The University of Nebraska Board of Regents Business Affairs Committee will be asked today to consider a tuition increase for the UNMC College of Pharmacy.
The increase is needed to address educational needs and new nationwide accreditation requirements by the Accreditation Council for Pharmaceutical Education (ACPE).
Tuition cost would increase $4,000 per year and would begin with students entering in the fall 2008, and continue with each new class of students thereafter. Students already in the program will not face the increase.
The UNMC pharmacy program, which accepts a class of 65 new students each fall, is a four-year program in which students earn a doctor of pharmacy degree. Program requirements consist of academic, laboratory, internships and pharmacy practice experiences that allow students to apply their knowledge of drugs and therapeutics in a wide variety of pharmacy careers.
Nebraska’s current cost of tuition is the lowest in a group of nine peer institutions. Under the proposal, UNMC’s pharmacy tuition would be slightly below the average tuition of its peer group.
“Our foremost mission is to educate exemplary pharmacy practitioners to meet current and future pharmaceutical care needs of the people of Nebraska and the nation,” said Courtney Fletcher, Pharm.D., dean of the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Pharmacy. “Almost 90 percent of the increase will go into hiring additional faculty to teach students and enhance their clinical experiences to best train our future pharmacists.”
The college would hire seven full-time faculty members to meet new accreditation requirements which doubled the number of hours for introductory pharmacy practice experiences (IPPE), increased professional electives, and required additional faculty for advanced pharmacy practice experiences (APPE). The college also would increase the number of professional pharmacy elective courses such as geriatric, pediatric and over-the-counter drug therapy.
The IPPE requirement, which teaches application of classroom skills in a pharmacy setting, increased from 150 to 300 hours for the first three years of the program. Advanced pharmacy practice requirements for fourth-year students would be strengthened with additional faculty. These additional faculty would reduce the student-to-faculty ratio from 9-to-1 to 6-to-1, and put UNMC in line with its peers that have achieved compliance with new accreditation standards.
The increase in tuition also would bring pharmacy faculty salaries closer to its peers. Currently, UNMC faculty salaries are 14 percent below its peers.
“After an increase, it would bring us to 9 percent below our peers, which is the average gap for faculty at other colleges on the UNMC campus,” Dr. Fletcher said.
If the college receives approval of the Board of Regents, it will notify students accepted into the fall 2008 semester of the increase.
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“After the students heard the reasons why we needed to propose this, they were wholly in support of it,” Dr. Fletcher said. “It was difficult for us to do this. But our students agreed the educational needs were real and needed to be addressed.”
Discussion among current students focused on the college’s affordability and quality, said Branden Nemecek, first year pharmacy student and president of his class.
“The student body seems to be fine with this increase, because it will still keep us in a price range that is very affordable, especially for the quality of education we are receiving,” Nemecek said. “We realize that with the changing accreditation process, we need to make changes in our curriculum and in the college as a whole.
“The college has one of the lowest costs in the country for students, yet scores very well on our board exams, but we need to make changes in order to continue to provide the best possible education. This proposal will allow us to make changes to ensure we have top-of-the-line education while still maintaining very affordable tuition for students compared to our peer institutions.”
The UNMC College of Pharmacy was established in 1908 and was only the third pharmacy school in the nation to offer the entry-level doctor of pharmacy degree. More than 55 percent of the practicing pharmacists in Nebraska graduated from the UNMC College of Pharmacy. Seventy-seven percent of those practicing in rural areas graduated from UNMC.
The College of Pharmacy’s doctor of pharmacy program has consistently ranked in the top third in the nation. In the 2009 edition of U.S. News & World Report rankings of the country’s best graduate schools, the UNMC College of Pharmacy ranked 29th of 110 accredited schools and colleges of pharmacies in the United States. Graduates also have performed above the national average on the pharmacy licensing examination annually since records first were kept. It is anticipated the Board of Regents will vote to approve the increase during its meeting in June.