...Aside from Veterinary medicine (which has a waiting list of almost an entire generation ...almost 15-years); Pharmacy is the next largest waiting-list program at Ohio State. Why? People make as much money as an MD, without all the studying and interning. The need for these people is enormous.
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Frequent reader but very infrequent poster...thought I would add a couple comments. The demand for Pharmacists has declined in the past eight years but still remains relatively strong. Two of my sons are relatively-recently minted Pharmacists. Pharmacists do not make "about as much money as an MD" but they get paid very well. I think all Pharmacy schools in the USA now grant the Pharm.D (doctorate) degree and there are no 5-year degree programs. The programs are all 6 or 7 year programs. They include a year of rotations (usually 4 to 6 week stints in a particular area of training such as the hospital setting or retail setting or formulary setting etc.). Many Pharmacy students are now entering special one- or two-year residency programs (this is post-degree) to develop specialization - -that's pretty much a requirement for being a Pharmacist in a hospital these days (one of my sons, for example, works primarily in a metropolitan hospital's cardiology department, adjusting drugs etc for heart patients including transplant patients; my other son works in the hospital setting too and is a little less specialized but is spending a great deal of time in the cancer clinic).
Anyway, adding a Pharmacy doctorate is not a bad idea. A lot of health care these days is through the administration of drugs and likely that will grow in the future. It's true, as IAA Fan indicated, legislatures can quickly change the law and allow greater numbers of Pharmacy Techs to work under one supervising Pharmacist but there are still certain jobs within Pharmacy that require the Pharmacy degree. And, the growth in the number of hospital Pharmacists seems certain to stay on its steep path.
So, add a Pharmacy degree and require every Pharmacy student to be a wrestler (I don't want to be accused of going off topic).
