University Times

The Board of Trustees voted Feb. 22 to replace the School of Pharmacy's five-year undergraduate degree with a six-year doctor of pharmacy degree.

The school will begin admitting students to the PharmD. program this fall, which is also when it will close admissions to its current bachelor of science program.

Nearly two-thirds of the 75 U.S. schools and colleges of pharmacy already offer the PharmD. as their entry-level degree. In voting to add Pitt to that growing majority, the trustees followed the advice of the American Council on Pharmaceutical Education (the pharmacy school's accrediting body), the school's faculty and board of visitors, University senior officials, the Provost's Advisory Committee on Undergraduate Programs and the University Council on Graduate Study.

Pitt fiscal analysts initially estimated that the change from a B.S. to a PharmD. program would reduce the school's income by $1.5 million over the next four years, mainly because the school will be bringing in less tuition money. That estimate has since been lowered to $850,000.

"This [the doctoral program] is a more complicated program that emphasizes a greater amount of clinical skills development, so we had to choose between either increasing our faculty or decreasing our enrollment," pharmacy Dean Randy Juhl told the University Times. "We decided the best route to take was to decrease the number of students, given the directions that health care is taking. That means our tuition revenue is going to decrease." The estimate of a $1.5 million, four-year income reduction was based on the school's current two-semester tuition rates of $7,632 for in-state students and $16,434 for non-Pennsylvanians, Juhl said. But in fact, the pharmacy school plans to propose increasing its tuition by 15 percent next fall. The dean stressed that the school would not simply be jacking up its tuition, but raising it by an amount commensurate to a change from a bachelor's to a doctoral program.

Combined with budget cuts that the school plans to make, the 15 percent tuition hike would reduce the four-year shortfall to $850,000, Juhl said.

But even the lower estimate prompted one trustee to question the University's commitment to making tough fiscal choices.

"The question becomes, when do we ever make a choice to keep our budgets under control?" asked Frank Lucchino, Allegheny County controller and a state-appointed member of the Pitt board.

He noted that Pitt operating budgets have increased by almost 500 percent over the last 20 years (from $162.7 million in fiscal year 1975 to $790.8 million in FY 1995), far ahead of inflation.

Lucchino said he wasn't arguing against the PharmD. program. But ultimately, he said, rising costs and declining revenues will force Pitt to make painful cuts in programs that are academically sound. When will Pitt begin making such cuts? Lucchino asked.

Interim Chancellor Mark Nordenberg pointed out that Provost's area schools shifted millions of dollars from low- to high-priority academic programs last year and will continue making such reallocations over the next several years.

Now that the pharmacy school has reduced its projected revenue gap to $850,000, the Health Sciences schools as a group will be asked to further reduce that figure. Only after the Health Sciences have made their budget adjustments will the University as a whole shift resources and/or cut costs to offset the pharmacy income gap, Nordenberg said.

Maintaining a viable pharmacy program should take precedence over a short-term revenue gap, the interim chancellor said.

Martha Munsch, chairperson of the trustees' academic affairs/libraries committee, agreed. She said her committee considered whether Pitt should eliminate the program but concluded that the pharmacy school is essential to the University's medical programs and to the western Pennsylvania community.

— Bruce Steele