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Veterinarian Or Lawyer
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Veterinary economists weigh costs and benefits of both degrees to determine how many graduates is too many for these similar industries.
A recent law school graduate and friend of mine called me a few weeks ago to vent about his current work situation. Or rather, his lack thereof. Turns out, even though he was in the top 10 percent of his class, had several internships under his belt and had passed the bar in multiple states, he couldn’t find a job.
After our conversation, I researched the current U.S. labor market for attorneys using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Association for Law Placement (NALP). This research showed that the number of law school graduates exceeds the number of available positions by a ratio of more than two to one. This ratio causes two notable issues: the average wage earned by new law school graduates is low, and the underemployment rate is high.
A similar situation
Of course, this got me thinking about the veterinary profession, as underemployment is one of its primary concerns. We’ve certainly battled with the perception of โtoo manyโ veterinarians in recent years, but yet: Do we know how many veterinarians would need to graduate in a single year to be truly โtoo manyโ?
To answer this question, we employed the concept of net present value (NPV) for veterinary school graduates, as described in the 2015 AVMA Report on Veterinary Debt and Income. NPV provides a measure of the relative current value of a stream of benefits and costs over a specified period of time. A positive NPV indicates that the financial benefits of obtaining a DVM degree are greater than the costs, whereas a negative NPV indicates that the costs exceed the benefits. Using this approach, โtoo manyโ veterinarians would be exactly the number of graduates that push starting salaries down to the point that the average NPV is zero-the point where the total benefits of the DVM degree exactly equal the total costs.
A look at the numbers
The mean starting salary of full-time veterinarians in 2015 was $72,527 for males and $69,879 for females, according to the 2015 AVMA Senior Survey. Given the current level of debt at graduation and expected earnings paths, the NPV calculation indicated that the break-even starting salary for males is $75,368 and $58,886 for females. The survey’s gender distribution of graduates was 22 percent male and 78 percent female. Using these percentages as weights, we determined the weighted break-even salary to be $62,446.
We modeled the mean starting salary in each year as a function of per capita real U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) and the number of veterinary graduates finding full-time employment (N) following the methods we describe in the January dvm360 article โAVMA veterinary economist warns of education problems ahead.โ Using the model’s parameters, the break-even salary would result from N being 31 percent higher. Simply put, there would need to be 31 percent more graduates finding full-time employment to result in an NPV of zero, or the equivalent of 10 additional colleges of veterinary medicine.
Weighing costs vs. benefits
We collected data from the NALP’s Employment Report and Salary Survey (ERSS) for 2014 and estimated the NPV for the legal profession in order to compare the job market for lawyers to that of veterinarians. Male law school graduates in 2014 earned a median starting salary of $65,000, whereas females earned $60,000, with a combined median debt of $145,000, according to the ERSS.
We used median salaries for lawyers instead of means because the data is highly skewed: While most law school graduates earn a salary around the median value, about 12 percent of new graduates earn exactly $160,000, making the mean much higher than the median. In contrast, the mean and median salaries for veterinarians are nearly identical. We otherwise made all of the same assumptions for law school graduates as we did for veterinary school graduates and calculated the NPV for lawyers as being -$299,661 and $31,207 for male and female graduates, respectively. The ERSS’s respondents were 53 percent male and 47 percent female, making the weighted average NPV -$144,815. This indicates that the current costs of earning a JD degree exceed the benefits.
Some good news (for now)
Unlike the legal profession, the veterinary profession is far from reaching a negative or even zero NPV. Not surprisingly, because of their negative NPV, the law profession exhibits rising unemployment and underemployment rates and unfilled seats at law schools. In order for the veterinary industry to reach the problematic point seen in the job market for law professionals, there would have to be a large increase in the number of veterinary graduates.
Of course, in the future, declining GDP growth, increasing student debt and continued veterinary service price increases in excess of inflation will all negatively impact NPV and reduce the number of new veterinarians required to reach a zero NPV. Even more important, the trend in NPV is declining, bringing down with it the potential for expanding the number of new graduates. So while 10 additional schools today would cause to NPV to fall to zero, in the future it will take fewer.
Who Gets Paid More – Lawyers or Veterinarians?
Lawyers and veterinarians have very different careers. One handles criminal and civil litigation, while the other treats animals with diseases or injuries. However, both require extensive education beyond undergraduate school. Lawyers must pass the bar and veterinarians must be licensed. One final difference is in their income, which may vary for a number of different reasons.
Average Salaries
Veterinarians earned a considerably lower average salary than lawyers in 2012, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average veterinarianโs salary was $93,250 a year, while the average salary for lawyers was $130,880. In certain cases, however, vets might make more. For example, those in the highest 10 percent of earners made $144,100 or more a year. Salaries for both professions vary by factors such as geographic location, industry, employer and work setting.
Workplace and Industry
The BLS reports that most lawyers worked in legal services in 2010, although almost a third worked for a local, state or federal government agency and a few worked in the management of companies or enterprises. Lawyers who worked in the management of companies or enterprises had the highest earnings as of 2012, with an average annual salary of $163,510, according to the BLS. In contrast, veterinarians worked primarily in private practice, with a small number working for the federal or state government. Veterinarians also worked in social advocacy organizations and colleges, universities and professional schools. Those who worked in scientific research and development services earned the highest average salaries in 2012, at $132,170 a year.
Unusual Settings
Lawyers with the highest earnings worked in some unusual industries, according to the BLS. In some cases, fewer than 100 lawyers worked in the field. For example, the cable and other subscription programming industry employed only 90 lawyers in 2012 and offered an average annual salary of $193,960. The 260 lawyers employed in the petroleum and coal products industry averaged $207,370 a year. The top-paying industries for veterinarians offered lower salaries and fewer opportunities than those for lawyers. The 40 veterinarians who worked in pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing averaged $113,530 a year in 2012, while the 210 who worked in local government averaged $94,470.
Location Affects Salary
Geographic location affected salaries for both lawyers and veterinarians in 2012, according to the BLS. That’s mainly because different areas of the country have different costs of living. Connecticut offered the highest average wages for veterinarians, at an average of $121,480 a year. Most of the top five salaries were concentrated in the Northeast. Lawyers earned the most in the District of Columbia, where the average salary was $165,590. All of the top five states were located on the East Coast, from Massachusetts in the North to Florida in the South.
Is It Harder To Get Into Vet School Or Law School
Iโd like to argue against the two arguments that are supposed to make vet science hard. 1) The multiple species argument and 2) the canโt talk argument.
Once you know general anatomy, physiology, surgical principles, pharmacology and pathology it takes very little effort to learn an extra species. In fact, probably all vets treat a species sometime during their career for which theyโve received no formal training at all.
If I had to train another vet or a medical doctor to treat a peculiar species for which I have a lot of experience and he/she has none, it will probably just take 5 sentences. 3 of those will be devoted to handling and treatment techniques and 2 sentences will touch on some physiology peculiarities. I mention all this to argue that treating several species is really not that hard. Having said that, someone with veterinary training will be able to make sense of sentences pertaining to comparative anatomy and physiology. For example if I say โremember a _____ doesnโt have a gallbladderโ or โit is a hindgut fermenterโ then a vet is immediately able to make sense of the statement and see how it will apply to different medical conditions. A response from a medical doctor might be โ Huh!? But how could that work!?โ
Now for the canโt talk argument: when an unconscious human is rushed into ER he also canโt talk. When a human says something like โI just feel weak and tired all the timeโ it gives you not much more than an owner saying โit would usually gulp itโs food down in a minute but now it only nibbles on it.โ
Lastly I would like to mention that human doctors go into a lot more depth than vets. Though I find that human doctors are very frequently surprised to learn at what depth veterinary medicine is studied and practiced.
Whilst I canโt give a definitive answer to the question posed, my experience is that both professions underrate the difficulty of the other. Personnaly, the mental challenge I love about being a vet is that I can be a pathologist, a clinician, an economist, a surgeon and a lab technician all in one day.
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