06/30/2025    Douglas Richie, DPM

Student Enrollment Should be Two-Sided (Bret M. Ribotsky, DPM)

I read with great disappointment Dr. Ribotsky’s
characterization of the current student
recruitment campaign at the schools of podiatric
medicine across the United States. Dr. Ribotsky
described the role of podiatrists in mentoring
prospective students as “unpaid marketing
representatives for private businesses, without
receiving any professional development
opportunities or other forms of remuneration in
return.” He proposes that podiatric physicians who
participate in a recruitment and mentoring program
for pre-medical students “invest considerable time
and effort in activities that primarily benefit
private educational institutions financially.”

I believe that Dr. Ribotsky has confused the
current recruiting campaign of podiatric medical
schools with his own previous efforts to recruit
vendors to support his for-profit seminars. His
philosophy of the need for “mutual benefits” for
all parties may have been a strategy to get
commercial companies to invest in his seminars,
but this has little relevance to the current
podiatry student recruitment campaign. His
characterization that student recruitment
“primarily benefits private educational
institutions financially” misses the purposeful
value of this campaign and the critical need to
increase the number of qualified applicants to
podiatric medical schools.

All of the schools of podiatric medicine in the
United States are non-profit institutions. The
need to boost applicants is not bent on profits
but instead is critically important to the
survival of the schools and our profession. If
the trend in decline in numbers of qualified
applicants continues, all the podiatric medical
schools in this country could close and our DPM
degree will become obsolete.

Contrary to what Dr. Ribotsky asserts, practicing
DPM’s are being encouraged to help contribute to
the student recruitment process in very simple and
time efficient ways. Whether engaging in
conversation with high school or college students
or allowing these aspiring people to shadow in
podiatric practice, the time commitment is minimal
and potentially rewarding. Further participation
at local university career fairs or pre-med clubs
may require a few hours of volunteer time from a
podiatric physician. How many podiatrists
already willingly volunteer to participate in
community health screenings or running events?

Beyond supporting a recruitment campaign many of
us regularly fulfill an even more important
obligation to the schools of podiatric medicine
which provided us a rich learning experience and a
wonderful career. Across the country, thousands of
DPMS willingly contribute financially to their
alma mater podiatry schools. The voluntary
contributions of grateful alumni are essential to
the financial well-being of all these non-profit
institutions. We make these contributions
willingly without demand for payback or “mutual
benefits.” Incidentally, most of the podiatry
schools provide ongoing professional development
opportunities for their contributing alumnae,
often at considerable discount.

In a recent LinkedIn post, my esteemed colleague,
Luke Cicchinelli recently quoted Denzel Washington
who said “First part of your life, you Learn, Second
part of your life, you Earn, third part of your
life, you Return.” I hope that my colleagues will
see the wisdom of this message and seize the
opportunity to give back to our schools of
podiatric medicine---with no strings attached.

Douglas Richie, DPM

Member, Board of Regents at Samuel Merritt
University, College of Podiatric Medicine

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