Faculty Shortage Calls Some Pharmacists Back to School

September 17th, 2008

With pharmacists already in short supply nationwide, a dearth of pharmacy professors threatens to deepen the pharmacy labor crisis and backfire on the needs of the marketplace.

“The shortage of pharmacy faculty, now and in the future, represents a serious public health threat in the face of the rapidly growing consumer demand for prescription drugs,” says Lucinda Maine, executive vice president of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP).

In 2006, the AACP reported an 11 percent faculty vacancy rate. Even with vacancies at this level, pharmacy schools are expanding enrollments to meet increased demand, and at least nine new pharmacy schools are scheduled to open by 2010, two factors that will only exacerbate the problem, says the American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education.

Therein lies the dilemma. With industry wooing both graduates and teachers with skyrocketing salaries and enviable benefits, who will instruct the next generation of pharmacists the industry so desperately needs? The solution lies in attracting more new pharmacy graduates and more practicing pharmacists alike to careers in teaching.

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