Predictors of Academic Success in a Nontraditional Doctor of Pharmacy Degree Program at a Historically Black College and University

DISCUSSION

The purpose of this study was to determine which associations exist between student success within the NTDP program and demographic factors. Success in this study was measured by cumulative graduating GPA. One key correlation was discovered: Though the majority of students enrolled in the NTDP program identified as African American and being born in the United States, being an international student who identified as African correlated with a higher graduating GPA. Students’ place of residence, gender, and race appeared to serve as lesser predictors of success.

The results of this study may reflect the sociodemographic dissections and paradoxes indicated by previous studies related to educational attainment among Black students within health care fields, most notably gaps in academic achievement between African Americans and other students.^5-7 In the medical field, Rao and Flores attributed achievement gaps to factors such as lack of family support and role models.⁸ According to Kent and colleagues, the number of Black immigrants to the United States has increased by more than 300 percent in the past three decades,⁹ with roughly 4% of Black immigrants being from the African continent and 9% being from the Caribbean.^10,11 Chiswick and Miller highlighted the fact that many African immigrants to the United States are highly skilled and highly educated due to the educational systems within their countries of origin.¹² However, because of their racial minority status, once in the United States, African immigrants have been more likely to experience career “mismatches” than have other nonminority immigrant populations. This has placed many Africans in positions where their education level exceeds job qualifications.^13,14

This historical phenomenon may explain trends prevalent within African immigrant populations today, which favor high educational and career attainment (degree seeking). Literature has revealed that many African immigrants may also be better prepared for the rigorous math and science-based curricula of PharmD programs than US-born students due to a “Western trend” of selecting highly skilled international students for immigration.^15,16 The combination of a perceived need to obtain higher education to circumvent skills mismatches and to possess strong baseline skills may explain why pharmacy represents a choice profession for many African immigrants, and why greater levels of academic success are achieved therein. Additionally, the field is often emphasized within their countries of origin, accompanied by more recent advocacy efforts to grow the profession within these countries.¹⁷ Nigeria, for example, has more pharmacy training programs than any other African nation, with at least 17 schools currently offering a Bachelor of Pharmacy (BPharm). Ethiopia has more than seven programs, with at least two offering a master’s degree in pharmacy.¹⁸ Efforts demonstrating a strong thrust toward the PharmD have been well documented in studies detailing the current state of the pharmacy profession within Ethiopia.¹⁹

At the other end of the spectrum, the academic performance of US-born Black student populations was found to be lagging. Though not well studied or articulated within the field of pharmacy education, this mirrors a larger national trend that shows that an achievement gap exists between African American students and other students, possibly attributable to a lack of self-efficacy and early scientific exposure.^6,20 The fact that distance learning programs may help to close the achievement gap between African American students and other students may be promising for NTDP programs, which use a distance-learning platform.^6,21,22 Reasons cited are that African American students benefit from increased structure and inherent scheduling flexibility. Hybrid programs are cited as being the most beneficial option for African American students to make academic gains,²³ as regular virtual interaction with instructors appears to enhance academic confidence and self-efficacy among African American students.^23,24

Limitations of this study include the fact that investigators were not able to assess student motivations for enrollment in the NTDP program. This information may have helped to inform some of the demographic patterns observed within this study. The current study provides much-needed additional information to the currently scarce body of literature that examines predictors of GPA among students in NTDP programs.²⁴ There are potentially important variables that were not recorded in this analysis, such as the number of years of prior experience the student had in pharmacy. However, GPA is a short-term measure of success in these adult learners, so future studies should examine other outcomes that may be of even greater importance, such as career trajectory. Moreover, because the sample included students from a single program, which primarily serves underrepresented students at an HBCU, study results may lack external validity. Recommendations for future study may, therefore, include exploring other NTDP programs to obtain more comprehensive data so that researchers can comparatively decipher trends and patterns related to student predictors of success.