Benchmarking Debt, Curriculum, and Student Experience Using an Academic Database
Purpose: Our primary aim for this symposium is to share our rationale, methods, and outcomes from our Academic Physical Therapist Educational Database benchmarking tool (2009-present) with a focus on the student experience, debt, and curriculum. As a secondary aim, we compare physical therapist benchmarks with medicine.
Methods and/or Description of Project: Between 2009 and 2019, we administered over 500 Physical Therapy Graduation Questionnaires (PT-GQs) to graduates of physical therapist education programs (98% response rate). Their ratings of the educational environment were also compared to nationwide data for a peer health care profession (medicine: over 250,000 students in national aggregate). Benchmarking to the PT-GQ allowed us to capitalize on a large, psychometrically validated database of academic domains that are broadly applicable to health care education. The PT=GQ captures critical information about the student experience including faculty professionalism, burnout, student mistreatment, student empathy, student tolerance to ambiguity, student burnout, educational emotional climate, and student-faculty interactions. The PT-GQ also captures assessments of curriculum content and student debt. Using student debt estimates, we calculated the net present value (NPV) of the DPT degree and contrasted that with other healthcare professions. Data were analyzed descriptively and, where appropriate, we used Welch unequal-variance t tests with adjustments for comparisons (alpha=0.05) to statistically compare physical therapist outcomes with medical schools. Effect sizes were calculated using traditional Cohen descriptors.
Results/Outcomes: PT students descriptively expressed higher levels of overall satisfaction with their education and less mistreatment as compared to medical students (>97% versus 85%). PT students rated the educational emotional climate (p < 0.001), faculty-student interactions (p < 0.001), exhaustion (p < 0.001) and engagement (p < 0.001) more favorably than medical students; but no difference in tolerance for ambiguity (p < 0.55) with medical students. There were no differences between how medical students viewed the fundamental sciences (anatomy) and the PT students. Student debt, as assessed from the database was 56% higher for medical students as compared to PT students. The NPV of the DPT graduate is approaching that of a bachelor’s degree as debt continues to increase. Various strategies to address these issues will be discussed.
Conclusions/Relevance to the conference theme: The PT-GQ that we modified from the AAMC survey provides critical insights into our educational culture and our relative position within a broader educational context. PT-GQ domains such as faculty professionalism, student perception of educational environment, student mistreatment, student burnout, student debt, and curriculum perception would be useful for examining all physical therapist learning environments both nationally and internationally. PT is a sound financial investment up to a certain level of student debt. However, physical therapist academic programs need to use national benchmarks and understand the role they play in bolstering the economic value of their graduates’ future careers.