Possible thoughts:
1. Students that are in college and beyond are adults and can make their own decisions (if they are at least the age of 18 or higher). I think the schools may not be allowing the admitted students to read anything "negative" towards or about pharmacy as a profession; this "no-negativity" mentality is used to promote "professionalism" among students and faith in the profession; "clever girl" to quote Jurassic Park. The students may not even think that what we are saying is true and that we must be "trolling" because they are too ignorant, obstinate, or "hopeful" to know otherwise. Most students may "think they know" exactly what they are doing and still disregard the numbers. Those that know what we do may not be allowed to post on social media at all.
2. The schools are focused on an "all-positivity, no negativity" mentality that the students are forced to buy into or else they do not achieve the PharmD or have a future, which is a falsehood considering the posts we have here and the LinkedIn profiles found. Phi Lambda Sigma members that were inducted from our class had these traits, even though most of these individuals were wrong. Each school's motivational tactics are different, but these tactics keep the student body compliant to the school's policy; in other words, to keep order without causing problems. What I am wondering is if the satellite campuses with each pharmacy school follow the same mentality as their mother hub.
3. If you look on YouTube, some individuals post that they refuse to read the statistics by their own choice; I call that "The Shining (Star) Mentality" after the movie. Maybe these students are the Jack Torrence and think that joblessness and failure may never happen to them because they do very well at "everything," or so they perceive. The lack of online posts and exposure to them allow admitted students to be comfortable with uncertainty. The reason could be due to faith in some higher power; yes, there are YouTube channels from graduating pharmacists that promote faith over reason, but neglect one fact: "Faith without works is dead," which is directly from the Book of James.
4. Schools are targeting a younger demographic (namely high-school students who generally know very little about pharmacy). I am against inducting students from high school directly into pharmacy, regardless of how smart they are, for revenue sake as these students know very little about the profession. (One could argue the same about Medical School, but that is not the topic of discussion here.). Within the context of pharmacy, Alex Barker and I agree on something.
4a. The strategy to target younger students seems reasonable (to the schools): the schools will induct students that will promote the profession regardless of what they hear from real pharmacists and real graduates. The successful PharmD graduates will be brought in by the schools to discuss their "experiences," while everyone else who knows the truth is not even discussed. The younger you recruit them, the more entrepreneurial spirit they have, which could promote the bias of "ageism" in the workplace. If you increase the number of positive students, then you increase the school's reputation and hence the reputation of the pharmacy profession. Once the information is brought to the forefront, it is not difficult to understand the correlation.
5. Restricting students from looking at such information also allows students to experience that "pain" for themselves, but it does not correct any issues for those who already know the truth. I call it the "modified placebo effect" when the actual treatment is logic. It make me feel these students are part of a long case-control study where the outcome assessed is the correlation between positivity and job outcomes. Once that correlation is confirmed, then schools can justify they were right and we as experienced pharmacists and PharmD graduates are not. The very idea takes experience and reason out of the equation. We all know from any statistics class one fact: correlation does not mean causation. More positive people does not guarantee jobs; it just makes jobs more likely in the future. In other words, the odds ratio increases but the absolute risk remains. If you increase both the odds ratio and decrease the confidence interval with while increasing the sample size of positive people, it makes the data more statistically significant. The schools are banking, literally, on positivity to recruit more students and retain their reputation and are trying to generate enough data to support their assertions.
6. Schools are using strategy to remove expectation from the equation and focus on things that are "better." Furthermore, students are choosing pharmacy because they want to (reason and logic aside). It feels more like a video game: Tales of Pharmeria more than it does anything else; believe drives thinking and thinking drives progress (even if it is in the wrong direction).
7. The students are tired of "perceived" negativity posted on forums and neglect the evidence based on perception alone, which is more dangerous than actually reading it (Thank you, Sasiri). What I call: neglect of facts based on "alert fatigue through repetitive notifications" and the "I don't care, I want this" mentality. Student mentalities have a tendency to drive the overall social progress of the student body.
Conclusion: This lack-of-posting by pre-pharmers and pharmacy students is more telling than even
@stoichiometrist thinks. Some individuals also prefer to maintain their anonymity and to protect themselves from scrutiny by their own "colleagues," who may be on the Boards of Pharmacy. People are actually reading our posts and choose not to comment. The students are allowing themselves to experience that pain, whether conscious and aware or not.
Positivity seems to be the the targeted analgesia for extreme perceived pain.
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