Letter to dvm360: For-profit veterinary schools have a legitimate role to play

I write because I am troubled by the publication of Dr. Robert Marshak's commentary against “vocationally oriented” colleges (as well as similar diatribes seen on vin.com or elsewhere on the Internet). I would like to see a publication defend not the schools themselves but the graduates of such programs who enrich and contribute to veterinary medicine on a daily basis. 

I too would like to see change in the system by which students are educated, but is the blame solely on for-profit veterinary colleges? A significant population of my 2013 graduating class at Ross were either Puerto Rican, Asian American or some other minority who didn't necessarily have the means to enter a nonprofit in the United States. 

My colleagues in Massachusetts are predominantly white and were able to graduate from nonprofit schools (namely Tufts, Penn and Cornell) without significant debt burdens due in part at least to their wealthy families. How can a person working for a nonprofit, especially a dean, suggest that all changes that need to occur are external? Perhaps the profession should call for an internal reevaluation of how veterinary medicine has evolved over the past several decades and how much further it needs to go. The system still does not allow for equality of pay or benefits to women or minorities despite major strides by all. I would argue that working together as professionals would be the best solution to a mutual problem.

The article also fails to mention the intense clinical training that all students must undertake. If a student is from a for-profit such as myself, he or she completes the same rigorous training that a nonprofit student undertakes. The main difference is we have been transplanted away from family, friends and any support system we may have developed to fight against prejudice and ignorance from many (not all) clinicians at nonprofit teaching hospitals. In some ways, being able to achieve success through these difficult situations helps us become valuable members of the community in ways that students at nonprofits may never undergo.

Name withheld