PharmD Degrees Decline ... (We're finally going mainstream!)

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Kevin.Mero

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PharmD Degrees Decline

In 2017, the second-largest number of PharmD degrees (14,502) were conferred in the history of pharmacy education—a slight decrease over 2016 (14,556) according to the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP).

Student enrollment in pharmacy schools for Fall 2017 declined from 2016, but the decrease is only slight and could be attributed to colleges that did not report their figures.

“Had these schools reported their data, we could have easily seen an increase in degrees awarded over last year,” says Cecilia Plaza, PharmD, vice president of Academic Services, AACP.

Nationally, college enrollments have been declining for the past several years, “and this trend may just be beginning to impact pharmacy as well,” Plaza adds.

http://www.drugtopics.com/small-dos...481&GUID=81CB9EE7-6C98-4374-BB57-2F278027C809

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What about 2018? That's a year old

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You would have to take that up with the AACP as they are always a year behind and it's getting worse. It seems with each passing year they are holding on to the info longer. I write a blog post each year and recap the data. This year we didn't get the results until May 21st. But that said, even they can't report 2018 data until the year is over.
 
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Student enrollment in pharmacy schools for Fall 2017 declined from 2016, but the decrease is only slight and could be attributed to colleges that did not report their figures.

So, are the saying there are colleges that did report their enrollment in 2016, but then didn't report their enrollment in 2017? Because if the colleges didn't report their data either year, then it wouldn't have any effect on the total. If the colleges did report their data in 2016, but didn't in 2017, I wonder why they would do that?
 
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So, are the saying there are colleges that did report their enrollment in 2016, but then didn't report their enrollment in 2017? Because if the colleges didn't report their data either year, then it wouldn't have any effect on the total. If the colleges did report their data in 2016, but didn't in 2017, I wonder why they would do that?
Whatever the AACP's true intentions are is open to interpretation. But if you ask me I feel they are trying to intentionally mislead the public with their fuzzy math. As the devil is always in the details, there was not enough detail to draw any conclusions, except one, the drop in PharmD degrees conferred. I feel the AACP is doing damage control and continuing to try to manage/spin messaging. Student applications have plummeted, enrollment is dropping, and now the # of degrees conferred has dropped. I assumed we would see the # of degrees conferred drop but I didn't think we would see that for another 2-3 years. It appears students are bailing from the programs faster than even I thought. I'm guessing colleges are not reporting because they don't want to report everything just mentioned, or probably the only metric rising ... attrition rates!!

The early 2020's are going to be the deciding period in the fate of new grad PharmD's. Our analysis lead to the conclusion that we currently graduate between 4,000 and 5,000 more pharmacists than we create jobs for, and the US could reach a tipping point somewhere between 2020 and 2023 where the number of licensed pharmacists will be greater than the number of jobs for pharmacists, assuming the current trends are maintained.
 
Whatever the AACP's true intentions are is open to interpretation. But if you ask me I feel they are trying to intentionally mislead the public with their fuzzy math. As the devil is always in the details, there was not enough detail to draw any conclusions, except one, the drop in PharmD degrees conferred. I feel the AACP is doing damage control and continuing to try to manage/spin messaging. Student applications have plummeted, enrollment is dropping, and now the # of degrees conferred has dropped. I assumed we would see the # of degrees conferred drop but I didn't think we would see that for another 2-3 years. It appears students are bailing from the programs faster than even I thought. I'm guessing colleges are not reporting because they don't want to report everything just mentioned, or probably the only metric rising ... attrition rates!!

The early 2020's are going to be the deciding period in the fate of new grad PharmD's. Our analysis lead to the conclusion that we currently graduate between 4,000 and 5,000 more pharmacists than we create jobs for, and the US could reach a tipping point somewhere between 2020 and 2023 where the number of licensed pharmacists will be greater than the number of jobs for pharmacists, assuming the current trends are maintained.


Shoot, in the last year alone I know 3 decent pre-pharm candidates bailing on applying and that is just at my one store!
One even accepted into a good cheap state school turned it down to take a year to re-assess the situation.
 
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