I've been watching all of this and it's certainly interesting. I really hate the private schools jumping at the bit to get new schools, feels like a cash grab for sure. As for Arkansas (as someone who doesn't live there), I think it's interesting that the state has decided to open 2! new vet schools so quickly. Plus, I recently saw an article that the state legislature there just denied like $20 million to build a teaching hospital so definitely taking everything there with a grain of salt.
As someone who was born and raised in Orange Park, FL, I straight up have no idea why LMU is trying to bring a vet school there. If no one else has mapped it out, it's basically putting one in Jacksonville without having to pay Jax taxes since it's right below the county line. Jacksonville is less than 2 hours away from UF, so it's not even really good spacing for Floridians. Plus the city is really not well equipped to support new vet students, or more students as a whole (lack of affordable housing, etc). For the biggest city in the US by landmass, it's bum**** boring there. I'm so glad I got out.
Same with these other ones like Murray State and the Ross adjacent in Georgia. The first one I kinda get because I can see Kentucky needing it's own vet school, but I still seriously doubt that area's resources to help vet students, distributive model or not. I don't have a lot of faith in these new private 3-year vet schools, especially with student loans up in the air rn. But I guess all we can do it wait and see.
Bonus points: I am curious to see how this will affect contract seats for established vet schools. For instance, I know UGA has something like 30 seats for South Carolina, I wonder how those seats will be distributed once state legislatures figure out everything.