Christ, the minimum admission GPA is only 2.75 and that's just "preferred"?
Interesting that from 2015 to 2018 the # of graduates working in pharmacy increased for this school.
Gainful Employment Class of 2015 Class of 2016 Class of 2017
Employment within the profession of pharmacy 30.60% 40.70% 48.00%
It is also interesting that the data says "working in a pharmacy." It does not say whether the graduate is a technician, a pharmacist, a delivery driver or something else; the role is not stated within pharmacy. The reporting is ambiguous. What I am not sure of is the intention behind the reporting. I am also not too sure about this either:
Employment outside the profession of pharmacy 0.00% (2015) 0.00% (2016) 40.70% (2017).
Post-graduate education or residency training 34.70% (2015) 25.93% (2016) 20.35% (2017).
Other/ lost to follow-up: 34.70% (2015) 33.30% (2016) 30.90% (2017).
Purdue University School of Pharmacy reports their employment data and why the data does not add up to 100%, encouraging transparency in reporting. The salary ranges for reported graduates are also mentioned for some areas of practice. For the lost to follow-up (LTFU) data for the University of South Florida College of Pharmacy, more students are responding about their actual job prospects as opposed to post-graduate "plans." Purdue University states why the students are lost to follow-up just like clinical trials do when enrolled patients with true informed consent do not show up for appointments: USFCOP does not. Maybe other schools should post employment statistics in a less transparent manner; we would have more faith in our profession and in our job prospects as pharmacists. USFCOP (Florida) intentionally breaks our faith in our profession then wonders why we are not employed yet or why we are underemployed.
Source:
Pharmacy Job Placement | Purdue College of Pharmacy
University of California--Northstate:
http://pharmacy.cnsu.edu/shareddocs/DisclosureDataTables.pdf
These are just a few.
Also to address the issue of low GPA, our school has strict behavioral standards that must be followed. That could contribute to the increase in numbers of students employed in A pharmacy, not as a pharmacist. The scare tactic is this: you could have a high pharmacy GPA and still not progress to the next year due to some spat with a preceptor, administrator, or faculty member. Some students were held back before, but mostly for academic issues: not passing PCOA, getting a lower-than-desired grade on a Capstone exam, or low GPA trend in a class or series of classes. All of those factors contribute towards consideration for overall graduation and to a conferred PharmD. Point being: you could fail an IPPE or APPE rotation, get As in everything else, and still fail the year. If I reported this data during school, I would not have graduated because my peers would have found out, confronted me about it, and possibly sent me to the Honor Committee or the school disciplinary committee (what we call ARPSACed).
Not many students agree with this policy as it is childish and it is. However, because USFCOP is the only place they got into, our peers have no power to discuss the issue much less address it: just like adult-children. As far as USFCOP is concerned the mentality is this: you should be privileged to have a PharmD, regardless of the job prospects you have or are eligible for (smiling Facebook photos, students holding up the Bulls sign, and lack of consideration for actual data notwithstanding).
I challenge the assertion and the data conducted the beginning of this thread: Does the job outlook of 2026 really look that good? Or is it relative to where you attended school or some other unknown factors? Please cite the source of your data so we all can benefit and peer review it.
