How Much does Acupuncture School Cost?

Responses

1. 

   Lisafer May 25, 2011

   OMG THANK YOU

   Keith, for doing this.

2. 

   Nora May 25, 2011

   Keith you are amazing.

   Great compiling work, thanks! 

   Also, I had totally missed that there was an acu-school in Kansas!  (And yet no licensing – is that why so few acupunks there?  Any insights, Nick?)

3. 

   Clayton Willoughby May 25, 2011

   South of the border…

   Still no love for Canada, eh?

   In the older sibling to this post you can see that the cost for Acupuncture only schooling in BC ranges between $23,330 to $38,470. 

   For Acupuncture & Herbs (TCM Practitioner) the range is between $31,040 and $53,185.

   For foreign students, including our kin to the south there, the prices are a bit higher, but not by too much. Probably a thousand or so per year.

   I’m really curious to know what the difference is between the schools. They must all follow some standard curriculum, so why the price? One of the more expensive schools in BC has a very high pass rate for the licensing exam (near 90%) but the owner of the school sits on the board for the governing college. So that might not be an indication of the quality…

   I also can’t wait to see what PCC/Climb is able to put together in the future. Might make a few ripples. 

4. 

   Shauna May 25, 2011

   Nice work Keith!

   I started to compile a similar list last year and put it aside. It’s a ton of effort just to navigate AOM school websites and piece together tuition, fees, fees with an asterisk. Sometimes 2 and 3 asterisks deep. Ugh!

   Your commentary on cost of living is also right on par. Prospecitve AOM students need to add these numbers to the ‘real cost of the AOM education’. Many programs are so packed full of classes these days that it’s really difficult to hold down a job, even a few hours a week. Furthering the need to take on additional loans to cover their cost of living.

   You deserve a star! Or a swim in the jello-pit!

5. 

   baba roseananda May 25, 2011

   Excited

   Now that makes me want to go right out and fill out an application for acupucnture school. And morgage my house !!!

6. 

   rhayden May 25, 2011

   interesting

   Some names i haven’t seen – just acquired candidacy in the last year.  Especially interesting is Stanton.  If the OM thing doesn’t work out, they also have schools of nursing, evangelical ministry and golf course management. Can’t seem to locate the tuition and fees on the website, where did you find it?

7. 

   keithananda May 25, 2011

   sorry Clayton!  I plan to

   sorry Clayton!  I plan to add the Canada schools. 

8. 

   keithananda May 25, 2011

   stanton

   https://www.stantonuniversity.com/2admission/23feeschedule.htm

   i think with this one i looked at the curriculum breakdown and calculated out the number of hours X unit cost for didactic and clinical.  (had to do that with several schools.)

9. 

   keithananda May 25, 2011

   …and maybe a couple of

   …and maybe a couple of names you don’t see anymore that are no longer enrolling new acu students…

10. 

    rhayden May 25, 2011

    thanks

    i couldn’t find this link from the site listed on acaom.org, i wonder if the information is still valid.  Way cheap for an OM program in any case – half the price of the upper-end schools.

11. 

    keithananda May 25, 2011

    5 of the least expensive AOM

    5 of the least expensive AOM schools are in the Los Angeles area.  They have a successful track record of preparing entry level practitioners.  As to why the prices are so much higher at some of the other schools would take some more investigation.

12. 

    Nic May 25, 2011

    well..

    they are a pretty small school so their classes only have 4-6 people in them a year.  (from what i have been told).  a lot of people move out of state or cross the border into another state to practice.  there is a lot of fear among the ks acu crowd about practicing in ks.  there are probably people practicing on the DL.  only a handful of us can be found on a websearch.  i have heard good things about the school.  maybe i should have went there.. it would have been half the cost and i would have learned herbs too..

     

     

13. 

    Steven Stumpf May 26, 2011

    Cost of being prepared for the licensing exam(s)

    Keith – This is really outstanding. I have a few questions and comments. First, these are costs for total tuition for the entire training, correct. Excuse me being a dummy. I believe they are totals and not annuals. The next question is how do folks pay for their training? We know many take loans. That is another story Shauna is expert on. Second Q – what is the corporate status of scools? How many for-profit and how many non-profit? How many are single shareholder/owner? How many are affiliated with a “religious” school or mission? Not an attack on faith-based orgs. We should all be aware there are training programs that exist primarily to prepare international missionaries for global work. I heard the testimony from the school President at an unforgettable CAB meeting. Additionally, the CALE pass rate data shows certain schools tend to have very few graduates who ever take the exam. Third, a caveat about how well AOM training programs prepare grads to pass at least the CALE. The overall pass rate is abominably low, averaging 60% over the decade (70% first timers, 55% repeaters). Some of the schools that cost the least have the worst pass rates. For example, S Baylo 62%, Dongguk 57% and PCOM 65%. Bottom line – there are way too many schools. As Deke Kendall recently wrote “China has a population that exceeds 1.3 billion people and they only have 23 Chinese Medicine schools. By comparison, the US has a population of 360 million people with 55 acupuncture schools.” I am not asking you to collect the data. What you have done is tough enough. Thanks.

14. 

    keithananda May 26, 2011

    Entire training –  yes,

    Entire training –  yes, figures given are total estimate for books, fees, tuition. In some cases I had to estimate books and some fees like malpractice that I know exist but weren’t laid out.

    Each program last between 3-4 years.  People can attend many of the programs part time until they finish, usually with a time limit of 6 years to finish.  when they do this , the cost increases.  OCOM is pretty much the only school that lays this out up front with a “programmatic track” of 3 years – 74K , 4 years – 81K, or 6 years 100K,  all for the same program at different time lengths. 

    Pay for training?  student loans, savings, family help?   people also work during school, but this is a hard road.  some schools are designed to be at night or on weekends so people can work.  Still challenging, but better in the long run to work during school and come out with far less debt than not working.

    in 2007, non-profit schools  – 25 , for-profit  – 36 .

    from ACAOM student enrollment report 2005-2007.

    for 2011, probably similar, a couple schools have folded and a few more have started up since then.

    I’m not sure what to say about the CALE pass rate, I bet the folks in California have a lot to say about it.

     

    Other interesting data tidbits:

    ratio of primary care physicians to people in the U.S. :

    1:1100

    ratio of acupucnture licenses to people in the U.S. :

    1:11000

    ratio of PRACTICING acupuncturists/AOM’ers to U.S. population:

    unknown. 

     

    but not more than 1:11000 . 

     

    still plenty of room for more

     

    somewhere i did a chart that showed the ratios state by state.  i’ll look for it.  even in California with 10,000 acu licenses i think the ratio was 1:3000 or something like that.

15. 

    emily May 26, 2011

    competition?

    I noticed a lot of the FL schools are less expensive, too, and there are a lot of acu schools in FL.  NESA is one of the most expensive, and is the only acu school in all of New England.  Does that trend seem to hold true for the other schools/areas?

16. 

    Linda inDetroit May 27, 2011

    The CALE is just a horrible

    The CALE is just a horrible exam, I feel lucky to have passed it on the first try, a lot of good students don’t pass it because it’s poorly designed with confusing questions, many that don’t make sense.  The NCCAOM exam was so easy in comparison, it was clear and the questions make sense, if you studied and did well in school you could count on passing it.  I took the CALE in 2002, I don’t know if it has gotten any better since then.  I went to PCOM, the CALE pass rate was much higher back then so I don’t know if the exam has gotten worse, or if the school has, but when I went I felt we were as well prepared as we could be to take the exam, the NCCAOM exam was a breeze for most of us, everyone I knew passed it, so I really feel the problem lies with the CALE, rather than our schooling.

    I knew quite a few people who chose not to take the CA exam, and only took the NCCAOM exams, many people who go to school in CA don’t plan to stay and practice so they don’t bother with the exam.

17. 

    Guest July 1, 2011

    Disturbing signs of influence

    Over here in Tokyo one of our big daily frustrations is the powerful influence of Tokyo Electric Power Co., the operator of the f—ed up Fukushima nuclear power plant. The electricity utility uses a massive advertising budget to keep a stranglehold over the media and tamp down criticism. (Why does a company with a monopoly need an advertising budget!?)

    It therefore has been the foreign press that have had to be the ones to really take Tokyo Electric to task. They are totally free of the tangled political-industrial-economic web that gags domestic outcry.

    BUT I was disturbed to see a possible sign that Tokyo Electric’s influence is starting to reach across the Pacific Ocean in the above post. I found it very suspicious that the author chose to use the acronym TEPCO for “total estimated program cost.” TEPCO is the acronym used for Tokyo Electric (https://bit.ly/lj0U3b). The author only used the acronym once, and in the very next sentence — hardly necessary to formulate an acronym for this purpose. An attempt at subliminal brain washing?

    I hereby call on CAN to free itself of all corporate influence, especially of companies with reputations as sullied as TEPCO’s!

    Just joking by the way…

18. 

    trish July 2, 2011

    glad you’re not afraid of

    glad you’re not afraid of ks. my mom LOVES getting treated at your clinic.

19. 

    janisx October 29, 2016

    Though I realize that this is an old thread, I am shocked to see that the tuition of ACTCM in San Francisco has gone up 20k in 5 years! When I visited the school last year for an open house, I felt like I made a wrong turn when I saw the dean wearing a Wall- Street-looking suit and tie. He and the other executives were dressed like employees at Goldman Sachs. Yuck.