Developing programs

[lemurcatta]

Anyone take a look at this webpage on the ARC-PA site recently?

http://www.arc-pa.org/applicant-programs/
 

There are 54 developing programs attempting to gain accreditation. In my own state of CA, there are 5 new programs mostly at schools you’ve never heard of. At least one of them (West Coast University) is a private for-profit racket of a nursing school that promises to seat you into their RN program (no waitlist!) upon payment of over a hundred thousand dollars. Side note: there is a provisional PA program already operating in Southern California (called Southern California University of Health Sciences) that is primarily a chiropractic school run out of an abandoned public middle school now offering a PA program because of declining interest and applicants for the chiropractic program.

It is so unbelievably sad that “universities” see our profession as a chance to cash in on federal student loan money, meanwhile degrading the quality of our education and without regard to eventual job prospects of their future graduates.

Anyone have any ideas on how we can fight this? Or maybe a different perspective? 

[Joelseff]

Yeah it's crazy. West Coast "University" worries me as well as the SCU one. They are NOT medical schools. A friends son got his BSN from West Coast.. Cost the poor kid 120k in tuition alone. SCU is a non allopathic school with Chiro and ND as their main programs.

We are definitely following suit to NP programs and 100% online programs will likely be on th ehorizon in the next decade.

This I think is detrimental to the PERCEIVED quality of our profession. It may hurt us in the end. I'm all for increasing the number of PAs but 54 additional programs (there were 80 countrywide 10 yrs ago) in one state is nuts.


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[rev ronin]

Hopefully ARC-PA is going to be putting the kibosh on many/most of these.  Rather than greenlighting new programs, if we are to grow it should be with established programs with proven leadership being allowed to organically grow by a few seats year-over-year.

It's a catch-22: We have too few of us, we get overrun by the horde of NPs, poorly trained but independent from the get-go.  If we have too many of us, we have no quality advantage.

All the more reason we should have ONLY PAs sitting on the ARC-PA board making decisions about the PA profession.

[DarwinStarwin]

I was in a relatively small, 20-ish year established program in a hihgly underserved state. Our graduating class had between 15 and 20 people. I was a recipient of a $50k scholarship focused on providing primary care to rural communities and i felt the program took advantage of that scholarship. They charged me more for rotations. It was unethical.

Meanwhile, my poor classmates are going about 120k into debt for the program and starting at salaries (in oncology and other relatively lucrative specialties) comparable to mine in family practice. I had a few classmates truly struggle in finding employment.

Its like puppy mills but... PA-ppy mills. Ha,, anyone, anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

[MediMike]

Charged you for rotations? Are you kidding me?

I guess I'm not highly involved in PA education but this blows my mind. 

 

Was this on top of your regular tuition?

[LT_Oneal_PAC]

On 2/16/2020 at 11:06 PM, rev ronin said:

Hopefully ARC-PA is going to be putting the kibosh on many/most of these.  Rather than greenlighting new programs, if we are to grow it should be with established programs with proven leadership being allowed to organically grow by a few seats year-over-year.

It's a catch-22: We have too few of us, we get overrun by the horde of NPs, poorly trained but independent from the get-go.  If we have too many of us, we have no quality advantage.

All the more reason we should have ONLY PAs sitting on the ARC-PA board making decisions about the PA profession.

Agree on all points. Problem is, ARC-PA has to approve these programs if they meet requirements. It’s federal law. So what they need to do is bump up the frigging requirements and shut down these programs.

[rev ronin]

3 hours ago, LT_Oneal_PAC said:

Agree on all points. Problem is, ARC-PA has to approve these programs if they meet requirements. It’s federal law. So what they need to do is bump up the frigging requirements and shut down these programs.

Well, or making sure that the requirements are really and truly being met.  Unfortunately, the plethora of new programs seem to be paying well for preceptors, taking away from older programs that never had to...  Hard to call that complying. Maybe we need transparency on what programs pay preceptors, so students can know where their money is going?

[TexasPA28]

It's a problem across the board for NP, PA, DO and MD programs.

Hell DO programs are now at backwater colleges with zero hospitals, zero academic medical center presence and zero academic physicians on staff.  It's a total joke.

In 2000 there were 19 DO programs, 20 years later there are 57 with another 20 projected in the next 5 years

 

Edited February 24, 2020 by TexasPA28

[Cideous]

I've said this for years.  It's not that we don't have enough providers in this country...it's that we don't have enough places for them to work.

Edited February 24, 2020 by Cideous

[Reality Check 2]

TOO MANY PA PROGRAMS

We are churning out new grads with no place to work much less places to train adequately.

54 programs in 1992 when I graduated. We have 4 times that many now.

Quantity NEVER outdoes QUALITY in medicine - whether in number of patients seen per day or number of schools.

We need to stop the glut and cut down the number of schools or raise the bars so high that schools can't qualify and the number becomes more manageable and hopefully of higher quality.