A Career as a University Veterinary Specialist
A University Career
What University Life Means to Dr Truli
- You live near a major university in faculty housing, or usually, an historic house of your choice.
- You have full access to many university resources such as gymnasium, swimming, clubs, book clubs, poetry readings, art shows, theatre troupes, and the people making these things happen.
- Elegant dinner parties at your house, or even, just a trip to Costco for fixin’s and a fun get-together of friends and ideas.
- You work with an office, a laboratory, colleagues who help you, give feedback at lunch and in the hallways, and share their ideas with you.
- You are surrounded by people who are leaders in their fields of research, and share this knowledge, because they are also teachers! It is a very compelling, nurturing, productive life.
- Competitive grants, exciting races to the cure, gritty experiments to elucidate the meaning of everything…
But I’ll Bet It’s Impossible to Get In…
Becoming a Diplomate of a Veterinary Specialty Board is no joke. It is competitive to get into veterinary college. It is stressful and challenging to score well in college. It is competitive to get a prestigious internship and residency. It is years of hard work to finish.
Here’s a Critical Secret No One’s Talking About (yet)
The secret is…there has been a massive shift in the veterinary industry in the last 15 years. From the late 1970’2 through the early 2000’s, medical school tuition skyrocketed, sometimes doubling within a student’s 4-year tenure. This absolutely ginormous increase in tuition and fees led to student loan debt as high as $200,000, sometimes more, with 30-year repayment plans. The financial pressure drove Specialists to leave University departments and large public hospitals such as Angell Memorial (MSPCA) in Boston and Animal Medical Center (AMC) in New York City, sometimes staff of whole departments left in 1 year! They left to open competing private specialty hospitals. Therefore, many specialists today only practice clinical medicine. They do do enjoy research and teaching privileges, or the collegiality and excitement of new discovery and sharing.
How Can This Help Me? (You may wonder…)
In 2008, several veterinary colleges began restructuring their student aid departments to offer grant-heavy student aid, instead of loan-heavy aid. This means, as a student today, looking at veterinary medicine, you have the financial breathing room to choose a career path based on personal, spiritual, or a contributing-to-the-planet basis, rather than making a purely financial strategic decision. This is an amazing opportunity to become the next generation to shape the direction of research, application, and teaching for the future. You will not be boxed into the daily grind of working for the buck like the generation before you. You can choose to innovate and hopefully, design a future for animals and people together.
The Opportunity is Waiting for You
There are critical shortages of most Specialists in the universities. For example, every veterinary school in North America is required to have a Board Certified Radiologist head the imaging department. Yet, there are not enough graduates each year to fill the positions! These colleges have to make do with conditional certification! The retiring leaders in the universities need a new generation to carry on the tradition and blaze a new path. You can live a life of cooperation, discovery, ideas, and service, all wrapped in a love of animals so blinding, you want to take your pets to your condo on the moon!
Prepare Your Future Today! Begin researching the American Veterinary Medical Association’s list of accredited Veterinary Colleges.
Review the Veterinary Specialty Boards.
