A study of supply and demand

Pharmacy schools turning out too many grads

October 26, 2013 1:00 PM    

By Bill Toland / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

For pharmacists, the salad days were just a decade ago, a time when a young man or woman newly in possession of a pharmacy doctorate could find a job in any state, working flexible hours, for handsome pay. And if the pay wasn't handsome enough, he or she could pick up and move from a more saturated city like Pittsburgh -- which has two pharmacy schools -- to someplace in the Southwest, where druggists were in critically short supply and higher demand. Six-figure salaries, $30,000 signing bonuses, even new cars, weren't uncommon.

You know what comes next: Universities responded by churning out new pharmacy grads, to meet the expected demands of a graying baby boomer generation and the seniors who were outliving actuarial forecasts. From 1987 to 2012, the number of accredited pharmacy schools in the United States grew from 72 to 128. Existing schools expanded their class sizes, as well.
Instead of creating 6,000 new doctors of pharmacy a year, as was the case in 2002, U.S. higher education is now putting out around 13,000.

It's too many, says Daniel L. Brown, pharmacy professor at Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida. He's studied and written about the issue.

"By 2007, you could see the winds starting to change," he said. "Some of it's the economy. Some of it's people not retiring. But most of it is the overexpansion of schools." The job market, he said, just can't absorb all of the new pharmacists, and it may take until the end of the decade or longer for a rebound.

Another issue facing new grads -- in some of the areas where growth was expected, the new jobs never materialized. Pharmacy schools were banking on the fact that changes in health care delivery would put

Workplace Readiness after college..

from Gawker: 

College Students Mistakenly Believe They're Ready for the Workplace

America's college students will soon be cast out into a struggling economic landscape in search of employment. Luckily, college students believe in their ability to get the job done. Far more than the people hiring them do, in fact.

Inside Higher Ed notes the findings of a new survey conducted by Chegg that measured how prepared college students think they are for the workplace, and, separately, polled hiring managers on their own beliefs about how prepared college students are. A classic comic setup if ever there was one! The survey reveals, as it puts it in the most polite possible terms, "a gap between the skills hiring managers reported seeing in recent graduates and the skills the students perceive themselves as having mastered." For starters, 50% of college students say they're very prepared for the workplace, whereas only 39% of hiring managers—who've actually seen college students in action, in the workplace—agree.

Also: more than two thirds of students think their GPA is important, but less than half of hiring managers say

WSJ: Don’t Blame Students for the Jobs-Skills Mismatch

from the WSJ Latest Headlines Blog:

Companies often complain they aren’t getting graduates with the skills they need. Why is that—and what should be done about it?

ERIC SPIEGEL: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that although nearly 12 million U.S. workers are unemployed, businesses report nearly four million open jobs—jobs that cannot be filled by previously displaced workers because of gaps in skills. There is clearly a mismatch between the education and skills that many Americans have and what employers need. At a time when American industry is struggling to fill these open positions, it is common to say that we have a skills gap. But in truth, it’s not just a skills gap–it’s a training gap.

If we want to fix this, we need to put the onus on those who train, rather than those who need to be trained. A recent OECD study that evaluated work-based skills taught in schools in 29 countries found that the U.S. ranks dead last. Wharton School professor Peter Cappelli found that in 1979, young U.S. workers received an average of 2.5 weeks of training per year. By 1995, studies found that the average company offered just under 11 hours per year. By 2011, Accenture found that only 21% of all U.S. employees had received any employer-provided training in the past five years. In other words, 80% of today’s workforce is working jobs with little to no instruction since before the iPhone was invented!

In order to ensure that students graduate with the skills needed for the jobs that exist, companies need to work with the education system, government and labor. These public-private partnerships are critical because they allow for the marriage of supply and demand. Businesses can communicate their immediate and anticipated needs so that educational institutions can develop programs to train students for the necessary skills. At SiemensSIE.XE +2.23%, we are bringing the centuries-old concept of apprenticeships, based on the German model, to America. These apprentices are paid to work while in school, receive a diploma and a skills certificate, and upon completion a job that can lead to a long-term career. This is one way to ensure that workers are trained for the jobs of today and tomorrow.

Eric Spiegel (@ericspiegel) is the president and CEO of Siemens USA and the author of the 2009 book “Energy Shift: Game-changing Options for Fueling the Future.” 

Career Week - October 13-19