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Comment by citilife | Hacker News Reader

> Veterinarian programs specific limit how many students they accept, because if they didn't, their graduates wouldn't be able to afford a living wage. Other majors need to catch on.

Medical schools do the same thing, but that's also what's causing a burden on the medical system. I truly blame most of the medical expense increases in the U.S. on them and medicare (which sets a base price and everyone else must make up for).

Basically there was a medical school student freeze[1][2] from early 90's through 2010. Now, it's finally starting to increase, still much less than population.

[1] https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/total-medical-scho...

[2] http://aamcdiversityfactsandfigures2016.org/report-section/s...

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The limiting factor is not the spots for medical students, but rather for residents and fellows, who are primarily funded through medicare/medicaid and the VA.

An interesting post on this is here, although it somewhat contradicts the popular notion that graduate medical education is limited by funding: https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/gme-federal-fun...

No, it isn't. There might be funding limitations, but if the demand to become a doctor is too high for the number of positions offered, then they can stretch the funding over more slots by passing more of the burden onto the resident in the form of lower pay.

To the extent that they can't legally lower pay, that is the factor, not the funding.

The argument that medicare funding slots is the limiting factor is like saying that Hamilton can't come to LA because the NEA won't cover airfare.

Vets can easily make 100k+ in rural areas where the median wage is in the 20s or 30s. You could double the number of vet grads and vets would still be able to make a comfortable living.

With the median wage being 20s or 30s, what's the median debt?

Do you know how much student loan debt vets have?

https://www.studentloanplanner.com/veterinarian/

Also, I have several veterinarian friends, and about half of them are absolutely struggling financially. Do you have personal contact with some, just out of curiosity?

And if you're curious, the suicide rate for vets is very high. We could argue the reasons, but I don't think it's unreasonable to say that money contributes.

Yes, my sister is a vet outside of Raleigh.

Taking out a $400k loan for education seems like a bad idea unless you know you will be making 150-200+. My sister graudated with something like $150k debt, and it is fully repaid now(8 years after graduation) The mistake the lady in the article made is she picked basically the most expensive option and graduated with debt that is greater than 90% of her peers. She could have prevented her situation by, perhaps, going to a cheaper or in-state school.

And yes, vet suicide rate is high, but so is the suicide rate in rural areas where they frequently operate. If you aren't a canine/feline/companion vet, the suicide rate of their clients(farmers) is almost certainly higher than the suicide rate of vets.

There are only 30 vet schools in the United States. It is in many respects harder to get into than vet school.

Tuition is very expensive. I don't know how your sister graduated with $150k in debt. She was for sure in-state. Was her undergrad paid for entirely by parents or scholarship?

According to this one, vets are higher than farmers:

https://mentalhealthdaily.com/2015/01/06/top-11-professions-...

But yeah, I don't know how that's divided among the different kinds of vets.

> Vets can easily make 100k+ in rural areas where the median wage is in the 20s or 30s...

Eh... depends on the job. I don't think that most prospective veterinarians dream of working for the USDA ($$$) when they graduate.

The median vet pay is $89k[1]. You don't need to work for the USDA to make 6 figures.

[1] https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/veterinarian/sala...

But ~$89,000 isn't six figures, so...? Also, I suppose it depends on the source and relevant area covered by the statistic. I've heard other (lower) figures elsewhere.

If median vet pay is $89k, then by definition much less than half of vets are making 100k.

So, how is it "easy" to make 100k+?

Maybe I'm an optimist, but I find it easy to do slightly above average in most tasks that I have some semblance of control over.

Sure, but how often is that a task where you and your peers have all been exhaustively trained for about 8 years on specifically that specialty?

/shrug

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