Access to quality education-and to a career in PT-shouldn’t be exclusive to those who can afford it outright. And sure, there are organizations that have popped up in the wake of this crisis-like FitBUX and Student Loan Planner-to help students and graduates better navigate the lending process.īut if educational costs continue to skyrocket, we could see a huge-and detrimental-effect to the makeup of our profession. Sure, it’s important for students to do their due diligence before making a life-altering decision like taking on tens of thousands of dollars in student loans. No matter what your opinion is regarding the current state of higher education, it’s clear that the system in its current form is in desperate need of a shakeup. To me, that just doesn’t add up, and I think it’s on all of us-not solely those who have, or will, take out loans to pay for school-to acknowledge that it’s a problem and start working toward a solution.
But as I mentioned above, the vast majority of new PT grads can expect to earn between $60,001–$80,000, despite racking up similar amounts of debt to MD students. You can pay your tuition now and think about repaying your loans once you’ve finished your undergrad and graduate school and you’re off “making the big bucks.” And perhaps that’s true for physicians, whose average starting salary is in the six figures. To a young person fresh out of high school-or even a few years out-who’s looking for ways to pay for college, student loans sound like an ideal solution. Students don’t always realize what they’re committing to when they take on loans. And when it bursts, the fallout could completely change the industry as we know it today. It’s as if they know the bubble is there they can feel it. However, they also expressed concern over the future direction of the profession and the healthcare industry as a whole. In fact, in our survey, most PTs indicated that they do, for the most part, like their jobs. Blend this all together, and you have a recipe for widespread PT burnout.Īnd yet, despite all of this, physical therapists often cite high levels of job satisfaction. This climate also leads to less profitability and thus, less pay-making it difficult for employers to compete and for debt-saddled graduates to make ends meet. However, the rising cost of health care has led to an increased emphasis on productivity in physical therapy practices, driving many clinics to turn their attention to add-on and wellness services-which some argue take the focus away from actually treating patients and making them better-in order to stay financially solvent. The aging population has created a need for highly skilled musculoskeletal experts, and the high cost of surgery is leading patients to seek out less invasive ways to address functional disorders and diseases. Here’s the thing: the current job market for physical therapists is strong.
(To gain some perspective, physicians typically take on similar or slightly higher amounts of student loan debt, but their expected starting salaries are nearly three times higher than the average PT starting salary.) This imbalance could kill our profession. Our survey found that nearly three-fourths of students believe they will earn about $60,001–$80,000 in their first PT job after graduation-an expectation that aligns with industry salary averages. The staggering amount of individual debt is bad enough, but it’s exacerbated by the fact that the average PT’s starting annual salary is wildly disproportionate to the amount of debt he or she can expect to incur during schooling. According to the results of our survey-which you can see for yourself here-more than half of physical therapy students will have over $70,000 in student loan debt at graduation, and more than a third will owe over $100,000. So, why am I talking about the subprime mortgage crisis in a post about physical therapy student loan debt? Well, during our recent industry survey, we dug into an issue that, as Evidence in Motion founder and CEO John Childs pointed out to us, has an unsettling parallel to the ’08 housing debacle.
As we know, this housing bubble eventually burst-and was a major catalyst for the 2008 recession. But with so many borrowers unable to make their monthly payments, banks eventually found themselves with a surplus of valuable houses on hand and no one who could afford to buy them. In the midst of rising property values during the ’90s and ’00s, this worked out favorably for banks-for a while, anyway. In 2008, the United States faced the largest and most devastating financial crisis since the Great Depression: as major banks handed out loans left and right to high-risk lenders-and hid massive interest spikes in the fineprint-many borrowers struggled to make regular mortgage payments, especially when faced with unforeseeable financial setbacks.
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