American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education Says College of Pharmacy Ranks High

For the first time, pharmacy faculty have collaborated to produce an evidence-based ranking of Pharm.D. programs in the United States. Using this value-based methodology – an alternative to traditional ranking methods – the Northeast Ohio Medical University College of Pharmacy emerges as one of the top programs in the nation.

In his March 2020 article An Exploratory Analysis of PharmD Program Value Using the Tuition: Licensure Index, published in the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, Heath Ford, Pharm.D., Ph.D., of the South College School of Pharmacy, posed this hypothesis: In an era of increasing college costs to students and families, what constitutes an objective approach to comparing pharmacy programs?

“The American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education is considered the premier peer-reviewed research journal in pharmacy education,” says Seth Brownlee, Pharm.D., senior associate dean and associate professor of pharmacy practice in the College of Pharmacy. “This study measures the cost of tuition against aggregate student performance on the NAPLEX exam, the nationally recognized educational outcome benchmark in the field.”

“They established an evidence-based formula that divides a program’s tuition over the average tuition for all schools, and then divides that value by the school’s NAPLEX pass rate over the average pass rate for all programs,” explains Mate Soric, Pharm.D., chair and associate professor of pharmacy practice.

How did the NEOMED College of Pharmacy measure up?

NEOMED’s quality/value rating was tightly clustered in the top three Pharm.D. programs in Ohio, all of which are within 0.07 percent of one another. NEOMED’s quality/value rating was higher than the average of the top ten U.S. pharmacy programs, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report in its annual issue on colleges and universities. Using the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education’s methodology, NEOMED’s quality/value rating is superior to all but two of those top ten programs.

Richard Kasmer, Pharm.D., J.D., has been at NEOMED since the College of Pharmacy began in 2005 and now serves as its dean. He said, “These rankings are a testament to the excellence our students and our faculty aspire to achieve.”