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The story
A thread on 5ch turned into a discussion of why private pharmacy schools keep filling their enrollment quotas despite high tuition and low national licensing exam pass rates. Data cited in the thread put private universities’ pharmacist national exam pass rate at 67.4%, lower than national universities’ 79.4% and public universities’ 82.9%, and noted that since the shift to a 6-year curriculum, total tuition at some schools now tops 10 million yen. Posters shared anecdotes claiming schools deliberately tighten graduation requirements to avoid producing students who keep failing the national exam, along with discussion of how entrance-exam difficulty has shifted over the years, with opinions split on whether the tuition is actually worth the qualification.
What people said
If it were me, I'd go for the 4-year one.
Nobody responding to this anymore really makes you feel the passage of time.
That's so unfilial, lol
What about unattractive guys?
Private pharmacy school students might actually burn through more money than NEETs (Not in Education, Employment, or Training), if you think about it.
National universities: 79.4%
Public universities: 82.9%
Private universities: 67.4%
Apparently.
So one in three doesn't even become a pharmacist?
Still more reasonable than those 'Let's aim to be a voice actor!' trade schools like Yoyogi Animation Academy, no?
Those ones probably wanted a research job from the start and never planned on becoming pharmacists anyway.
It's a place only rich kids can afford, so I can't help getting jealous.
They're just jealous.
Even at a mid-tier-or-lower private university, these grads probably land way better jobs than humanities majors from similar-ranked schools.
Might be true at national/public schools too, though.
What's the point of running a smear campaign like this?
Meanwhile there are guys at regular companies pulling 9 million as a 35-year-old section chief, so you're all being way too hard on pharmacists.
Show me a source.
Isn't the average pharmacist salary not even that high?
Quit using mystery slang like 'Kin-yaku-sei' (Kindai pharmacy student).
It's wild how there are like 4-5 pharmacies clustered right next to a hospital.
What was the entrance-exam hensachi (standardized difficulty score) like back in the day?
Kyoto Pharmaceutical University was around a hensachi of 65 — a level where it was basically full of Kyoto/Tokyo University rejects, and the women there were pretty much some of the top academic performers in Japan.
Kindai was around 60 too.
Setsunan was just above 50, not a score just anyone could get in with.
And Daiichi College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, for example, wasn't bottom-tier ('F-rank') even back then — it had a real admission ratio, though it was famous for having the highest tuition in Japan.
Of course there were also held-back students.
That's roughly how it was.
65 is way too high compared to now. What happened?
It's because pharmacy schools popped up everywhere.
Kyoto Pharmaceutical is only at 55 now, after all.
When it switched from a 4-year to a 6-year program, enrollment quotas exploded.
The long-established pharmacy schools used to have a hensachi near 60 back in the 4-year era, but now they're close to bottom-tier.
You could buy a house with that.
Does it actually pay off once you become a pharmacist?
You'd be better off just buying them a house.
It was still more reasonable back when it was a 4-year program.
For reference, you can look this up yourself, but back when I attended, Kyoto Pharmaceutical charged a flat 1.5 million yen a year with no sliding scale — 6 million total over 4 years, which was on the cheap side.
Apparently Kindai and Setsunan Pharmacy already had a sliding-scale tuition system back then.
Once it went to a 6-year program, I heard my old university now costs 11.6 million yen total.
Places like this aren't somewhere a student from a poor family can go anymore.
Even if they get in, they'll just flunk the national exam anyway.
To answer seriously, backdoor admissions do exist.
It's been a thing at private medical schools forever, so it'd be weirder if it didn't happen.
Of course it exists at pharmacy schools too.
But the one thing you can't backdoor your way through is the national exam.
Pharmacists are pretty popular in the marriage market too —
maybe even more so than female doctors.
Their families have deep pockets too.
That's how it was with the people at my university — seriously, it was almost all kids from wealthy families.
So going after a female pharmacist as a marriage prospect made sense.
Regardless of what she's like as a person, of course.
Having a wife who can stably bring in 5-6 million yen a year is just too much of a blessing.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Pharmacy programs in Japan switched to a 6-year curriculum starting in the 2006 academic year, after which new pharmacy schools opened one after another nationwide, causing enrollment quotas to balloon and entrance-exam difficulty to drop. One reason cited for private universities’ lower national exam pass rates compared to national and public schools is that some private universities reportedly tighten grade-advancement and graduation requirements to filter out weaker students before they can sit the national exam — a ‘pass-rate management’ practice that overlaps with issues previously covered in the press. Total tuition varies widely by school, and since the shift to a 6-year program some schools now charge over 10 million yen. That said, the anecdotes shared in the thread describe specific universities’ internal circumstances secondhand, so the timing and details may not reflect the current reality.
※This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “Private Pharmacy Schools: ‘Low academic caliber. Low odds of becoming a pharmacist. High tuition.’ ← So Many Reasons Why.”
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