DISCUSS: Oklahoma State University vet school troubles?

[Mr.Smile12]

OSU's once-prestigious vet school is at a crossroads. Can it repair its reputation?

https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/education/2025/03/20/osu-oklahoma-college-veterinary-medicine-reputation/77600368007/

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[Musicandhorses]

This echos what has been happening at many vet schools and the vet med field at large. The answers are complex.

 

[TheDogFather]

When browsing various veterinary forums, often enough I come across members who are chomping at the bit to pay more in taxes, provided the funds go to education. Why not chip in to help out colleagues at Oklahoma State?

 

[JaynaAli]

This really isn’t surprising, both as someone in vet med in general but also as someone who works in the state. I do think the school has tried making some changes, but one has to wonder if it’s too little too late. While a new hospital is definitely sorely needed, if that doesn’t come with a culture change and ability to attract employees, all the investment may be for nothing.

I do think this is a symptom of a larger issue plaguing vet med, and academic vet med specifically. Even in “thriving” vet schools, it’s getting harder to retain faculty members, especially in fields like radiology and to a lesser extent pathology. It’s just hard to compete with private practice or diagnostics salaries and work life balance. I used to think I’d maybe be interested in teaching (specifically in Stillwater, actually), but now that I can work from home doing diagnostics wherever I want and make easily double what I’d make teaching…I don’t think I want to make those lifestyle adjustments and do that anymore. If the market gets over saturated and salaries start to drop and stuff maybe we’ll get people back in academia, but who knows. It’s unfortunate OSU is at this crossroads but I don’t think this is a uniquely OSU problem. They may just have imploded from a variety of factors all at once. But I hope they can continue with the more recent improvements and get things back on track. I will say I am impressed they’ve maintained such decent navle numbers, especially when we have long established schools having dramatic drops in pass rates in the last couple years, so at least they’re still doing an adequate job for their students even if it’s not ideal settings and staffing.

 

[pp9]

make easily double what I’d make teaching

For real. Most new grads in my class were making more money at their first jobs than the faculty that taught us. Illinois has seemingly made some significant salary increases (some very tenured clinicians are in the high 100s/low 200s these days) in the last several years, but for a while a substantial number of our clinicians were making significantly less than 100k I believe. Aside from salary, I think it takes a specific type of person to 1) want to be in academia 2) to succeed in academia, especially as the culture of teaching and the culture of each new generation changes. Especially when, as you mentioned, certain specialties have been getting 200-300k a year in private practice when their academia counterparts are lucky to be in the low 100s.

In my first two years of vet school, U of I clinicians and faculty were leaving in a mass exodus. I don't think people realized how bad it was. Some spots were not filled even by the time I graduated. Oklahoma is not the first school to go through this, although I don't think U of I had toxic work environment concerns.

When browsing various veterinary forums, often enough I come across members who are chomping at the bit to pay more in taxes, provided the funds go to education. Why not chip in to help out colleagues at Oklahoma State?

I've got so many thoughts on this that it's hard for me to organize an answer. I work for an organization that is partially dependent on tax dollars - tax dollars rarely go far, and that is probably more true for public universities. This school probably needs mega-rich donors willing to cut a check towards capital improvements if the university is not delegating enough funds.

My guess is that despite all concerns brought forward in this article, they will increase the class size like very other school with financial woes has done in the past 10 years. More revenue in/more student bodies = more money from university being funneled to the school without significant increase in costs on the part of the vet school. I also won't be surprised if more and more schools arrange 'distance teaching' agreements with various specialists. 'No, I won't leave my PP job/check to come teach at your school, but I'm happy to prerecord lectures!' This is exactly what UofI had to do for our radiology education for my entire four years.

 

[JaynaAli]

They’ve already increased class size to what the facility will hold, I think. The dean told alumni at a recent conference I attended that they’re actually decreasing OOS seats and increasing IS by like 10 seats, so I have no idea what the long term plan is. They have hired a couple specialists lately in IM and derm I think. They’ve been emailing alumni telling us to contact legislators because the bulk of the 300m funding will need to mostly come from the government. OSU’s newly appointed interim dean (like overall university dean, not vet school) is a physician and on some sort of advisory board for the vet school I think, so honestly it seems like now’s the most optimal time to get university support if it’s coming.

At the last path conference I went to there were literally sessions with titles like “the mass exodus of pathologists from academia: what we can do”. These were often roundtable type discussions and really, no one had easy answers besides raise salaries, improve quality of life, and get rid of a culture of sexual harassment/intimidation/assault that many institutions try so hard to cover up and ignore. But even removing students out of it, there is big concern that there will be no academics left to train residents. Just like happened with UofI radiology. Teaching and preclinical work can be farmed out to a certain extent, but residency training can’t be done remotely in the same way.

 

[pp9]

there is big concern that there will be no academics left to train residents. Just like happened with UofI radiology. Teaching and preclinical work can be farmed out to a certain extent, but residency training can’t be done remotely in the same way.

I understand the concern and perspective, but academia is only one way to go about entering a specialty. There are absolutely some specialties that are more dependent on an academic environment than others, but in my eyes that would be the minority of programs.

Edit: And that's not to say I don't think this is a problem, I'm just not sure I would have had this on my list of 'big' concerns when it comes to the dwindling numbers of clinicians in academia.

 

[Lissarae06]

Current Oklahoma faculty here. There is an anonymous (though we pretty much know who they are) group of disgruntled former employees who are mad at administrators that no longer even work at the vet school. The group mentioned in this article haven’t worked at the vet school in years, yet they keep trying to tear us down. Our new administrator team has things moving in the right direction. There is a positive atmosphere around the hospital and several specialists have been hired and more are being interviewed. Our NAVLE scores remain very competitive and I am damn proud of the work we do. Our newish department head is being very creative in attracting specialists and we hope to continue adding services. It’s really hard to have so much negativity thrown our way when we are all working so hard to provide a great educational experience to all of our students.

 

[Musicandhorses]

Current Oklahoma faculty here. There is an anonymous (though we pretty much know who they are) group of disgruntled former employees who are mad at administrators that no longer even work at the vet school. The group mentioned in this article haven’t worked at the vet school in years, yet they keep trying to tear us down. Our new administrator team has things moving in the right direction. There is a positive atmosphere around the hospital and several specialists have been hired and more are being interviewed. Our NAVLE scores remain very competitive and I am damn proud of the work we do. Our newish department head is being very creative in attracting specialists and we hope to continue adding services. It’s really hard to have so much negativity thrown our way when we are all working so hard to provide a great educational experience to all of our students.

Thanks to all faculty. You all have a tough job, but without you, our profession would cease to exist with the standards that we have

 

[battie]

Jayna has a good point for academia now necessarily for the short term, but the long term: the number of specialists we actually have to even put in academia.

I had a slow night last night, so I googled my classmates to see where people ended up as far as type of practice. Out of 134, we had fewer than 15 either successfully in residencies or still pursuing specialty. 4 IM, 1 ECC, 1 lab animal, 1 surgery, 1 anesthesia, 1 cardio, 1 ophtho, 1 zoo/exotics, 1 onco. 7 of these folks are in academic settings and the rest are at private practices. None are large animal, thinking about it.

That's not going to be sustainable in the long term for the industry as boomers retire. And I can imagine poor quality of life for interns and residents is a major factor, particularly in academia.

 

[pp9]

Jayna has a good point for academia now necessarily for the short term, but the long term: the number of specialists we actually have to even put in academia.

I had a slow night last night, so I googled my classmates to see where people ended up as far as type of practice. Out of 134, we had fewer than 15 either successfully in residencies or still pursuing specialty. 4 IM, 1 ECC, 1 lab animal, 1 surgery, 1 anesthesia, 1 cardio, 1 ophtho, 1 zoo/exotics, 1 onco. 7 of these folks are in academic settings and the rest are at private practices. None are large animal, thinking about it.

That's not going to be sustainable in the long term for the industry as boomers retire. And I can imagine poor quality of life for interns and residents is a major factor, particularly in academia.

I think we’ll see PP residency numbers continue to grow as private specialty hospitals become increasingly important. Maybe. I’ve worked in several large specialty hospitals in some capacity at this point and most could probably add on additional residency positions with the caseloads we see. Academia caseloads just won’t support that many residents. Large animal is definitely one of the areas that, in my mind, is more dependent on an academic environment though.

In terms of hiring specialists, academia wants specialists trained in academia. That’s going to have to change if the teaching hospitals want to stay afloat. Gonna have to start letting the PP specialists into the cool kids’ club. Although this still doesn’t change the fact that PP can get you 2-4x more money than you’d get in academia. If you aren’t that person that wants to be in academia no matter what, you’re going to follow the money.

Idk if uofi is a great school to use as an example for anything lol. I think ~10 of my classmates did any residency, academic or not. our GPAs are just not competitive in the match, so many people who wanted to specialize don’t bother trying at all, or give up after 2-3 years of trying to match. Several of uofi grads out there that I know that have tried to scramble into open academic positions and been declined once their packet is reviewed. Options are seriously limited for half (maybe more like 75% depending on the class) of each class UofI graduates.

 

[battie]

our GPAs are just not competitive in the match, so many people who wanted to specialize don’t bother trying at all, or give up after 2-3 years of trying to match.

This is what happens when you try to be cool with your grading scheme 🤣