Protect your money

I recently saw  the ‘Know Before You Enroll’ series of the ‘Protect Your Money’ campaign on the NYC subways.  I was reminded of Pacific College of Oriental Medicine:

• -credits from PCOM are difficult to transfer over to other schools
• -tuition is high while  starting salaries are low
• -job placement is a joke

Check out the campaign series and remember to always be an educated consumer — protect your money because you worked (or will work) extremely hard for it.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/ofe/html/policy_and_programs/pym_KnowBeforeYouEnroll.shtml

 

 

PCOM Student Clinic should be run by STUDENTS

Are you aware that if you borrow about $100K in student loans, upon graduation, your monthly payments (with the 6.8% interest rate) will average about $600 every month for 30 years — in interest ALONE? You can do income based repayment but it would mean subsisting at very low income levels for 10 years.

I’ve been criticized for questioning the leadership of Pacific College of Oriental Medicine’s Career Services department. Apparently, unpaid internships, unpaid externships, unpaid jobs, and subsistence wage level jobs have a huge fan base. Who am I to judge? Going forward, I will focus my blog on helping PCOM acupuncture/herb AND massage students get more value for their money.

I think that ALL PCOM students would benefit from more exposure to career development and practice building lessons. However, the classes I remember PCOM offering were just simple exercises of submitting business plans, some tips on websites and business cards and a bit of budgeting. How is this real life?

The PCOM clinic offers an excellent setting for students to cut their teeth on how a real business is run. Therefore, STUDENTS should be running the PCOM Student clinic. The school should open the books so that students can see the operating expenses and income. Students should take turns running it – from the scheduling software to the phone systems, the chart filing system, ordering supplies and the paperwork. I also think that, since community acupuncture is growing as an alternate model to the one advocated today, the clinic should run both systems – with students overseeing both so they can decide which kind of practice they’d prefer. I think that it’s also appropriate that any clinic revenues earned, after expenses, go to pay the students.

Just my positive two cents on improving the PCOM student experience.

Cognitive dissonance and Pacific College of Oriental Medicine NY

Cognitive dissonance is a term used to describe the brain’s inability to process  information that conflicts with a closely held belief or viewpoint. Whenever I think of the cognitive dissonance concept, I am reminded of my PCOM days. Every now and then, the subject of being able to earn a living wage would come up and someone would pipe up “If you do what you love, then the money will follow” or “it’s a growing field” and that would be the end of the discussion. I would sure love to see those people say that to the faces of the acupuncturists out there who are barely making ends meet.

Now I am encountering another aspect of cognitive dissonance with this blog. I am not a hater and I am not writing out of malice or spite. I am writing to WARN students that, from what I’ve seen and read and heard, the likelihood of earning a living wage from acupuncture/herbs alone is really small. I care a LOT about the PCOM student body and want them to be better prepared once they graduate and also to get more out of the student experience at school. I am not interested in defaming or attacking anyone. I am not attacking PCOM’s Career Services department but I can’t reconcile my definition of failure (lack of paid employment opportunities) with my memories of PCOM’s job postings while I was a student (unpaid volunteer positions, unpaid externships, unpaid internships, unpaid work ‘opportunities’ etc) and define Career Services as successful. To try and do this would mean that I am suffering from cognitive dissonance.

The people who criticized my postings on career services haven’t responded to my observation about the lack of PAID opportunities for PCOM students. Believe it or not, I would be really happy to get a posting like this on my blog:

Honey, you are so full of s***. I checked PCOM’s job listings just yesterday and there were so many well paid positions available that there aren’t even enough students to fill them. Also, students CAN access the job listings online.

Or something along these lines.

Pacific College of Oriental Medicine, Acupuncture and Job Prospects

I’m glad you’re a successful student and that you feel PCOM’s Career Services/Cynthia Neipris is doing right by you. In all sincerity, I hope that my grim opinion on the income potential for PCOM acupuncture students is wrong and that every single PCOM acupuncture graduate earns a living wage.

Acupuncture is a fascinating field of study and the decision to walk away from the degree and my spent tuition money wasn’t easy. I took a hard look around and assessed the ROI of a potential L.Ac. I spent my clinic shifts talking to the advanced students and didn’t hear of any success stories. I looked at the people who obtained the degree and where they were in life. It wasn’t a very compelling outlook.

Every single one of these people were passionate about acupuncture and did well in school. I tried to find success stories when I searched using the terms ‘acupuncture, salary, pay, income’ and I found a whole community of acupuncturists who agree that making a living is ridiculously hard. Do the search yourself (https://www.pocacoop.com/ is a good place to start, as is http://www.theturningpointacupuncture.com/SoYouWantToBeAPunk.html) – I have absolutely NOTHING to gain from this blog.

As to your suggestions on how I can help Career Services, what would Cynthia do with any extra money she receives when she thinks she’s doing a great job thus far?  I spent 2 years at PCOM and recall that the only e-mails she sent out were for overpriced CEU credits, calls for UNPAID volunteer work, UNPAID internships, UNPAID externships (look up the difference between internships and externships), and ‘exciting opportunities’ to work as an UNPAID assistant at an acupuncturist’s office.

I have the following suggestions for improving career services:

1. Publicly post the number of PCOM graduates (broken down by campus) working full time as acupuncturists. Include the mean, median and mode salary and all info relevant for statistical integrity (total # of graduates, total respondents, definition of acupuncture field, etc).

2. Allow students and prospective students to see the alumni job boards – they should know what they’re getting themselves into.

3. Like the students who are on the hook for student loans, Cynthia should have some skin in the game. A significant portion of her income should be based on the percentage of graduates earning $55K or higher per year (this bar is set LOW for NYC — and no cheating, only income from acupuncture work counts).

4. Have the SBA or a management consulting firm come in and review the career services program. I graduated from a good school and I know that job boards should consist of real employment positions – not unpaid ‘opportunities’.

5. Students pay a LOT in tuition money and they deserve an innovative career services department. 

Pacific College of Oriental Medicine NY Issues

Cynthia Neipris, the director of Career Services at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine’s (PCOM) NY campus recently responded to my posting on the livelihood of acupuncturists. I considered taking the conversation offline and addressing the hurt she felt over the posting and make it clear that I am not into causing pain or distress. I re-read my posting to see if I was unfair, cruel or hateful and then I read her post again to try and see things from Cynthia’s point of view. Here are my thoughts on this:

1. My existence would be truly blissful if everything I read about myself were positive. However, this isn’t a realistic scenario. I need my friends and family to be there and tell me all the negatives so I could be an even BETTER person. I need my bosses and co-workers to tell me what they see so I could do an…

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Equinox pricing, prison quality overcrowding

Would you ever pay $800 per semester for a sub par gym experience where you exercise in an overcrowded classroom once a week for 3 hours? Where, when the teacher told you to spread out, you had to carefully angle yourself so raising your arms doesn’t mean hitting your neighbors? I’d like to tell you about my Tai Ji class with Eleanor Yung, one of my earliest PCOM classes.

Every Saturday for 3 hours, the class met in a windowless space where ventilation was minimal. I think there was about 35-40 people crowding into a classroom that would comfortably hold about 30 SEATED students. We had to practice a series of moves in slow motion that required our bodies to really spread out but if we moved 6 inches to any side of us, we were most likely crowding someone else.

Eleanor Yung wasn’t that patient with the slow learners (I will always be forever grateful to my fellow students for so generously taking time to tutor me outside of class). I asked if I could video tape the moves and she said no (what’s wrong with videotaping her moves?) I wouldn’t recommend Eleanor as a teacher and I wouldn’t recommend tai ji classes at PCOM.

For the price PCOM charges for the crappiest tai ji lessons ever, I could have just joined a top end gym with good ventilation, fans and a locker room (because, despite all the hype, tai ji is just an exercise). The $800 tai ji classes with Eleanor Yung were really worth no more than $5 per 3 hour session. It’s one of the examples of poor quality control when I cite all of the faults with Pacific College of Oriental Medicine.

My tip to current students who haven’t taken this class yet is to save your money by learning one form of tai ji (there are free classes at local community centers, tai ji centers and gyms around the city) and just do PCOM’s challenge exam (which I think costs about $150…PCOM didn’t really publicize this info so check into it). Do the same for qi gong class too (which was another adventure in exercising in an airless, overcrowded room).

Response to PCOM’s Career Services Department

Cynthia Neipris, the director of Career Services at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine’s (PCOM) NY campus recently responded to my posting on the livelihood of acupuncturists. I considered taking the conversation offline and addressing the hurt she felt over the posting and make it clear that I am not into causing pain or distress. I re-read my posting to see if I was unfair, cruel or hateful and then I read her post again to try and see things from Cynthia’s point of view. Here are my thoughts on this:

1. My existence would be truly blissful if everything I read about myself were positive. However, this isn’t a realistic scenario. I need my friends and family to be there and tell me all the negatives so I could be an even BETTER person. I need my bosses and co-workers to tell me what they see so I could do an even BETTER job. Cynthia, you should find INSPIRATION (not censure) from my posting and CHALLENGE yourself to THINK “what MORE should I be doing to address the issues this person is writing about?” 
2. Cynthia, I’ve seen you in school in the late evenings and also on some weekends. You walk around with a tight expression on your face and, while I recall exchanging niceties with you, you never asked me about my career ambitions, my thoughts on post PCOM plans, invited/informed me of upcoming events nor invited me to sit with you. You’re the face of the career services department and should be more of an ambassador/representative. Why don’t you talk more to the students you meet? You should invite people/inspire them to come see you!
3. On that note, Cynthia, over the past decade that you’ve spent at PCOM, would you say that, between the PCOM alums and the current student body for all of the programs (massage, acupuncture, herbs), you are now (theoretically) working for 10 times the number of people you had originally? Has your department’s budget (or your salary) increased by a factor of 10? You are the only name that I associate with Career Services and that’s a shame. I think that Career Services should at least have 3-4 people staffing it. How realistic is it for *ONE* person adequately support the Career Services responsibilities for a school the size of PCOM? If you really think you’re doing a FABULOUS job right now, how much MORE do you think you could accomplish if your department staff and budget were increased? I think you should consider this – and if it’s out of your hands, let the student council know that you’d like them to spend some of their budget helping you out.
4. I’d like to make it clear that other than the small pleasantries at the elevator banks, I don’t know you. My blog is not a personal attack on you. It’s a space I created to share my opinions on how PCOM can be improved and my DIRE WARNING to potential students — DON’T GO TO PACIFIC COLLEGE OF ORIENTAL MEDICINE UNLESS YOU HAVE MONEY TO BURN.
5. Lastly, on the job front, it may help to allow current students to see the job postings alums have access to online so they can see what they’re getting themselves into.

OH MY — $250K for an acupuncture degree from PCOM?!

OH MY GOODNESS.  Check out this link to an article written in October 2011 and focus on the paragraph below:

Currently, Dr. Tsao works as a part-time professor at the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine, which is the largest school of Traditional Chinese Medicine in the nation. Over 70 percent of students are American, paying  tuition of  about $250,000  in a degree  granting program that takes three and a half years to complete. http://themidtowngazette.com/2011/10/acupuncture-in-new-york/

I can’t believe that over 70% of PCOM students have $2,500 to spare, much less $250,000 to spend on an education with dubious earnings potential.

PCOM student council edicts — read, heed and obey (…or else)

On November 12, 2011, PCOM’s student council posted the following:

Pcom Ny

FROM STUDENT COUNCIL: READ. HEED.
Recently, Students at Pcom Ny have hurled expletives & names at Staff members, kicked/overturned office chairs, & violently ripped papers from the hands of Reception/Records Assistants. It is understandable that people get emotional, however, SELF CONTROL AND RESTRAINT ARE REQUIRED AT ALL TIMES. The College clearly outlines policies for appropri…ate behavior and will enforce these policies – which entail IMMEDIATE ACTIONS from Admin, such as: warnings, SUSPENSIONS and/or EXPULSION.

While I believe that it is important to maintain civility and show respect to one another, I laughed at the examples they provided and the preaching/lecturing/warning to paying customers.  How much indignity should students/customers put up with before they’ve had enough?  I’ve heard the more callous response to this question ‘if they don’t like it, they should go.  PCOM is a business.’  Fair enough, but good businesses issue refunds and have customer service departments.  Students can’t exactly get a refund after going through the program, after taking x number of courses and investing the time and money — all in good faith that they’d be treated fairly and receive the bill of goods they were sold.  When PCOM customers are unhappy, the only resolution they have is to leave and continue to pay off the student loans/write off the tuition already spent or suck it up and take it.  I can understand how students become fed up and reach a breaking point. It’s ironic that PCOM bills itself as a ‘healing’ environment/school yet administration can’t reach peaceful resolutions with unhappy students.

PCOM:  If you believe strongly in the school’s personnel, the program and the earning potential for graduates then offer a money back guarantee.  Be open, genuine, caring and honest in all of your dealings.

Student council: It’s better to inspire good behavior rather than trying to legislate it. Please work on behalf of those you’re supposed to represent and resolve the problems that are driving people to those aggressive measures. Clinical counseling classes should have covered this.

The Finale: The PCOM American Cancer Society Fundraiser

Welcome back!

Recap:  On Sunday, July 24, 2011, the PCOM student council held a talent show to benefit the American Cancer Society.  Prior to this, I expressed my opinion as to how, based on the way things were run at the last show, the 7/24/11 show could be improved.  I was criticized by Jason Morris for questioning the way things were run.

So, a week has gone by now and there has been radio silence as to how much was raised for the American Cancer Society.  Why is this?

• The Chernuchin Theater, capable of seating 140, sat about 20-25 people that evening.  The theater rental was $600, paid for by student council budget funds.  At $25-$30 per ticket…well, you can do the math.  Keep in mind that about HALF of the audience consisted of performers waiting to go onstage .
• There was a heat wave going on (there was a high of 91 and a low of 78 on Sunday) and there was no air conditioning.  At $25 per ticket, shouldn’t the basics be covered?

• The show lasted over 3 hours…with no A/C.

Personal musing:  The goal of raising money for cancer is, of and in itself, noble.  What’s not noble is if the reason behind it is to feed an ego or to falsely raise the stature of PCOM by diverting student council money.  Perhaps in the future, rather than using $600 for a theater rental, the money could be spent funding snacks and small goody treat bags for all students prior to midterms, finals and comps.

So how much do acupuncturists earn?

Full disclaimer:  I am not an acupuncturist.  Rather, I am a drop out of Pacific College of Oriental Medicine’s NY campus acupuncture program.  I can only comment on what I’ve observed in the 2 years that I’ve studied.

So, you’re thinking about signing up for the Acupuncture program at Pacific College.  How much will you make?  You’ve sat through the orientations and when the question is brought up, vague reassurances are issued — mainly that acupuncture is a growing field and that the salaries are hard to track because there aren’t enough numbers. I’ve found the following blogs on the dollars and ‘sense’ of acupuncture to be very helpful — it’s written by a licensed acupuncturist, Shauna McCuaig:

https://www.communityacupuncturenetwork.org/blog/guest-blog-dollars-and-sense-information-prospective-acupuncture-and-oriental-medicine-students

http://www.communityacupuncturenetwork.org/blog/dont-go-acupuncture-school

I’m a cynical New Yorker and Shauna McCuaig’s blog sounds pretty realistic to me.  What’s even more realistic is the lack of paid opportunities available through the Career Services department of PCOM NY (Pacific College of Oriental Medicine, NY campus).

The career services department is run by Cynthia Neipris.  I’ve heard conflicting opinions on her.  Some people suspect Cynthia sits on her duff all day and has little interest in posting more jobs or helping students find positions.  Others had positive things to say, claiming that she’s a very nice woman who works very hard and is helpful.

I say…SHOW ME THE MONEY (I’ve always wanted to say that).  Check out the job postings available at PCOM, ask the students to forward you e-mails Cynthia has sent out about open positions, internships, and opportunities.  Look at the salaries being offered (low to non-existent when mentioned) from the positions that are available through PCOM’s career services.  Either Cynthia really isn’t doing her job (because honestly, there are VERY few acupuncture, massage and herbalist positions posted) or Cynthia is out there hustling for all she’s worth every single day and coming away empty handed because there’s not much available.  Which is it?  Either answer is pretty damning for prospective students who are spending hard earned money for a degree with questionable job security.

One rebuttal people may make to this posting is that acupuncture is an entrepreneurial endeavor and that most graduates/students go into private practice.  To that I say:  this is NYC, where the cost of living is amongst the highest in the nation.  To make it here with the minimum (an unlimited metrocard, cell phone, food, utilities and a rented room), you need to earn at least $35K/year.  Do you have the confidence that you’ll have enough clients, charging $60-$80/session (that’s about 600 sessions/year) to make it in the first few years?

• Cheap room share:  $800/month in the boros (there are cheaper rooms ranging from $500-$800 — I am putting up the higher figure b/c this would pretty much guarantee a legal bedroom w/a window and some degree of privacy).
• Cell phone bill:  $50/month (average)
• Metrocard:  $104
• Utilities:  $50 for electric, $20 for gas, and $40 for internet = $90
• Food:  Let’s say you eat cheap and get by on $10/day (this means $.99 menu or strictly cooking and packing lunch daily) = $300
• Sundries:  Essentials for hygiene (soap, toothpaste, shampoo, detergent), laundry, etc = $50/month
• Acupuncture malpractice insurance:  $50/month (averages $150/quarter but could be higher)
• Total= roughly $1450/month just to get by (you must see at least one client/day on a 5 day work week)

Do you want to have some extras in your life?

• Pay off student loans?  Estimate a monthly payment of $200 to service it w/the hopes of paying something towards the principle.
• A social life?  Let’s say you spend $20 each weekend/month seeing friends — ~$80/month.
• Desire to go on vacation once a year?  $800 (that’s a round trip plane ticket, if you’re lucky, plus a little extra for food and transportation) = $70/month in savings.
• Is health insurance (roughly $400-$600/month) important to you?  Let’s go with the low end (or even HealthyNY, where the cheapest option is about $250/month) which is about $400
• Total= roughly $750

You will need to earn $2200/month if you want to live a life with some enjoyment/security.  How did I estimate the $35K annual salary when 12 months x 2200=$26400?  Well, $35K after taxes is about $29,000.  Everyone needs a little extra cushion so I put in $2,600 per year towards a cheap office share (where your practice will be run), needles (cheap at about $5/box but adds up), sheets (again, laundry costs money), and office supplies.  Of course, if you can live off family, you have no worries and no major pressures.