As a soon to be pharmacist graduating this May, I honestly don’t know why anyone who has to pay for college is applying right now. Unless your mom and dad are paying for school it just makes no sense to go to school for 6 years (now becoming 7/8 in most nearby places) just to make 80-110k.
I didn’t come from money and I know I’m entering a saturated field so fingers crossed but my standards are low anyways so any money will be appreciated. I got a high scholarship that paid for 65% of my tuition so with dorming (only two years - kinda regret but amazing experience) will total around 190k around graduation. Smartest move? No, I recognize that but I also fell into the trap of seeing 16% growth on BLS in 2012 when I signed on. If I knew what I knew today I wouldn’t have dormed and only owed 145k. But hindsight is 20/20 and I did have an amazing experience, made tons of friends and stayed in Europe a semester so it’s not all bad.
I’m curious to see what happens. If people are really doing it for the money, finance/engineering can easily land you there in a few years (assuming you’re around average) with less schooling. I can’t see people going to pharmacy school for a 80-90k salary to work at CVS while taking out >250k loans, that just doesn’t make sense. Even from when I started, tuition is now 10k higher a year and scholarships are cut.
I honestly am not sure how this will play out, I’m not doom and gloom and I don’t think pharmacists will be extinct in X amount of years. But I do foresee salaries declining for the meantime which has to lead to closing of pharmacy schools (cause we all know they
arent lowering tuition). I’m going to assume even the less intelligent prospective students aren’t going to school for 6-8 years for a starting salary of 80k and a loan burden of 300k. But we’ll see. For all of our sake, I hope everyone fares okay through the worst of this saturation and who knows what the future will bring. =)