Just announced. First class will start in 2025.
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This is wonderful news. Thank you for sharing this development.
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This was my reaction also. There are not very many veterinary schools, and my understanding is that there is a shortage of DVMs. I do not know to what extent this depends upon the specialty (such as large animal versus small animal versus mixed practice).
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Recieved āletter of reasonable assuranceā from accredidation board, which lets them start to accept students for next year.
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Fantastic news. We donāt have enough vet schools in the country, and from the difficulty I hear that everyone is having getting in with a vet, clearly we donāt have enough vets.
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The AVMA has released a position statement which indicates they believe there will be enough veterinarians to continue to meet demand thru 2035 - based on the existing Veterinary School Programs (as in already graduating veterinarians). I believe this is exclusive of the somewhat regularly march of expanding class sizes in existing schools. And itās exclusive of the schools already building their programs as w well as schools āannouncingā their intentions to start a veterinary school. This suggests the AVMA believes there will be a fairly large net surplus of Veterinarians beginning sometime in the next few years and likely for the foreseeable futureā¦which for most of your children would be much of their practice career.
Not to be a downer here - but for profit education as well as the ātraditionalā state schools have discovered the disconnect between the numbers of kids who want to be veterinarians, their willingness to take on large debt, the governments willingness to back this debt (and pay the schools up front), and the future demand for services (salary).
Taking that a step further - the corporate and private equity assimilation of what used to be privately owned practices has eliminated a lot of the Veterinarian/Business Owner compensation - which is where some veterinarians were able to escalate their compensation into the multiple hundreds of thousands of dollarsā¦ which obviously would make paying your educational debt off that much easier. The large majority of DVM graduates will not become Business Owners, so that multiples of Veterinarian compensation that comes with owning the practice and managing your professional colleagues is disappearing.
Alternatively, Specialty Practice does pay better than General Practice, but comes with 4-5 more years of school, delayed payment on educational debt, and itās own headaches.
This perhaps emphasizes what some of us have been saying about avoiding or minimizing debt.
I just did a quick Google search that said that the average debt for all recent DVM graduates was $147,258, but the average debt for those recent DVM graduates who have debt is $179,505. If I did the math right, this would suggest that 82% of recent DVM graduates have debt. This does roughly agree with what my daughter has been saying. I think that the 18% without debt have found a good career that will pay well enough and be relatively recession free. However, I would be nervous for any recent or soon-to-be graduate whose total debt exceeds their starting salary.
I have also been leery of a DVM going into private practice. I think that there are just too many legal and regulatory ways to make this difficult.
You are probably overthinking this part - Business Insurance covers Veterinary Practices as it does for other businesses and for the most part is no more or less expensive proportionately.
From a malpractice perspective I have been hearing for 30 years that litigation against veterinarians for Malpractice has been increasing and the awards are getting larger and larger. I believe this is propaganda and hype - propaganda from the companies selling high level medicine diagnostics, therapies etc and pushing āgold standardā or youāll get sued, and hype from the Veterinary Schools and Specialists who are pushing "Gold Standardsā¦and refer to the specialists). Here is why - our Malpractice Insurance Rates have not been skyrocketing, in fact, the rate of increase on my Malpractice Insurance has been the -lowest- increases (%) of all my business expenses. I believe I am paying a bit less than $500 a year for a 3M (Single Incident) / $ 5M cumulative (annual) policy and a another $ 100 a year in License Defense coverage. So the malpractice is for the Civil action costs and the License Defense is so that I have a specialized attorney to represent me in front of the Licensing board. Thus the actuarials employed by the major insurance providers, who should know their numbers down pat, have determined our malpractice risk/payouts continues to remain very low.
Lastly, as far as Regulatory - yes it has gotten a bit more rigorous as the years go by - but its not that bad, especially once youāve established your protocols/maintenance schedule and so you known when you need to do what and what inspections are coming when and what to expect.
TBH, the most difficult part of owning/managing the practice is the PEOPLE partā¦ HR for Employees and managing client interactions. And if someone thiunks they are going to escape those by staying in corporate / private equity as an associate rather than an owner (or escape it as a referral specialist)ā¦ they are going to be disappointed to find out, theyāll still have to deal with it.
Itās worse than what youāve googled.
Imo, the VIN Foundation does the best at ferreting out the data and compiling it. (Bias disclosure as I am a past Board Member and Finance Chair some years back). Having worked with a lot of these ākidsā (Vets out less than 5-10 years) many of them are very negatively impacted by the reality of their debt load and inability to make head way on it - MANY- are gambling on the 20-25 year government repayment and forgiveness plans (of which they will likely be taxed as unearned income for whatever debt gets waved in year 20-25). MANY are accumulating more debt each year, as their minimum payments under these programs doesnāt even cover their monthly interest payments.
I went in search -m this is hardly the only opinion on the matter, and certainly the AVMA has itās own biasesā¦ but they are not the same biases as those pushing for expansion of Veterinary Class sizes in existing programs or creating entirely new programs;
I am a veterinarian (by training) ā when I got out of school ā my first job paid $35K and I literally would have made more money flipping burgers. (I worked 60 hours a week.) I left private practice due to a number of factors -but the pay (and hours) were certainly a big factor.
I HAVE been told that the starting salary is much better now- and that will help them address those large loans:
From the AVMA website ( https://www.avma.org/news/veterinary-starting-salaries-rise-2023-educational-debt-holds-steady)
The mean starting incomes in 2023 for the following areas was:
- $125,416 for private practice
- $87,417 for public practice
- $46,186 for residencies
- $53,266 for internships
Am I encouraging people to go into veterinary medicine? NOPE ā because most people canāt actually afford āproperā medicine for their pets - so you spend a lot of time guessing at medical diagnoses and then giving antibiotics or steroids and hoping for the best. Basically for general private practice, you donāt really get to practice medicine. I guess if you are lucky enough to get into a specialty -then you actually get to do more medicine but those spots were few and far between -and only the very best students even had a chance at them.
If you have the grades for veterinary school ā go into human medicine instead - you donāt need to be a MD ā plenty of supporting fields pay well and donāt require the extensive schooling. THEN you go and have the money to have lots of cats or dogs or donate to shelters! 