 2. a bill for 300k. Why not cut the bullsh*t? No one believes these schools are teaching them anything, do they? They're just wasting everyone's time by pretending, and students can start working for Uber/ Lyft many years earlier without having to play student for all those years! Think of all that extra earning potential!
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They need to put up a front dude. Ever seen one of those "I appreciate pharmacists" posts from a stray RN or MD who wander onto r/pharmacy? Heck, majority of allied health professionals/students have no clue what's going on in pharmacy in regards to the job market so they are still recommending people to do pharmacy (out of ignorance). I've seen plenty of youtube vids that demonstrate this.
 
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Xenophylia said:
These schools need to just give new students the following things on admission: 1. a degree and 2. a bill for 300k. Why not cut the bullsh*t? No one believes these schools are teaching them anything, do they? They're just wasting everyone's time by pretending, and students can start working for Uber/ Lyft many years earlier without having to play student for all those years! Think of all that extra earning potential!
Click to expand...

Seriously 95% of the crap is not used in real world practice.
 
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American Princess said:
When this happened back in 2010, it was shocking.


TSU students: We were unfairly let go
Click to expand...

I remember this one

"failed four classes in one semester" => let's just have no standards then

"Mother of 8" => do you run a farm?

"19 teachers for one class" => pharmacy curriculum is very basic yet "experts" in each and every topic are required
 
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AM77 said:
The problem with West Coast University is that Los Angeles is completely saturated by the time they opened up the school. Their board exam pass rates are abysmal. I horrible for the students that got duped into going to West Coast.
Click to expand...

This may sound bad. But, vast majority of their students are very unqualified and would never be admitted to one of CA's original 8-9 schools.
 
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Feel bad for the students but this is what you get when you sign up for these schools. They should have never taken them in the first place and promised them things they couldn't deliver. Just wanted their $$$. If I was a student at one of the lower score NAPLEX schools I would certainly be worried about policy changes or even accreditation problems.
 
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Sine Cura said:
"19 teachers for one class" => pharmacy curriculum is very basic yet "experts" in each and every topic are required
Click to expand...

Sadly even 100 years ago when I was in school some courses were taught like that. Our Pathophysiology course would steal instructors away from Univ of Penn. They were certainly experts in their respective fields. But for some, English was a second or third language. And it does take some talent and communication skills to educate others. So results widely varied. Some literally couldn't teach their way out of a wet paper bag. Imagine being lectured in Cardiology from an instructor who spoke a with a thick Indian accent and who looked at his shoes the whole time while he talked., I remember sometimes sitting through the course twice (there was more than one time slot due to class size) just to get a coherent set of notes. Good times.
 
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Marzapan said:
Close all of them except the top 25 schools.
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Don't you think that's a wee bit too draconian? There were 72 pharmacy schools when I was in school in the early 1990s.
 
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rph3664 said:
Don't you think that's a wee bit too draconian? There were 72 pharmacy schools when I was in school in the early 1990s.
Click to expand...

Yes. They all need to go.
 
rph3664 said:
Don't you think that's a wee bit too draconian? There were 72 pharmacy schools when I was in school in the early 1990s.
Click to expand...
The demand for pharmacists has always been constant (at let's say, 90 schools' worth of students), so you are probably thinking that if we shrunk 150 schools back down to 72 schools that will fix the issue. Problem is, automation and expansion of technican scope of practice has made it such that jobs are being eliminated daily so there no longer a demand of 90 schools' worth of students each year -- it's more like 10 schools or less. So keeping 25 schools open would be a good starting point.
 
You failed 4 classes in a semester...you ain't cut out for this dude.
 
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Marzapan said:
The demand for pharmacists has always been constant (at let's say, 90 schools' worth of students), so you are probably thinking that if we shrunk 150 schools back down to 72 schools that will fix the issue. Problem is, automation and expansion of technican scope of practice has made it such that jobs are being eliminated daily so there no longer a demand of 90 schools' worth of students each year -- it's more like 10 schools or less. So keeping 25 schools open would be a good starting point.
Click to expand...

I truly believe if all pharmacy schools shut down today, there would be zero demand for new pharmacists for at least a decade. All the pharmacists working in academia would have no job and there would be no need for them, so that's a few thousand unemployed pharmacists right off the bat.

There's so many unemployed and under employed pharmacists right now in their 20s-50s that would gladly take full time positions or second or even third jobs if any positions opened up.

The number of available positions goes down every year as pharmacies close down, pharmacist hours are cut or automation takes over. There is simply no need for any pharmacy schools to be open right now besides profit and greed.
 
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what does this mean to current CHSU students?
 
steveysmith54 said:
Nothing in terms of getting licensed. They will have the same rights to practice as UCSF students.

The dean of CHSU put a statement that she plans to apply for accreditation again
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I forget. What is that definition of insanity?:thinking:
 
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steveysmith54 said:
Nothing in terms of getting licensed. They will have the same rights to practice as UCSF students.

The dean of CHSU put a statement that she plans to apply for accreditation again
Click to expand...

most job postings say graduated from a accredited COP as a requirement, would that disqualify those students?
 
American Princess said:
When this happened back in 2010, it was shocking.


TSU students: We were unfairly let go

By ABC13
Friday, August 20, 2010
HOUSTON While Texas Southern University is holding on to its accreditation, it has been ranked the lowest-performing pharmacy program in Texas, according to US News and World Report. Now, the school's administration is kicking students out of the program to bolster their standings and their prestige.

"Our goal is just to get out," pharmacy student Andrea Anderson said. "We want to be pharmacists. That is our dream."

Dozens of TSU pharmacy students shoved their way into a board of regents meeting, demanding improvements to their program and answers about why some of their classmates were kicked out of school based on a new set of guidelines in the student handbook.

One major complaint: the new rules straddled one school year.

"You can't hold one section of the class to a higher standard than the first section of the class," student Fred Walker said. "That's unethical."

Walker is one of 11 students that got an email, telling him he can't return to school this fall because he failed four classes in one semester.


"They didn't take into account the human factor," he said. "Some of us had extenuating circumstances."


The same thing happened to Beatrice Tembo-Jackson, who was banking on her starting salary once she got her degree and passed the licensing exam.


"I'm a mother of eight," she said. "So I have a family to feed, so I probably have to go back to work, pay back my school loans."


In the last school year, TSU's College of Pharmacy adopted more specific guidelines about dismissing students. It used to be students could be kicked out for demonstrating "poor overall performance."


Now, any student who receives less than a "C" in four or more classes in one semester -- or "exceeds time allowed to complete (their) degree" can get their white coat revoked.


"We have raised our expectation for student performance, and there's some tension around that," TSU's College of Pharmacy Dean Barbara Hayes said.


While the dean of the school says the stricter guidelines will make for a better batch of pharmacists, students, even those in good-standing, are left wondering whether better teachers and more organized classes would better prepare them to pass in the first place.


"Before you consider dismissing someone, you have to first look, 'Did we as a college support this student enough to help them succeed?'" student Gwendolyn Burgess said.


TSU's pharmacy school has endured a history of problems. One student told me she had 19 teachers for one class in one semester, none of which showed up for reviews, or class sometimes. She also said she just can't be expected to excel in that environment.


There is also a lawsuit against the school and the dean because of these student dismis
Click to expand...

How do you fail 4 classes and be surprised when they kick you out? No question about it the school is a joke but students these days are so lazy and entitled. You failed 4 classes bro, get the **** out.
 
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ldiot said:
How do you fail 4 classes and be surprised when they kick you out? No question about it the school is a joke but students these days are so lazy and entitled. You failed 4 classes bro, get the **** out.
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And this was TSU, a school notorious for having absolute low standards. The Med Chem professor would rant and rave in class. I remember remarks at a summer conference about them admitted a couple of students who scored LOWER than completely random guessing on the PCAT and sure enough, the range did include a score beneath the random guess threshold. And this was 2011.
 
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ldiot said:
How do you fail 4 classes and be surprised when they kick you out? No question about it the school is a joke but students these days are so lazy and entitled. You failed 4 classes bro, get the **** out.
Click to expand...

Don't worry, our buddy eventually made it through and is a practicing pharmacist per the tsbp records. :dead:
 
lord999 said:
I remember remarks at a summer conference about them admitted a couple of students who scored LOWER than completely random guessing on the PCAT and sure enough, the range did include a score beneath the random guess threshold. And this was 2011.
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What is the random guess threshold? 20th percentile?
(Asking for a friend)
 
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297point1 said:
What is the random guess threshold? 20th percentile?
(Asking for a friend)
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Under the old calibration, the one where most people made 99%, it was 8%. That was used in an argument to say that PCAT didn't matter. I agreed on the high end, but I genuinely suspected illiteracy to score that low.
 
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Lots of people forget that it was only 6 years ago that OU closed down their Tulsa campus. I would expect more of these to happen if the enrollment numbers continue to bottom out. Texas Southern, Incarnate Word, Texas Tech in Abilene, etc. Clock is ticking!
 
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Actinomycin said:
OK so we finally have two pharmacy schools shut down - Hampton University's appeal got denied and California Health Sciences University (CHSU) did not progress to accredited status - https://www.acpe-accredit.org/pdf/ReportofProceedingsJulyandAugust2020FINAL.pdf

Which are the next 5 to go down - any guesses?

My wild guesses -

Larkin and AUHS do not progress to accredited status (like CHSU)
Chicago State
Not sure what the fifth one could be
Click to expand...
Lake Erie college of pharmacy
Billy Gatton school of pharmacy
Mid western school of pharmacy- don’t like the name, sounds like a name of a bank, lol
And South University should close down too.
 
ldiot said:
How do you fail 4 classes and be surprised when they kick you out? No question about it the school is a joke but students these days are so lazy and entitled. You failed 4 classes bro, get the **** out.
Click to expand...

I agree. but that problem was that there was some students in the Fall of 2009 that did the same thing but TSU still let those students repeat those 4 classes and they passed them. That's why those students called the media on TSU and that is why those two lawsuits were filed.
and I still have family members that think that TSU is still a good school. SMH.
 
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