23-04-2025
Walgreens to pay workers' tuition to bolster pharmacist ranks
Walgreens is rolling out a new tactic to replenish its ranks of pharmacists: paying for current employees' college prep to better position them for pharmacy school.
Why it matters: Long hours, burnout and tuition costs are hindering pharmacy chains' ability to fill gaps in their ranks even as they position themselves to offer more services and patient monitoring.
Efforts to encourage technicians and other support staff to take the next step in their careers haven't caught fire because of the cost and time to get prerequisite schooling.
Driving the news: Walgreens on Wednesday was set to announce an initiative called PharmStart with talent development company Guild to offer prerequisite classes online and paid for in full, the company told Axios first.
Workforce surveys showed nearly roughly 3 in 4 technicians want to attend pharmacy school, Rick Gates, chief pharmacy officer for Walgreens, told Axios.
"But the bottlenecks were around the cost of tuition, their prerequisite requirements and balancing work and family," he said. "This helps solve all three to some extent."
Up to 300 workers across six states, including Oklahoma, Texas, Oregon, Illinois, Wisconsin and Kentucky, will be selected to take advantage of the program.
What they're saying: The industrywide numbers around the pharmacy shortage are alarming, with a 20% drop in new graduates between 2018 and 2024, said George MacKinnon, pharmacy school dean at the Medical College of Wisconsin.
If the trend continues, that figure will grow to a reduction of 33% — or from nearly 15,000 down to 10,000, said MacKinnon, a member of Walgreens' Deans Advisory Council, which connects the company with pharmacy school deans.
"Where you're seeing the implications of this is we have pharmacies that can't staff because they don't can't cover the hours. You can't cover the weekend. It's impacting all of us as consumers and patients," he said.
