🔒Amid broader industry shortage, CT college pharmacy programs see declining enrollment

A little more than a decade after the University of St. Joseph (USJ) launched its highly touted pharmacy doctoral degree, the program has become smaller than originally envisioned.

West Hartford-based USJ had 117 graduate pharmacy students enrolled in 2022, down 44.3% from 210 students in 2019.

Meanwhile, UConn has seen enrollment within its pharmacy school — which includes pre-professional, professional and graduate degree programs — shrink from 714 students in 2019, to 598 in 2022, a decline of 16.2%.

Nationally, the number of students enrolling in a first-year accredited pharmacy program has shrunk more than 35% over the past decade, as the major and industry in general face a number of headwinds.

The pandemic, which spurred burnout in the broader healthcare sector, exacerbated enrollment pressures at pharmacy schools and a pharmacist shortage in Connecticut and elsewhere, experts said.

There were 2,990 pharmacists employed in Connecticut as of May 2022, down nearly 12.6% from two years earlier, according to the latest available data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

USJ administrators said they don’t anticipate a major enrollment boost anytime soon. However, school officials said they are embracing smaller class sizes that offer students more personal attention.

The school would like to see enrollment of first-year students get back up to around 60 annually, said Ahmed Abdelmageed, dean of the USJ School of Pharmacy. Its current first-year enrollment is about 45 students, down from 65 in 2018 and about 90 in the program’s first year in 2011.

The school receives between 200 and 250 applicants annually, Abdelmageed said.

“I’m more focused on quality rather than quantity,” he said. “There is a better learning environment when you have small classes; it lends itself to better group work interactions. It can also help those students who might be struggling early on where our faculty can work with them, rather than that student getting lost in the numbers.”

Philip Hritcko, dean of the UConn School of Pharmacy, said there are several reasons for the recent enrollment decline, including fewer students graduating from high school, more competition from other health professions — including a proliferation of physician assistant programs — and a soft job market.

Hritcko said the number of students in UConn’s pharmacy program “has cycles, and ebbs and flows, and I believe we’ve hit the bottom of the curve and that we will see an increase in applicants going up in coming years.”

Evolving program

There are 142 accredited university pharmacy programs in the U.S., according to the American Association of Colleges and Pharmacy, including two in Connecticut — at USJ and UConn.

USJ launched its pharmacy program to much fanfare 13 years ago, in a new campus building within the XL Center — its first downtown Hartford presence.

That’s where the pharmacy program — which currently has 20 faculty and staff — operated until last August, when it was moved to USJ’s West Hartford campus.

The relocation was driven by a desire to make it easier for pharmacy students to interact with individuals majoring in different but similar programs, like social work and nursing, which are located on USJ’s main campus, said university President Rhona Free.

USJ invested $4 million renovating space at its West Hartford campus, creating a teaching lab with a mock pharmacy, IV room and research lab.

“We were seeing the increased emphasis and value of interprofessional education, and students being together at the same campus,” said Free, who noted the school’s XL Center lease was set to expire last August.

Abdelmageed said the USJ program has reinvented itself in recent years with a new curriculum and more integrative coursework in order to maintain competitiveness.

One key selling point, he said, is that USJ offers an accelerated program that allows students to get their pharmacy doctorate degree in three years, instead of four. Only 18 similar pharmacy programs exist in the U.S., he said.

This year, USJ also began offering a dual master’s of public health and doctor of pharmacy degree program, Abdelmageed said.

“Our program puts more emphasis on clinical skills and meets the needs of what the marketplace is looking for today,” he added.

Abdelmageed said the pharmacy program’s recruitment efforts are “multi-layered” and will soon be reviewed and potentially revised, but the main focus is on visiting health fairs and other universities (students can only enroll in the program if they have a bachelor’s degree), and sending out electronic mailers.

Recruiters also target high schools and community colleges “all over the state, including in urban districts.”

There is, and will continue to be, a concerted effort to bring in diverse students, whether by gender, ethnicity or socio-economic status, Abdelmageed said.

Top-ranked program

UConn uses 25 to 30 student ambassadors to recruit for its pharmacy school, which offers bachelor’s and doctorate degrees in pharmacy, in addition to master’s degrees and Ph.D.s in pharmaceutics, medicinal chemistry, pharmacology and toxicology.

A big selling point for UConn, Hritcko said, is its research capabilities.

The UConn School of Pharmacy sits on 220,000 square feet in one large building. It includes about 198,000 square feet of research space with 84 research labs shared by the biology department, he said.

Scientists from major pharmaceutical companies in the region provide support to UConn’s graduate programs through collaborative research engagement and teaching in graduate courses, he added.

UConn’s School of Pharmacy is ranked No. 29 nationally and No. 1 in New England, according to the U.S. News & World Report.

Enrollment challenges

Recruitment efforts, however, are challenged by a number of factors negatively impacting pharmacy school enrollments, which have been on the decline nationwide since 2015, when the number of first-year professional pharmacy students totaled over 14,000, according to the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP).

That number is projected to fall to about 9,000 first-year enrollees this year.

Meanwhile, the number of doctor of pharmacy graduates is projected to decline precipitously over the next five years, from 14,000 in 2022, to under 10,000 new graduates by 2027, AACP data shows.

That will likely exacerbate existing workforce challenges — there is a shortage of about 4,000 pharmacists in the U.S., said Russell Melchert, president of the AACP and dean of the University of Missouri School of Pharmacy.

High school graduation rates are going down in many parts of the country, intensifying competition among pharmacy schools to recruit from a smaller applicant pool, Melchert said.

There is also growing interest in vocational careers that are experiencing worker shortages but don’t require advanced degrees. The expense of a seven- to eight-year college education can be a deterrent, Melchert said.

To become a pharmacist in Connecticut, one must graduate from an accredited U.S. pharmacy school, complete 1,500 intern hours and be licensed.

The pandemic also led to burnout within the pharmacist profession, Melchert said, especially for those who work in community drug stores like CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreens, which are among the largest employers of pharmacists in Connecticut.

Melchert said he predicts pharmacy student enrollments won’t reach pre-pandemic levels until, at the earliest, the end of this decade.

While challenges exist, there are silver linings, USJ’s Abdelmageed said.

There’s huge demand for pharmacists who earn, on average, about $125,000 annually to start, he said. In addition, many new hires are being offered sign-on bonuses.

In particular, UConn’s Hritcko said there are significant job opportunities for community pharmacists who work for drug-store chains.

“We are seeing an evolution of community pharmacy changes,” Hritcko said. “They are taking on different roles and just don’t count pills anymore. They also test patients, provide immunizations, and not just for the flu. Given the education they have, they are among the most underutilized health care people out there.”