MEMPHIS, TN — The University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s College of Pharmacy is expanding its regional tuition rate program to pharmacy students living out of state within a 200-mile radius of the college’s instructional sites in Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville, effective for fall 2017.
The highest-ranked pharmacy school in Tennessee and ranked number 17 in the country by U.S. News & World Report, the college will now be more accessible to students from parts of 13 surrounding states. They will pay only 25 percent of the differential between in-state and out-of-state tuition. The expansion brings the out-of-state tuition for students in the 200-mile radius more closely in line with tuition paid by in-state students.
For example, out-of-state students currently pay approximately $41,100 annually in tuition. With the regional out-of-state tuition discount, they will pay approximately $26,500 annually in tuition, an amount that more closely aligns with the annual in-state tuition cost of approximately $22,000 for 2016-2017.
“We want to expand our access as we continue to recruit the best and brightest students possible. We also want to continue to increase diversity in our student body,” said UTHSC Pharmacy Dean Marie Chisholm-Burns, PharmD, MPH, MBA, FCCP, FASHP. “We believe this program helps us to do that.”
UTHSC’s College of Pharmacy already is the lowest-priced option for students in Tennessee. The expanded regional tuition program would be available to all eligible current and new enrollees from major cities, including Atlanta, Georgia; Lexington and Louisville, Kentucky; Jackson and Oxford, Mississippi; Birmingham, Alabama; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Charlotte, North Carolina.
In June 2014, the UT Board of Trustees approved a regional tuition rate for pharmacy students living out of state within 50 miles of Memphis. Since that program began, 26 new and existing students enrolled, and the number of applications from the region continues to rise. The board approved expanding the program’s radius to 200 miles late last month.
The College of Pharmacy offers three campus options across the state for students to complete the Doctor of Pharmacy program. All students spend their first nine months on the Memphis campus, after which they have the option to transfer to the Nashville or Knoxville campuses for the remainder of their professional training.
The UTHSC College of Pharmacy opened its location in Nashville in the fall of 2014. It had operated a smaller clinical education site in Nashville for about eight years, where 10 to 12 students annually did their experiential training during the last year and a half of the pharmacy curriculum. The Knoxville site has been in operation for about a decade.
