Faculty & Staff
Self Governance » Faculty Meetings Committee
Dallas Expansion
To: Faculty, SOP
From: Arthur Nelson, Jr., R.Ph., Ph.D., Dean
Date: May 5, 2003
RE: More Background Information on DFW 4-Year Program
Two of the major questions that I have been asked to address about the proposed 4-year DFW satellite program is "why do we need to expand? Do we need to expand the first two years in DFW, can't we just increase our Amarillo class size and meet this need?" Please allow me to provide you my perspectives on these important questions.
As a state institution, we have been able to grow our programs through a combination of a booming state economy with a legislature that has favored higher education (particularly health sciences) and a growth in our class size that has driven the state's formula funding and Pharm.D. tuition payments. These elements have generated additional dollars to support the School's diverse missions of teaching, research, service and patient care far beyond what would be essential to support the Pharm.D. program alone. The state's economy has recently faltered, and will likely require 2-4 years to fully recover. Thus, to continue the growth of all our programs will likely depend on our ability to find new resources.
I asked the staff to pull some data to demonstrate the impact of enrollment growth on the School. The data in the attached table illustrates this. (SEE ATTACHED EXCEL SPREADSHEET.) When I formulated the initial plans for the School during the summer of 1994,[1] I planned an entry class-size of 55 students, a faculty of 37 when we achieved all 4 years enrollment in FY00, small graduate and residency programs, and that the program would be based totally in Amarillo. You may say Nelson really planned small-time, but what I missed in the analysis was the rather explosive growth in the demand for pharmacists, both in Texas and the nation. All the predictions at the time were for pharmacy schools to close! Most leaders nationally expected a reduction in the demand for pharmacists, primarily due to increased technology and technologist, and the growth of mail service pharmacy. We also had only about 100 qualified applicants for our entry class while both the universities of Texas and Houston pharmacy schools were in the middle of multi-year, compounding reductions in student applicants to their programs. The ratio of applicants to available positions was less than 2:1. Hence the student demand for pharmacy education was not yet signaling the coming explosive growth.
Fortunately, the situation changed and, as the data in the table depicts, all of our programs have grown dramatically in direct proportion to our growth in students. This is logical since Texas funds its higher education institutions through a formula process that considers the number of semester credit hours taught as the basis for appropriations. Additionally, pharmacy and law schools were further encouraged to increase class sizes by the Legislature approving a special tuition supplement for these two groups of students. As the data clearly show, our explosive growth from 1994 through 2000 correlates with a large increase in our class size, while the smaller growth from 2000 through 2003 correlates with the smaller growth in class size. More importantly, the growth has been widespread among our programs: more faculty lines, more staff to assist the students and faculty, more funds to support MOT, equipment, and our graduate program. All aspects of the School have benefited greatly from the additional funds.
We had hoped to sustain our growth in resources from students who enrolled in the TxPHARM program and residencies. The TxPHARM program is relatively low-cost and generates significant state resources and much higher fees than required of students in the traditional program. However, this program has never provided significant student demand, so we are closing the program as soon as the current students complete their requirements. We will need to admit approximately 5 more regular Pharm.D. students each year, beginning in 2004, to simply make-up the loss in semester credit hours we will incur through eliminating this program. The residency program will generate 23 students for the formula this year, but beginning with the new group of residents in summer 2003, the state will no longer include these students in the formula. These will be another 23 students we will need to add per year in 2004 simply to be relatively even with our formula student counts for the 2005/2006 budget cycle. Thus, 28 of the proposed 36 new DFW students will just keep us even in student count for the formula in the next (FY06/07) biennium.
The bottom line is this: state appropriations are not likely to support significant growth in higher education over the next several years except through increases in student enrollments. If we hope to maintain and even expand our current programs with modest growth, we need to continue to grow our Pharm.D. class size. We must be careful to not hurt the quality of instruction, but if we can maintain, and perhaps increase the quality of our program by having access to better students and more quality clinical training facilities, the ability to at least maintain and perhaps grow our existing research, residency and graduate programs in these times of reduced state funding likely depends on our ability to grow our class size.
Why DFW, why not just increase the class size in Amarillo and send a greater numbers of P3 and P4 students to DFW? DFW is the largest, and only, major city in the US without a pharmacy school or active planning for a new school or satellite program (except for UNTHSC). There is a large number of "place-bound" potential pharmacy students in DFW and this region of the state is under represented in the number of pharmacy students when compared to most regions in Texas (See attached THECB report). We currently receive approximately 1/3 of our applicants and students from DFW and generally they are among our best students. It is likely that if we do not move to meet this need for a 4-year DFW program and do so in a timely manner, then someone else will meet this need and we will lose our window of opportunity. As we know, UNTHSC has proposed to be the DFW 4-year pharmacy program; I expect one of the private institutions to make such a move if a state school does not develop.[2] It is very unlikely that the Texas Legislature will fund two state schools in the DFW. Hence, we truly have a very narrow window of opportunity to secure our program.
Finally, we realistically do not have the opportunity to significantly increase our class size in Amarillo without either teaching multiple sections of courses or teaching classes in the auditorium at the 1400 Wallace building. We admit 78 students per class; typically have 2-3 holdover students, and at least one of our P1 classes have Ph.D. students concurrently attending the lectures. Room 107, which is used for most P1 classes, holds a maximum of 90 students. Room 208, which is used mostly for P2 classes, holds 85 students. Our teaching laboratory has only 26 student stations. Hence, the most we could likely increase our Amarillo class size is 5-6 students without getting back into the over crowded classroom situation we were in before the recent expansions to these classrooms. Expanding the entry class size in Amarillo simply does not seem to be a good solution. Plus, it would not do anything to meet the needs for a 4-year program in DFW.
I hope this information is useful as you consider the decision before the faculty.
Thank you.
[1] TTUHSC New Program Application Request to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, August 1994.
[2] Texas Christian University has completed an exploration of the potential to open a program.