I have decided that the best use of my limited online time is to make people aware of ALL STUDENT DEBT — rather than just the problems in chiropractic  — and have launched a new blog:

AMERICAN STUDENT LOAN DEBT CRISIS

Please link to the new blog now — I need your help.

The best posts related to chiropractic student debt have been moved there, and I hope to post new articles related to the student loan problems that so many face.

For now, this blog will remain online in archive mode. So many people have read it and linked to it, that it’s a shame to take it down. But I will no longer be updating it. I hope it leaves a LONG TAIL of information for those considering chiropractic college to consider carefully.

Chiropractic Student Debt Will Bury You

Anyone considering becoming a Chiropractor — or currently attending chiropractic college — should GO READ THIS ENTIRE LINK IMMEDIATELY.

It contains facts (with links to proof) about how chiropractic colleges mislead students and misrepresent the career.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE POST NOW

This single post contains more information than I could ever post here. Read it CAREFULLY and follow all links before even THINKING ABOUT becoming a chiropractor.

Anyone who knows the complete facts about this “profession” would NEVER get involved and take out the massive student loans required to become a chiropractor. Chiropractic fails on every level as a career choice: it’s a low income, unscientific, unethical profession with a low public trust that is DYING quickly.

PLEASE READ THIS ENTIRE POST NOW AND SAVE YOURSELF 3 1/2 YEARS OF YOUR LIFE AND $89,000 IN TUITION ALONE (LINK TO POST)

Here’s a great article on why Chiropractic is such a poor career choice.

This was written years ago, but nothing has changed — except that chiropractors are making even less money now!

All students should read this article… here’s a few quotes:

Many who choose chiropractic as a career have been misled by government policies and educational counseling materials that portray chiropractic as part of standard health care. Prospective students are lured by false promises of status and success. At most chiropractic colleges, students are exposed to cultlike indoctrination into a deviant belief system. They are taught false theories of disease and healing and persuaded to accept them as gospel. They are taught to disdain science and distrust medical doctors. A few reform-minded schools are trying to move away from teaching chiropractic philosophy as a substitute for science, but these are under attack as heretical.

Many new graduates are dumped into the cold, hard world where survival values often displace ethics. Many discover that they are not in a true profession, but a guild of survivors who must sink or swim. A large percentage ­ half, according to chiropractic sources ­ fail in practice. This is one reason that chiropractors have the unhappy distinction of having the highest default rate of all who obtain Health Education Assistance Loans from the federal government. (Figures released in January 1998 showed that 817 chiropractors owed a total of $59 million. The current default list can be seen on the Health Resources & Services Administration Web site.)

CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE (“Why Becoming A Chiropractor May Be Risky”)

Please forward this post to anyone you know who is considering attending chiropractic college.

Dr. Matthew McCoy, a chiropractor, recently wrote a great article in a chiropractic trade journal (The Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research, February 2008) called “Negative Brand Equity”.

It discussed why chiropractic has such a bad reputation — which also explains why the public doesn’t trust chiropractors and why it is such a poor career choice. Here are a few good quotes from the article:

Dazed, confused and hung over – we sit and wonder why our market share has dipped from 7% to 5%. We wonder why chiropractic college enrollments are down 40%

Most people are not neutral when it comes to chiropractic – they already have an opinion – and it ain’t a good one.

According to Gallup, we rank just a couple notches above used car salesmen when it comes to the public’s perception of our level of honesty and integrity.

This means that the profession has to vigorously shake off its cultural aversion to research. The days are over when the profession can rely on 70 poorly compensated researchers and a handful of research journals that no one subscribes to. The colleges are going to have to face the reality that their own future depends on producing the evidence of chiropractic’s effectiveness otherwise there won’t be any butts in their seats. Why get $200,000.00 in debt when you can do ‘wellness’ on less or in a profession without negative brand equity?

Before you think “This blog is just ‘bashing’ chiropractic”, keep in mind that these words come from someone IN the chiropractic profession, printed in one of the profession’s own journals.

Students: Please avoid this horrible career.

CLICK HERE TO READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE (“Negative Brand Equity”)

CLICK HERE TO READ AN ONLINE DISCUSSION OF THE ARTICLE

Thinking of becoming a chiropractor?

Then you should definitely read this (CLICK HERE FOR POST) about the unfortunate realities of supply and demand.

From 1995 to 2008 (estimated), there are 36,000 new chiropractors, yet only 7% of the population ever sees a chiropractor — and that number hasn’t changed in 20 years.

”The number of chiropractors in the U.S. grew from 13,000 in 1970 to 40,000 in 1990. That should have been a large enough jump to invite talk of restricted chiropractic college enrollment. However, the jump of more than 50,000 by 1994 should have set off alarm bells.”

The chiropractic colleges keep pumping out more and more graduates with huge student loan debt, yet the demand for chiropractic is NOT increasing. At the same time, insurance companies are paying for less and less chiropractic care.

Before you sign the papers and go into massive debt for a chiropractic career, please read this blog, follow the links, and carefully do your own research. You can ask questions to former and current chiropractors on Chirotalk: The Skeptical Chiropractic Discussion List.

Remember that chiropractic colleges make money by getting your tuition. They can not be trusted to tell you the reality of the situation, especially considering that many make improper claims on their websites.

(Click Here To Read Post “Operation Money Hum–How to make $ in Chiropractic?” )

Greg Stanley, the president of Whitehall Management, a leading chiropractic management consulting company, recently published an essay in Dynamic Chiropractic called “The Sustainability of Chiropractic”.

No big surprise, folks… the outlook for Chiropractic as a career choice looks HORRIBLE.

CLICK HERE TO READ “THE SUSTAINABILITY OF CHIROPRACTIC”

I believe the current flow of DCs into the marketplace is unsustainable. In time, we’ll see the price of an adjustment fall to levels that won’t support free-standing offices. In my consulting practice, we get calls each day from doctors practicing in the living room of their mother’s mobile home, wanting to know if we have a consulting program that can save them. Currently, the student loan default rate in chiropractic is twice as high as all other health care disciplines combined.

Am I saying chiropractic is in danger of being eliminated from the health care scene? No, but it’s in the slow and steady process of being changed from its current status as a highly profitable, free-standing, entrepreneurial career to that of a second job for most of the profession.

Please read this ENTIRE article before you even THINK about signing up for chiropractic loans!!

CLICK HERE TO READ “THE SUSTAINABILITY OF CHIROPRACTIC”

Remember, I didn’t write this… it was written by someone IN THE PROFESSION, and published in one of the profession’s most read magazines.

Question: How much does it REALLY cost to become a chiropractor?

The answer might surprise you… click HERE for the real story.

Question: And how much can you REALLY earn as a chiropractor?

The numbers are truly depressing. Click HERE if you really want to know the truth.

So if you’re thinking about a career in chiroquackery, better think again !!

Little-known practice called ‘dumping’ costing taxpayers an estimated $400 million

(click HERE to read full story)

Washington- Alyscia Taylor, a 5-foot-2 Georgia fireball, graduated from chiropractic college outside of Atlanta with an education in treating spines and student loans totaling $53,880.

The debt seemed manageable as she began her career as a chiropractor in suburban Washington, D.C., in 1994. But she had asthma, got recurrent pneumonia and needed to care for parents on a farm near Augusta, Ga. So she moved, eventually left the profession and took sales jobs that paid basic bills but left little for the loans.

That’s when the problems began.

Collection agencies called relentlessly. Late fees and interest compounded the debt, churning the $53,880 balance to $134,466 by 2004. By then, many bankers would have figured the loan was uncollectible and declared the matter closed. They would have gotten most of their money back, too, and with interest, because the U.S. Department of Education guarantees the loan industry that it will make up most losses.

But the student loan industry has had a practice, unknown to outsiders, that lets it earn even more money off a bad debt while shifting the problem to taxpayers, a Plain Dealer examination has found. Its official name is Direct Loan default consolidation, and it is costing taxpayers an estimated $400 million.

Insiders in the industry, government and some college financial aid offices have a harsher name for it: “dumping.”

What that means is that the borrowers’ bad debt, often multiplied because of earlier delinquencies and refinancing, gets turned into a new loan – with interest, late charges and an 18.5 percent handling fee for the industry. But this new, expensive loan is no longer the industry’s liability; rather, industry employees convert it into a new government loan, issued under the federal Direct Loan program.

The new loan is shifted from the private sector and dumped on the government.

“The student winds up with a lot more debt, and the taxpayer winds up with more obligations,” said Robert Shireman, executive director of the Institute for College Access and Success and a former White House and U.S. Senate education policy adviser.

Department of Education data between 1995 and 2005 put the default rate of these dumped loans at about 34 percent. A department analyst, however, says that over the long-term life of these loans, the default rate could approach 60 percent.

“Chiropractor” has been voted Most Overrated Career by U.S. News & World Report magazine for 2007:

(Click HERE to read the magazine story)

Some chiropractors think their discipline can cure everything from headaches to sciatica, asthma to premenstrual syndrome. But the Federal Trade Commission only allows chiropractors to claim they can treat low back pain. And even so, research shows that mainstream treatments for lower back pain are equally effective. Many chiropractors also devote considerable time to marketing–in part to pay back the cost of chiropractic school, usually over $100,000.

Here’s another recent newspaper feature showing what it’s really like after you graduate from chiropractic college (with mountains of student loan debt):

Chiropractor works 2 jobs to chip away at $165,000 in school debt – from USA Today

(click HERE for the full story)

The story is quite familiar to those of us taken in by the chiropractic promise of being a “successful doctor”:

Yet despite her two jobs, she’s still struggling to pay her living expenses and the minimum monthly payments on her student loan and credit card debts.

She’s amassed nearly $165,000 in student loan debt from attending graduate school at Southern California University of Health Sciences in Whittier. She graduated in April 2005 with a degree in chiropractic health.

While at the university, she borrowed for tuition, books and living expenses. (The $165,000 she borrowed is just principal, not interest.) She also has about $9,000 in credit card debt and a $4,000 car loan.

There’s even a video. You’ll note that this woman is well-spoken, intelligent, and hard-working yet she still can’t pay back her loans. The chiropractic colleges make wild claims about how much money you can make after graduation and often claim that chiropractors who can’t pay back their loans are “losers”. As this story shows, that is not the reality.

Meanwhile, check out this page called Student Debt Alert, which informs us that “nearly two-thirds of all four-year college graduates now have student loans” and “the number of students who graduate with over $25,000 in loan debt has tripled since the early 1990s”:

Student Debt Alert:

http://www.studentdebtalert.org/

Thanks to everyone who has supported the blog by sending me articles and your own personal “war stories”. Thanks for linking to this site and for telling everyone the truth about chiropractic and student debt.