Student debt is a steadily escalating problem for health care professionals. It has gotten so bad that this past week, the NYU School of Medicine announced that it is waving tuition for all new and existing medical school students. Their action is in response to growing debt among young doctors and the trend away from lower-paying, but much-needed, primary care practice. The school reportedly views this as a public health issue. The hope is that other medical schools will follow suit.

Unfortunately, optometry doesn’t appear that fortunate or farsighted. To my knowledge, no optometric program is planning to wave tuition or even reduce it to more affordable levels. In sad fact, optometry school graduates have a higher debt-to-income ratio than any other health care professionals with an earning capability far lower than most. With even more new schools on the already crowded horizon, it’s difficult to not view additional optometry programs as predatory, preying on increasingly less-qualified students who have dreams of becoming a doctor.

For many of these young ODs, I fear that their dreams may quickly turn into a nightmare. The glut of new graduates will eventually exceed demand, if it hasn’t already. With continuing advances in technology and too many practices still mired in traditional refractive care, OD salaries are likely to tank while competition for a shrinking number of positions grows exponentially. More and more of these young ODs will be working just to pay off their student loans, and some may not be able to pay them off at all. If reimbursements drop to fuel Medicare for all, it won’t be pretty for any of us, but especially painful for young and in-debt grads.

Unfortunately, there is no simple answer. By the time the law of supply and demand kicks in, it will be too late. Some have suggested that we actively discourage prospective new ODs from pursuing optometry as a career. The only thing that will accomplish is to deprive the profession of a greater number of quality candidates rather than dissuade the poor ones.

Eventually, some existing schools will have to close and new ones not open, but that will never happen as long as there are students willing to pay, and schools are making money from minting new ODs. The one solution that would work and might actually save the profession is the hardest. Raise entry and training standards to almost painful levels. That would ensure qualified candidates and well-prepared ODs, and force the worst schools to close. Ultimately, the future of optometry lies in the hands of the AOA and its Accreditation Council on Optometric Education.

Arthur B. Epstein, OD, FAAO Chief Medical Editor artepstein@optometricphysician.com