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Pharmacy school graduates by state and region: 1990-1999
Judith A Cooksey1, Surrey M Walton, Todd Stankewicz
1Illinois Regional Health Workforce Center, University of Illinois-Chicago, 60607-3025, USA. jcooksey@uic.edu
Objective:
To describe the distribution of pharmacy schools and graduates (first professional degree) at the state, divisional, and regional levels during the 10-year period from 1990 through 1999, as well as enrollment patterns by residential status.
Design:
Yearly school-level graduate counts from 1990 through 1999 were obtained from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy and analyzed at the state, division, region, and national levels. Comparisons were made before and after adjusting for state population. In-state enrollment patterns for 1998 were examined.
Setting:
United States.
Main Outcome Measures:
At various geographic levels, the distribution of schools and new graduates adjusted to population; cumulative production of graduates; percentage of in-state enrollment.
Results:
Over the 10-year study period, 73,541 new pharmacists graduated from U.S. pharmacy schools, about 9,500 more than graduated in the 1980s. The number of schools varied across states (range, 0-5), as did cumulative graduate counts (range, 0-7,303), with high-producing states including those with four and five schools. Nationally, 28 new pharmacists graduated per year per 1 million population. Several populous states, including California, Florida, Illinois, and Texas, produced pharmacists at a rate substantially below the national average when computed as graduates per year per million population. The West region had the lowest annual graduate count adjusted for population. In-state enrollment was consistently high, with nearly 80% of individuals graduating from schools in their state of residence.
Conclusion:
The number of pharmacy schools and graduates increased during the 1990s, a period of substantial educational and workforce change in pharmacy. Numbers of schools and graduates varied significantly across states. The West region and several populous states had graduate counts less than one-half the national average. With the current national pharmacist shortage, greater attention should be directed to the development of strategies to address imbalances between supply and demand within individual states.