Pharmacy schools write bitter pill for grads; Job market softens just as enrollment surges

Crain's Chicago Business reports:

Robin Carney graduates next year with a doctorate in pharmacy from Chicago State University and about $150,000 in student loans. But will she have a job as a pharmacist?

For years, new graduates of Illinois' pharmacy colleges had no reason to doubt their career choice. As recently as 2009, Walgreen Co. was adding more than 500 drugstores a year, helping lift starting salaries to upward of $100,000 a year, plus signing bonuses.

Now, the job market has been turned on its head. Hiring is plunging as Deerfield-based Walgreen and archrival CVS Caremark Corp. curb their retail expansions, insurers push patients to automated online pharmacies and older pharmacists put off retirement or re-enter the workforce after the financial and real estate meltdowns crushed their nest eggs.

Meantime, the number of new pharmacists is surging to record levels. Illinois has seven accredited pharmacy programs, up from two a decade ago and more than Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin combined. In 2008, 375 pharmacists received degrees in Illinois. In 2015, when the first classes graduate from the latest schools to win accreditation, their ranks could reach 725 annually.

Grim.