When Kerry LaPlante decided to become a pharmacist, the opportunity to play a direct, accessible role in community health care served as a major motivation.
“When there’s an ailment or there’s a problem, [people] go to their pharmacists first,” said LaPlante, the dean of the University of Rhode Island’s College of Pharmacy. “And that’s free service that the pharmacist provides. You can just go to the counter” and ask for guidance on symptoms or medication.
It’s also a service that has become all the more essential amid primary care provider shortages, LaPlante says.
Many pharmacists have felt the same way. More than half of pharmacy school graduates choose to take a career path into “community pharmacy,” instead of choosing other specialized roles.
But that enthusiasm started to stall on a nationwide level about a decade ago as pharmacy schools saw applications decline sharply as independent pharmacies disappeared, corporate pharmacies began to dominate and expectations placed on the community pharmacist grew and support waned.
Now the situation is improving.
URI, where enrollment in the College of Pharmacy had eroded by 2022 to about 100 students each year (20% of its numbers a decade earlier), has seen applications rebound in recent years. About 125 students have committed to joining the pharmacy program in each of the next two incoming classes.
Why?
There has been a concerted effort by organizations such as the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy to tout the benefits of a career in pharmacy to a broader audience of college-aged students through social media campaigns. Industry groups are also putting more effort into reaching students as young as middle schoolers.
Meanwhile, at the corporate level, “there’s been a good change in community pharmacy” workplace conditions, LaPlante said. “Pharmacists are taking lunches now. Their calls are being triaged.”
As a result, data from the most recent enrollment cycle shows an increase nationwide for the first time in about 11 years, according to Lee C. Vermeulen, executive vice president of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy.
AACP data shows a 6% rise from fall 2024 to fall 2025.
Still, while many pharmacy schools are seeing enrollment increase, Vermeulen says the trend isn’t universal, with about 30% of pharmacy schools continuing to struggle to attract more students.
That’s of little surprise to many in the industry.
“There has been a pretty steady decline in the quality of workplace conditions and the way pharmacists are treated,” Vermeulen said. “Especially as we think of corporate community pharmacies: your CVS, Walmarts, Krogers of the world. ... It’s just not a very attractive place to work, and that’s very visible to young people thinking about career choices.”
Meanwhile, “the independent community pharmacy, the mom-and-pop shops, have seen a pretty steady incline in interest from our graduates,” he said. But with far fewer independent pharmacies in operation, graduates have fewer job opportunities in those types of settings.
“The face of the profession is traditionally the community pharmacist,” LaPlante said. “I think the burnout was starting to get pretty high ... a lot of people were thinking maybe that’s not a profession for them.”
The cracks in the workforce pipeline really began showing about 11 years ago, Vermeulen says. Nationwide, enrollment in pharmacy schools historically sat at around 14,000, but the numbers started to sink as the appeal of the industry and its promise of high salaries ebbed.
Then the health care crisis touched off by the COVID-19 pandemic served as an additional blow, and enrollment dwindled to about 10,000. The dip followed a broader trend in higher education enrollment and the perceived value of a degree, Vermeulen says.
And with pharmacy school requiring a commitment of at least six years between undergraduate and graduate studies, students are also cautious about costs and taking on loans. On average, Vermeulen says, a pharmacy school student graduates with $130,000-$150,000 in debt.
But he’s not surprised to see URI – where the pharmacy program has long had a top-notch reputation – starting to rise above the industry’s challenges.
LaPlante says that when she became dean of the university’s College of Pharmacy two years ago, meeting enrollment was her biggest goal. But she doesn’t feel like she had a particularly difficult task.
“We were just ourselves,” LaPlante said. “We started showing it ... I didn’t have to do much. I just had to take what we were already doing, share it on social media, get our people out there, invite more people to our welcome days and our early admissions days.”
The number of applications has surged.
“We actually are almost exceeding our enrollment,” LaPlante said. “Our application numbers are high, and our yield is still the highest possible quality.”
LaPlante and Vermeulen also tell prospective students that while community pharmacy is the most popular path within the field, it’s far from the only option. Pharmacy graduates can enter any number of specialized roles such as drug development, compounding and hospital work.
“There are a hundred things you can do with a doctor of pharmacy degree,” LaPlante said. “It’s not just community pharmacy, and it’s not just clinical. Many things can happen.”
