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From: THE FAYETTEVILLE OBSERVER
Date: 06 Jun 2005
Time: 12:42:39 -0400
Remote Name: 64.12.116.12
UNC-Pembroke optometry school proposal is on hold 2005-06-03 By Alice Thrasher PEMBROKE - A request by the University of North Carolina at Pembroke to start an optometry school has been put on hold for further study. Dr. Roger Brown, the UNCP vice chancellor for academic affairs and provost, said the school hopes to submit the request to the UNC system again in the fall. He said the American Optometric Association for many years has had a moratorium on new schools of optometry in the United States. Brown said some optometrists have told him the moratorium was passed for fear of an overload in the market and too much competition. State Sen. David Weinstein of Lumberton led a drive to include the sale of $10 million in bonds for the planning of the proposed optometry school at UNCP in the state budget last summer. The bonds have not been issued. The cost to build the school would be about $20 million, Brown said. There are 17 schools and colleges of optometry in the United States, according to the American Academy of Optometry. None are in North Carolina. Gretchen Bataille, the senior vice president for academic affairs at the University of North Carolina's General Administration office, said last year that an optometry school was not in the strategic plan for UNCP. The deans' council of the UNC system voted 14-9 against the UNCP request April 26 in Chapel Hill. The council is made up of graduate deans and faculty from each of the 16 UNC campuses. The council did not recommend that the proposal to plan an optometry program be taken to the Committee on Educational Planning, Policies and Programs of the UNC Board of Governors, Brown said. He said the council raised questions that UNCP will address. Brown said UNCP will continue to gather data to support the school's position that a four-year professional optometry school could benefit the state and future optometrists, particularly people of minority races and from rural areas of North Carolina and South Carolina. He said the majority of North Carolina's 1,100 optometrists are clustered in cities. Minorities are underrepresented, he said. North Carolina has contracts with four out-of-state schools to provide slots for North Carolina students. The state pays the difference between in-state and out-of-state fees for North Carolina students who attend the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the Southern College of Optometry in Memphis, Tenn., the University of Houston and the Pennsylvania College of Optometry in Philadelphia. A total of 84 slots are held in the schools for North Carolina residents. Unfilled positions Alan Mabe, vice president for academic planning with the UNC Office of the President, said in a letter to UNCP Chancellor Allen Meadors and Brown that 16 of the slots were unfilled in 2004-05 and 19 were unfilled in 2003-04. He said a national study by the American Optometric Association projects that there will be an oversupply of optometrists until 2030, based on the relative growth of practitioners and the demand for services. Brown said many North Carolina students graduate from the optometry schools with heavy debts from loans. He said the students have to pay between $15,000 and $18,000 in tuition, after the state pays the out-of-state difference. Brown said the tuition for a UNCP school of optometry has been estimated at $8,000 or $9,000 a year. The program would take at least four years after a student receives a bachelor's degree, he said. Mabe said in his letter that one academic reviewer of UNCP's request questioned whether the school is ready to support the optometry program, attract faculty for the school and support the level of research such a program would entail. Mabe said one reviewer said the role Pembroke could play in increasing minority participation in optometry was identified as an advantage. He said the reviewer recognized the merit of small classes that the proposed school would have. But, he said, the reviewer expressed that a "significant concern is the size of the institution and its faculty with regard to its ability to deliver a quality doctoral level program in the health sciences."