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University of Kentucky Pharmacy College Seeks New Building

Posted on: Wednesday, 28 September 2005, 00:00 CDT

By Art Jester, The Lexington Herald-Leader, Ky.

Sep. 27--Almost 20 years ago, one of the University of Kentucky's highest-ranked programs got a new building, but not as big as it really needed.

Now, once again, UK's College of Pharmacy is pushing to get a new 250,000-square-foot building so the school can eliminate crowded facilities and admit more students to help alleviate a national shortage of pharmacists that has hit Kentucky hard.

The new building would be a huge step forward for the UK pharmacy school, currently No. 8 in its field in U.S. News & World Report's college rankings.

That is down from UK's usual ranking at No. 3, and the drop, says UK pharmacy dean Kenneth Roberts, is "directly correlated" to overcrowding in the 85,000-square-foot structure on Rose Street, part of the UK medical center complex.

UK has received $40 million in state money so far to pay for the new building. That's one-third of the total cost, leaving UK still needing $80 million.

The state Council on Postsecondary Education has established the new UK pharmacy building as the state's No. 1 budget priority for 2006-2012 among university capital projects that would serve research and economic development.

But it remains unclear whether UK will get the remaining $80 million for the building when the 2006 General Assembly convenes in January.

Harry Moberly, D-Richmond, the influential chairman of the House Appropriations and Revenue Committee, said yesterday of the $80 million request that it was "highly likely that they could get part of it. The question is whether they will get all of it."

That will depend partly on the governor's recommendation and partly on how much money the legislature has to dole out next winter, Moberly said.

Roberts, who came to UK from the University of Mississippi in 2000, said he doesn't think the shortage of space has undermined the quality of pharmacy education. But he said "if I didn't tell the state of Kentucky that we need this new building, I would be negligent."

When Roberts came to UK, the entering class had 88 students. Two years later, the number had increased to 100.

This fall, after some renovations on classes and labs, UK was able to squeeze in an entering class of 131 -- 119 of them Kentuckians. The entering class had an average grade-point-average of 3.62, and its average score on the Pharmacy College Admission Test was in the 86th percentile nationally.

For this fall, UK got a record 998 applications, 60 percent from out of state. In the end, UK admitted only 13 percent of all applicants.

With a new building, UK could increase its enrollment fairly quickly to 150 and move toward an entering class of 180-200, Roberts said.

A new graduate in pharmacy can earn as much as $100,000 a year in Lexington when incentives such as bonuses and moving expenses are included, said Peter Cohron, a Lexington pharmacist, lawyer and adjunct professor of pharmacy law at UK.

Kentucky currently has 300 to 400 vacant positions for pharmacists, and "last year Kentucky 'imported' 55 to 60 pharmacists" from other states, Roberts said. The state currently has 3,938 licensed pharmacists.

Nationally, the shortage of pharmacists has reached 8,000 -- and climbing. Some states are adding new pharmacy schools to reduce the shortage.

Part of the reason for the problem is the sheer volume of prescriptions for an aging population. In 1993, 2 billion prescriptions were written in the United States. By 1999, the total was up 50 percent, to 3 billion, "but we didn't have a 50 percent increase in pharmacists," Roberts said.

The total is expected to reach 4 billion this year or next year, a 100 percent increase since 1993.

Trish Freeman, director of the pharmaceutical care lab in which students are trained in practical applications of what they've learned, said other universities have moved ahead of UK by building "really nice practice labs."

"It's an understatement to say we're crowded," she said. "It's not conducive to learning. We really need to have additional space."

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Lexington Herald-Leader, Ky.

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Source: Lexington Herald-Leader (Lexington, Ky.)

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