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JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. — Enrollment at the Gatton College of Pharmacy is on the upswing, bolstered by a recent $3.2 million annual funding increase from the Tennessee legislature. This financial support has enabled the college to lower tuition for a second time, and administrators are optimistic that enrollment will soon return to its traditional levels.
“Our goal is to enroll 75 to 80 first-year students, which aligns with our historical averages,” said Gatton Dean Debbie Byrd in an interview with News Channel 11. Her comments came shortly after the institution received news of the additional funding.
Part of East Tennessee State University, the Gatton College of Pharmacy saw a decline in student numbers starting in 2020. This followed a 2019 state funding initiative that allowed Tennessee’s other state pharmacy school in Memphis to significantly cut its tuition, while Gatton did not receive similar financial support. As a result, Gatton’s enrollment in its four-year program fell from 298 in 2019 to 211 by 2022.
Back in 2019, tuition at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis was $42,180, whereas Gatton’s was slightly lower at $37,172. However, by the following year, state funding allowed Memphis to slash its tuition to $27,374, while Gatton’s rose marginally to $37,916.
After several years of advocacy, Gatton secured $2.5 million in recurring funds from legislators in 2023, half the amount advocates deemed necessary to equalize tuition rates. Despite this, Gatton promptly reduced its tuition to $27,000 annually, with ETSU covering the additional costs beyond the allocated $2.5 million.
Those declining numbers began turning around once Gatton started recruiting for the first class to benefit from the lower tuition. The new classes in 2022 and 2023 totaled 45 students each. But by then, Byrd said, Gatton was having to deal with the significant enrollment decline.
“From a student-to-faculty ratio, you aren’t required to have as many faculty, and we literally couldn’t afford to have them,” Byrd said.
The school offered buyouts and was able to provide a year’s salary, but some faculty who weren’t ready to retire or move on were among those affected.
“It was very painful — I mean very painful,” Byrd said.
Made moreso because the school was eating the difference between the $2.5 million increase and what it really needed to lower tuition to $27,000, and preferably beyond that.
The 2024 group of first-year students totaled 58. The 2025 group, who just finished their first year in the program, totaled 64. The class that will begin the four-year program this fall is projected at 75 students.
“We did depend on our reserves somewhat but we also felt pretty confident that we were going to get the rest of it eventually,” Byrd said. “It was a risk obviously to take, but I’m glad that we were able to pass on those savings sooner rather than later.”
Eventually came this year. Byrd said she and ETSU President Brian Noland both felt good about meetings they’d had on Capitol Hill, “but we both said to each other we felt great about it before and haven’t been funded.”
The news came late last week, and Byrd said she was grateful to the Northeast Tennessee legislative delegation that kept pushing forward. They had plenty of letters and personal messages to buoy them, not just from staff but from students.
“When they tell their story, that’s much more powerful than anything that I can say,” Byrd said.
“On the House side, Gary Hicks (R-Rogersville) never stopped working for us, and then on the Senate side we had Senator (Rusty) Crowe (R-Johnson City) who carried the appropriation bill.
“We also had Senator Bobby Harshbarger in our corner this year so that was helpful and as a pharmacist, that certainly helped us along the way.”
Meanwhile, the school’s reputation hasn’t taken a hit. Last year’s graduating class had the nation’s fifth-highest percentage of students passing the pharmacy licensure exam on the first attempt, a year after being second-highest out of nearly 150 colleges.
The school also continues to serve a mission based in training students from the region — a number of them first-generation college students — and providing pharmacists who are willing to go to underserved areas.
“Just a couple of months ago we learned that we are the national, champion in terms of our work in the community for substance use disorder through the American Pharmacists Association Academy student pharmacists for the third year in a row,” Byrd said.
“Draw a circle around Johnson City, maybe a 100-mile radius. That’s where most of our graduates land. But beyond that, we’re still focused in East Tennessee and rural areas in East Tennessee.”
With the additional funding, Gatton’s tuition will drop a further $2,220 for in-state students to reach $24,780. That’s the same as UT’s Memphis pharmacy school, and ETSU expects the change to make recruitment easier.
Byrd said the mood was jubilant last Friday during the annual awards banquet, and she plans to stick around to see the numbers rebound over the next several years. The college dipped as low as 170 students but should return to around the 320 mark within the next four to five years.
“We’ve got a plan to hire one or two or three faculty every year, just depending on how that goes,” she said.
“I’m looking forward to seeing that growth. And students are very excited.”