[core0]

Originally Posted by prairienp

That is my point, the UND program is clearly an "outlier" yet has produced a significant number of PAs. What % of practicing PAs are UND graduates? Maybe 3-4%?

Less than 2%. If you take 35 per year x 35 years you end up with around 1000. There are around 75,000 total PAs ever trained. I would also guess that like most PA programs the early years of the program had many future students than programs today. That also implies that all those PAs were trained with distance based education. Quite a trick in 1970. I would guess that well less than .5% of PAs have been trained there with the distance education. Maybe less.

David Carpenter, PA-C

[PMFB-RN]

Originally Posted by core0

Less than 2%. If you take 35 per year x 35 years you end up with around 1000. There are around 75,000 total PAs ever trained. I would also guess that like most PA programs the early years of the program had many future students than programs today. That also implies that all those PAs were trained with distance based education. Quite a trick in 1970. I would guess that well less than .5% of PAs have been trained there with the distance education. Maybe less.

David Carpenter, PA-C

*** I have no way of knowing the stats for UND but it's not as if distance education is an unknown factor. Seem pretty well established to me that very complex and rigorous subjects can be successfully taught via distance learning. I think it would be silly to argue otherwise given the huge number of mechanical engineers, NPs, and other professions with large portions of their didactic portion via distance. Currently many of the one year accelerated BSN programs for college grads are all online except for clinicals and skills labs and they are turning out nurses at least as competent as graduates from the regular programs.

[prairienp]

Originally Posted by core0

Less than 2%. If you take 35 per year x 35 years you end up with around 1000. There are around 75,000 total PAs ever trained. I would also guess that like most PA programs the early years of the program had many future students than programs today. That also implies that all those PAs were trained with distance based education. Quite a trick in 1970. I would guess that well less than .5% of PAs have been trained there with the distance education. Maybe less.

David Carpenter, PA-C

My understanding was that they admitted 80 PA students per year until 2005? when they reduced to 35. Which would be 30 X 80 (2,400)+ 5 X 35 (165) or 2,565. Which would be closer to 2%. As I understand the UND program Distant Ed wasn't part of the program until the last few years.

[core0]

Originally Posted by prairienp

My understanding was that they admitted 80 PA students per year until 2005? when they reduced to 35. Which would be 30 X 80 (2,400)+ 5 X 35 (165) or 2,565. Which would be closer to 2%. As I understand the UND program Distant Ed wasn't part of the program until the last few years.

My understanding is that it has been around 35 for a quite a while. The one PA that I know went there about 8 years ago and had 32 in her class. I think the confusion is that they interview for 80 but spread across two years (if I understand the process). Currently part of the interview process is that they go to your preceptor and interview both you and the preceptor. This makes more sense if you can batch a bunch of interviews together in one geographic area.

Also remember that the size of most PA programs have only increased in the last few years. Duke had 4 students in its first class. They were at 24 until about 10 years ago. Similarly the first CU class was 6. They were also about 20 until about 9 years ago when they went to 40. Most PAs that are out there have actually graduated in the last 11 years (if I remember where the 50% mark is).

David Carpenter, PA-C

[prairienp]

Originally Posted by core0

My understanding is that it has been around 35 for a quite a while. The one PA that I know went there about 8 years ago and had 32 in her class. I think the confusion is that they interview for 80 but spread across two years (if I understand the process). Currently part of the interview process is that they go to your preceptor and interview both you and the preceptor. This makes more sense if you can batch a bunch of interviews together in one geographic area.

Also remember that the size of most PA programs have only increased in the last few years. Duke had 4 students in its first class. They were at 24 until about 10 years ago. Similarly the first CU class was 6. They were also about 20 until about 9 years ago when they went to 40. Most PAs that are out there have actually graduated in the last 11 years (if I remember where the 50% mark is).

David Carpenter, PA-C

The PA I talked to had 80 students in her class in 1997, her alumni news listed 80 graduates in 98-2001, with 2001 the last time I saw a alumni publication. Which means I don't have any accurate information other than those few years I saw the alumni news.
The size of NP and PA programs were all small in those early years, I had 5 students in my class in the early 80s. I am guessing the # of new NPs over the past 10-11 years is about = to % of PAs. Everybody trying to expand education numbers to keep costs down. Less cost to the program if they can have 10-20 students tuition as compared to 5-10.

[core0]

Originally Posted by prairienp

The PA I talked to had 80 students in her class in 1997, her alumni news listed 80 graduates in 98-2001, with 2001 the last time I saw a alumni publication. Which means I don't have any accurate information other than those few years I saw the alumni news.
The size of NP and PA programs were all small in those early years, I had 5 students in my class in the early 80s. I am guessing the # of new NPs over the past 10-11 years is about = to % of PAs. Everybody trying to expand education numbers to keep costs down. Less cost to the program if they can have 10-20 students tuition as compared to 5-10.

The person I talked to said she had 40 in her class in 1999. She said they admitted 80 for a two year cycle. Not really sure what their numbers are. Very hard to pin down. She said the numbers in the class before were much larger, the class after was smaller. It may be they go up and down depending on resources. She did most of the course self study and then went there for four one month rotations. She was an ICU nurse so they let her arrange her specialty rotations in the hospital also. This was just before internet learning came out. She thought that the dropout rate was 25-30%. Overall she was not very impressed with the education compared to the other PAs she works with. Her perception was that she had to figure out what was important instead of having people who had worked in the profession go over what they thought was important. The main advantage was that it allowed her to stay at home with her kids.

As far as the classes, this is definitely true. The first PA class was 4 people. The first NP class had 1 person. For PAs the classes really didn't expand until the 90's. Thats when the colleges figured out the dollar signs were there.

David Carpenter, PA-C

[PMFB-RN]

Originally Posted by core0

The person I talked to said she had 40 in her class in 1999. She said they admitted 80 for a two year cycle.

*** I just talked to a person at UND. She said that they have been admitting 35 PA students per year since it became a graduate program. She also said that they were planning on admitting 60 students in 2008 and do an all in-all out program were there is only one class of PA students at a time.
I have been thinking that with their first two semesters of didactic instruction online and with students working with a preceptor in their home town the size of their class could be almost unlimited.
The person I spoke with thought the idea that UND would lose their accreditation absurd and said their program has been accredited since 1970.
I am disappointed that PA instruction seems to be going the way of nursing and some other fields towards degree inflation.

[core0]

Originally Posted by PMFB-RN

*** I just talked to a person at UND. She said that they have been admitting 35 PA students per year since it became a graduate program. She also said that they were planning on admitting 60 students in 2008 and do an all in-all out program were there is only one class of PA students at a time.
I have been thinking that with their first two semesters of didactic instruction online and with students working with a preceptor in their home town the size of their class could be almost unlimited.
The person I spoke with thought the idea that UND would lose their accreditation absurd and said their program has been accredited since 1970.
I am disappointed that PA instruction seems to be going the way of nursing and some other fields towards degree inflation.

As far a class size you still have to supply the same support to the students wether they are at the school or not. That is part and parcel of the PA education process. That was recently codified in the guidelines. A typical PA program with 40 or so students will have 3-4 academic coordinators to secure new sites and to check on students while on rotations. This is magnified if you have students spread out all over the place. The uneveness of student arranged rotations is supposedly the reason that ARC-PA is doing this. The rules on this are probably going to get stricter. A lot of the top tier programs are cutting down on student arranged rotations and are getting rid of any that don't give good experience.

The other issue is that the students still have to do their other required rotations such as surgery and ER. My understanding is that most of these are done in North Dakota. If you double the class size you have to find twice as many slots. They are also increasing the medical school size if I remember correctly so that will be more competition there. Adding students is not as simple as adding seats in the class. You also have to have good sites for them. Nationwide there is a tremendous problem finding OB slots for male students for example. Some of the programs have resorted to paying the practice site for the slots.

As far as the degree issue, I think that the Masters is the appropriate degree. The knowledge is taught at the graduate level. The trick is to keep the certification competency based. There are a few schools that funnel a lot of PAs to underserved areas that are based at community colleges. It would be a shame to lose those programs that really go back to the roots of the PA profession. That being said there are at least two states that require a Masters to practice so that is probably the future. (the cynic in me sees the higher $$$$ for graduate school as the motivating force).

David Carpenter, PA-C

[prairienp]

Originally Posted by core0

As far as the degree issue, I think that the Masters is the appropriate degree. The knowledge is taught at the graduate level. The trick is to keep the certification competency based. There are a few schools that funnel a lot of PAs to underserved areas that are based at community colleges. It would be a shame to lose those programs that really go back to the roots of the PA profession. That being said there are at least two states that require a Masters to practice so that is probably the future. (the cynic in me sees the higher $$$$ for graduate school as the motivating force).

David Carpenter, PA-C

I often wonder where is the $$$ going? We know NP and PA faculty are not high $$$$ jobs, they do it because they like to teach. Costs vary greatly between individual NP programs and individual PA programs. I would think if the $$$ were so good for teaching, the jobs would be hard to get. My understanding is that teaching jobs are confusing, in that (at least NP) are seeking the PhD prepared NP, of which very few exist. I haven’t heard that PA faculty are making a lot money either. So we have a lot of students who want to be NPs or PAs and a significant faculty shortage. I know the nursing faculty shortage is scary, and isn’t getting better. Not sure what the answer is, the more we compare the NP and PA the more similarities are found.

[core0]

Originally Posted by prairienp

I often wonder where is the $$$ going? We know NP and PA faculty are not high $$$$ jobs, they do it because they like to teach. Costs vary greatly between individual NP programs and individual PA programs. I would think if the $$$ were so good for teaching, the jobs would be hard to get. My understanding is that teaching jobs are confusing, in that (at least NP) are seeking the PhD prepared NP, of which very few exist. I haven’t heard that PA faculty are making a lot money either. So we have a lot of students who want to be NPs or PAs and a significant faculty shortage. I know the nursing faculty shortage is scary, and isn’t getting better. Not sure what the answer is, the more we compare the NP and PA the more similarities are found.

In a lot of schools the money goes to subsidize other programs. In my program the money subsidized the undergrad students. I will give you the example I know best. 50 students per class at $24k per year (so 100 students total per year). That works out to $2.4 million per year. We had a 3 administrators, 6 faculty, 4 academic coordinators and a program director (who was also faculty). In addition there are part time instructors that supervise students in their first year rotations and visiting instructors that are paid for lectures (if i remember that was about $100 per lecture). So lets be generous and say that salary + benefits are $100k (I would bet that it is less than that). That would be $1.3 million or so. Add another $300k for the building and stuff and you still have a nice profit. I was told that the graduate programs (PA/OT/PT) with 150 students paid about 40% of the colleges expenses while the undergrad with 900 students paid the rest.

Now what you get for that money is a top 10 school with a lot of contacts that is able to get you a rotation almost anywhere in the US. Another program that I know fairly well has 24 students with 4 faculty, program director, 2 coordinators and a secretary. They pay their lecturers less but tuition is $12K. So there you have a budget of about $550k per year which won't cover expenses without state aid and a grant. So not all programs make a ton of money.

There isn't really a big shortage of PA educators as far as I know. There is a shortage of program directors, but that is a function of the growth in the profession. A good program director can do really well. The one issue is that a lot of older PAs don't have a masters so have a hard time getting academic appointments. If you are coming from primary care the salary is probably a wash. If you are cominig from specialty you are going to take a hit. In the end you don't teach for the money.

As far as NPs they are mostly looking for the PhD which limits the job market. This is one driver for the DNP (at least from my understanding). At least locally the NP instructors don't take a heavy course load so some of the tuition goes to subsidize their research.

Graduate education is a very complex topic. There are some schools that make a frightening amount of money off it (University of Phoenix comes to mind). Overall most of the programs break even or subsidize other graduate programs.

David Carpenter, PA-C