Questions About WesternU's Optometry Program

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Still some questions unanswered....and that link doesn't seem to work for me.
 
First I'd like to thank "Hurricaneuro" for pointing out that the I hadn't answered the below questions. I had gathered this information some time ago and honestly thought I had already posted it. Please accept my apologies for the delayed response.

Below are the original questions posted by "blysssful"

1) In general, a large percentage of graduates of any type of graduate program stay in the area they went to school. Even if the national saturation issue is debatable, does Western honestly believe another optometry school down the road from SCCO won't create extreme saturation issues in the Southern California area? What is the official stance on this topic?



WesternU's College of Optometry was established to address a need in the profession - specifically in the area of neuro-optometric rehabilitation. Our curriculum offers something different to current applicants:
  • curriculum focuses on rehabilitation (Neuro-optometric rehab, VT, Low Vision, TBI, special needs population, etc.)
  • Interprofessional Education: learning and sharing with the other professions on campus. Our graduates will be better prepared to work in more diverse settings with other health professionals at a higher level due to their training.
  • Early entry into patient care
There are a couple of other things to keep in mind.
  • California is the highest represented state when it comes to students enrolled in school/colleges of Optometry.
  • Many California students end up attending an out-of-state Optometry school due to lacks of seats available at the other California schools.
We strongly feel that WesternU is meeting an umet need of patients and in doing so offering a challenging/innovative curriculum that will enable a WesternU graduate to be a better prepared optometrist in any setting and be able to work with all health professions to ensure the well-being of their patient.

2) Although Western will undoubtedly do everything in its power to get accredited for the first graduating class, there is still a possibility that this will not happen (albeit, a small possibility), correct? So in this worst case scenario, what will happen to those students who would not be eligible to practice? (Will they be refunded tuition? Given back four years?)

The Accreditation Council on Optometric Education (ACOE) may decide to grant one of the two following accreditation statuses to a program following adoption of the evaluation team report and recommendations.

  • Accredited - A classification granted to an education program indicating that the program generally meets the standards for educational effectiveness of the total program. However, recommendations relating to marginal compliance with certain standards, and suggestions relating to program enhancement may be included in evaluation reports.
  • Accredited with Conditions - A classification granted to an educational program with major deficiences or weaknesses with reference to the standards of accreditation. This classification indicates that the educational effectiveness of the program is in jeopardy. Programs with this classification will be required to submit progress reports and shall undergo a full on-site evaluation visit within two years.
As you can see, it is not an "all or nothing" decision. If the status "accredited with conditions" is attained, there is a period of time to rectify any deficiencies. There is also an option for appeals and a process of reconsideration. We believe it is best for students to go directly to the source for the most accurate accreditation information. The ACOE can be contacted directly at [email protected] if you have any further questions.

3) What research is currently being done by the faculty?



I've listed below some of the research faculty are involved in.
  • The ability of Critical Thinking instruments to predict performance in optometry school
  • Optics (diffractive, "new" optics, Nanotechnology)
  • Myopia
  • Presbyopia
  • Accomodation/Reading
  • Contact lenses (especially RGP)
  • Eye glasses (match calculations and concepts to optimize abberations)
  • Orthokeratology
  • Glaucoma
  • Case reports (various topics: ocular disease, rehabilitation, etc.)
Best wishes to everyone for a great 2010!
Marie
WesternU Admissions
 
I hope the pre-opt readers of this forum realize how full of "marketing fluff" this response was.

New programs will always have issues initially, and the ones driven by Oesteopathy instead of Optometry will have even more.
 
WesternU Adm said:
WesternU's College of Optometry was established to address a need in the profession - specifically in the area of neuro-optometric rehabilitation. Our curriculum offers something different to current applicants:
  • curriculum focuses on rehabilitation (Neuro-optometric rehab, VT, Low Vision, TBI, special needs population, etc.)
  • Interprofessional Education: learning and sharing with the other professions on campus. Our graduates will be better prepared to work in more diverse settings with other health professionals at a higher level due to their training.
  • Early entry into patient care
There are a couple of other things to keep in mind.
  • California is the highest represented state when it comes to students enrolled in school/colleges of Optometry.
  • Many California students end up attending an out-of-state Optometry school due to lacks of seats available at the other California schools.
We strongly feel that WesternU is meeting an umet need of patients and in doing so offering a challenging/innovative curriculum that will enable a WesternU graduate to be a better prepared optometrist in any setting and be able to work with all health professions to ensure the well-being of their patient.
Click to expand...

As a practicing OD of 10 years, I strongly disagree with the majority of this part of the posting.

There is no great unmet demand for those services. Every practitioner that I know (myself included) who does VT, or Low Vision, or TBI, or special needs does it on an extremely limited part time basis. Why is that?

1) Because the demand isn't there. How many optometric practices or providers out there are limited to VT, Low Vision, TBI, or special needs? I'll bet you can count them on one hand. I see a smattering of VT patients a month. Certainly nothing worth opening a new school over.

2) The payment for these procedures is abysmal, particularly with respect to Low Vision. Does anyone, including WesternU have an idea how medicare and/or medicaid pays for a low vision evaluation and low vision devices? Guess what? It's so little that most people who do it do it as a charity. We have a huge local nursing home that has numerous locations throughout CT covering thousands of lives. They just LAID OFF their low vision specialist.

If you think that an 85 year old mac degen patient on a fixed income in a nursing home is going to fall all over herself to pay some doctor hundreds and hundreds of dollars to "restore" her vision, you can disavow yourself of that notion right now.

The fact that many California students pursue their training outside of California has no bearing on whether there is a demand for optometric services in California. I've never practiced in CA, but I have in NV and AZ and talking with people in California, the consensus is that ODs are a dime a dozen in California even in the most rural parts of the state. Where in California is there an unmet demand for optometric services and what steps, if any, is the school taking to ensure that graduates will service these supposedly underserved areas?

Whether these students go outside of CA or remain in CA to train doesn't matter. Most of them will likely end up in CA TO PRACTICE and that's going to exacerbate an already tough situation.

It also stands to reason that California has the highest number of students pursuing training outside of the state. It has the highest population. Interestingly enough, it's also the state with the most OD students represented in all of the schools.

The part about training along side other health professions I do think is a major plus as long as that actually happens in a clinic environment. Simply taking neuroanatomy with osteopathic students means little. Actually rotating through their clinics, and them through yours is a valuable experience that other schools would do well to embrace.
 
What are the math requirements for admission into the OD program?
 
What would I be doing with 'early entry into patient care'? Is this early entry 1st year?

Will I be taught something right off the bat to actually be useful in patient care or is it just going to be vision screenings at elementary schools.
 
"The ACOE will review the preliminary approval classification annually during the first three academic years of the program through written reports and/or site visits as deemed necessary by the Council. Not less than 12 months prior to graduation of the program's first class, the ACOE will visit the program at the University's invitation to determine accreditation status."

Was 2009 the first class? does that mean we will know if Western is accredited by January 2013? In the hypothetical situation that Western is not accredited, does that mean that the students of class 2013 will not be able to practice?
 
janedoe88 said:
Was 2009 the first class? does that mean we will know if Western is accredited by January 2013? In the hypothetical situation that Western is not accredited, does that mean that the students of class 2013 will not be able to practice?
Click to expand...

You cannot be licensed to practice optometry in the US unless you graduate from an accredited OD program. You'd have an OD, but it would be useless as far as clinical practice.

Unfortunately for the profession, the standards for accreditation in optometry are abysmally low so in all likelihood, the new programs will get accreditation.
 
WesternU said:
WesternU's College of Optometry was established to address a need in the profession - specifically in the area of neuro-optometric rehabilitation. Our curriculum offers something different to current applicants:
  • curriculum focuses on rehabilitation (Neuro-optometric rehab, VT, Low Vision, TBI, special needs population, etc.)
Click to expand...


  • SCCO already focuses its program heavily on vision training, low vision, kids on the autism spectrum, etc and has highly reputable faculty in those areas. Are you not aware of this fact? I am in touch with people from SCCO and I can say with certainty that very few of their grads actually find employment in the areas you mentioned - mainly because the opportunities are few to begin with. Please don't answer that the opportunities might increase in the future. There might a few openings in VAs for people to work with TBI with combat veterans, but we're talking about a few hundred, maybe a thousand patients over the next 5 years or so, hardly enough to justify the existence of your program. I hope you guys have some good attorneys on retainer because you're going to need them once your students wise up to the scheme that's being played on them.

    WesternU said:
    There are a couple of other things to keep in mind. [/COLOR]
    • California is the highest represented state when it comes to students enrolled in school/colleges of Optometry.
    • Many California students end up attending an out-of-state Optometry school due to lacks of seats available at the other California schools.
    We strongly feel that WesternU is meeting an umet need of patients and in doing so offering a challenging/innovative curriculum that will enable a WesternU graduate to be a better prepared optometrist in any setting and be able to work with all health professions to ensure the well-being of their patient.
    Click to expand...

    Just because there are CA students who want to go to optometry school does not mean that there is a need for another program 15 minutes away from an existing program. Just because there are people who want to buy black tar heroine, doesn't mean that we should open up hard drug shops on every street corner. Why? Because it's bad for society. Simply saying that there are CA students who want ODs is a pretty weak reasoning for a new program if it's not there for financial gain of the institution.



    I appreciate your attempt to answer the questions that were posed to you, but I still don't think there has been a real response to the major question on everyone's minds which is, How do you explain the existence of your program 15 minutes away from another OD program, in a setting that is massively over-run with optometrists already? Be certain, WesternU's presence is not creating a problem, it's adding to an already out-of-control one.

    Your program is contributing to the destruction of the profession it claims to serve. You're students will graduate, have difficulty finding work, be shuttled into commercial optometry making barely enough to pay their loans, and they'll be miserable. It's going to be at that point that they'll start coming back to their alma mater for explanations. Get ready, they're going to be quite upset when they discover that all the information in blue print above is hot air and designed to get them to fork over 220K in educational loans.
 
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Jason K said:
You cannot be licensed to practice optometry in the US unless you graduate from an accredited OD program. You'd have an OD, but it would be useless as far as clinical practice.

Unfortunately for the profession, the standards for accreditation in optometry are abysmally low so in all likelihood, the new programs will get accreditation.
Click to expand...

My question was exactly WHEN will we know if Western is accredited? Since I would be entering 2012, does that mean I would know within the year to 2013?
 
janedoe88 said:
My question was exactly WHEN will we know if Western is accredited? Since I would be entering 2012, does that mean I would know within the year to 2013?
Click to expand...

When the ACOE cracks down on unnecessary schools and you just wasted 1+ years of your life and $30,000+ in tuition and living expenses.
 
Shnurek said:
When the ACOE cracks down on unnecessary schools and you just wasted 1+ years of your life and $30,000+ in tuition and living expenses.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately for you, me, and everyone else loosely related to the profession of optometry, the ACOE is a division of the AOA. I have yet to decide whether the AOA is criminally corrupt or just full of a bunch of clueless idiots, or an even more frightening prospect - a combination of the two. In any case, the AOA is not interested in bettering the profession of optometry by increasing the standards of optometric education, they're interested in "getting in bed" with slime like Luxottica and now, VSP. The odds are very good that these new programs that we need like a hole in the head, will get accreditation because the standards are so low.

What's that, you say? Luxottica couldn't possibly be "in bed" with the AOA, right? And surely VSP, an almost 4-letter word in optometry right now, they couldn't be allowed to cavort with our own AOA, right?

http://www.aoa.org/x5623.xml (How thoughtful - the AOA to provides a link directly to the Luxottica sight.)

That's right folks. The almighty AOA, the force that should be working against commercial optometry, working against low-paying vision plans like VSP and Eyemed that are sucking the life out of private practitioners, and working to improve the future of the profession, is taking back-door funding from the enemy.

This is the future of the profession; kickbacks and bribe money from commercial optometry going to boost its own increasing presence in the field. It's a nice arrangement - money gets funneled into the AOA from commercial garbage like Luxottica and crap vision plans like VSP. The AOA, in turn, promotes optometry to the world as a wonderful prospect and a profession with a great outlook. The public reads that crap, buys into it, and reads a bunch of AOA driven surveys in the mass media. Those naive students borrow life and limb to get their coveted OD, only to find out too late that the only career prospects out there for them are commercial - then they show up at the doorstep of the nearest Luxottica office looking for an application. And thus, the cycle competes itself. Cheap labor showing up for work at Luxottica's doorstep. Now they can pay less for the ability to sell eyewear - what a deal!! It's an awesome arrangement for both sides; the AOA gets tons of cash from its slimy supporters and the slimy supporters get cheap labor coming out of schools in droves. Welcome to optometry, folks, this is what you're signing up for. You're going to buy yourselves a $200K+ refracting optician's certificate and you'll be getting paid less and less every year you're out of school. Ahhhhhh, good times.
 
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Judgment Dragon said:
Where is Marie?
Click to expand...

I imagine she's either editing their website to remove the misleading data such as the salary claims that quote 96-175K annual incomes or she's researching good attorneys in the LA area who can come to the school's aid when the lawsuits start flooding in. Fortunately for the school, JDs are even more plentiful in the LA basin as ODs so they might be able to get some good legal advice for a great bargain.
 
Can you get an interview invite before sending in a supplemental application?
 
Judgment Dragon said:
Has a USA OD school ever been sued before?
Click to expand...

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/08/11/38921.htm

Not yet, but it's coming. This article could very well be written about many of the new OD programs that are out there....promoting optometry as a profession that is in great need of new graduates, that offers new graduates solid prospects for respectable employment, and one that offers new grads the substantial income needed to pay off the extremely high loan obligation. They are blatantly lying to prospective students and at some point, it's going to come back to bite them.

With a huge oversupply issue already in effect and multiple new OD programs underway, it's inevitable. Sooner or later, OD students are going to wake up and realize they bought into a scam. It hasn't always been this way, but it is now and with all the new OD schools further adding to the problem, it will only get worse.
 
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I don't think they'll be changing much on their website - right to their greedy end.

Perhaps Marie's boss looked over her shoulder and saw the truth on the monitor. In shock, perhaps the boss gave her a new task - deal with all the applications! And that is why we don't hear from her anymore. 😀

Seriously, I smell fraud. If there is a class-action lawsuit (law students will obviously have more of the inclinations to take this up XD, not so sure about optometry students) it'll probably go civil.
 
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