IS DENTISTRY STILL WORTH IT? Dying profession? Too much debt?
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- Äas pĆidĂĄn 28. 06. 2024
- The amount of debt being taken on by dental students is staggering. Add to that saturation of dentists, more competition for fewer patients, and corporate dentistry, and many are wondering if it's even still worth it to become a dentist today.
In this video I look at how dealing with dental school debt, how dentist incomes have been trending over the last 25 years, and figuring out why there is so much negativity online about becoming a dentist.
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I'm glad you made a video that cut through a lot of the negativity and subjectivity you see online to get to a much clearer picture of this profession.
happy it was helpful!
small channel, but you are putting quality content out there. Lots of schools and doctors find it taboo to talk about income, but when they are piling 300-600k in debt on us, income is a huge factor that we have got to think about. I know you have done videos on income, but maybe you could do a video of where ideal locations for practices are? obviously more people less dentists is the golden ratio but I am sure there is more to it. Would love to hear since you have lived in the middle of nowhere and im sure done the research to support that decision. Subbed!
appreciate your support, tell your friends ;). Definitely something I can discuss in a future video
Studying in Germany, 4th year rn. Im sooo happy that studying dentistry is almost "for free" here. Wont have any dept when I finish...
I'm planning to study dentistry in Germany also
However, I do not know German and I plan to study German for one year in a language school to get a C1 certificate first.
May I know if they would still accept my A level results after one year?
Also, what is the typical offer grades for dentistry in Germany? (I don't know German but the "not international" degree websites are all in German)
@@dzikijohnny about what a-level grades would you need?
In Hong Kong, one needs a bare minimum of 2A* 1A to get an interview opportunity from HKU dentistry (the only dental degree provider). As for medicine, one needs a bare minimum of 3A* 1A to get an interview...
I seriously don't think I could get these grades and I pray that Germany wouldn't be the same (ăĐ)
Ooof, $507,000 in debt here from NYU. Don't go into this profession, especially if you live in Manhattan unless your parents have a practice.
@@radujko you should have went somewhere else, donât tell people not to go into the profession because of your poor choice to go to NYU
â@@loganduncan501 Not a poor choice I'm doing just fine, but the majority are struggling here and unhappy
Hey Joel! Been a fan since DAT Genius days! Love your videos man! As someone who is starting dental school in the summer, I was worried about the amount of loans but your advice has given me motivation for my dream of becoming a dentist! đđŸ
one of my day ones âĄïž ty for your support all along the way Sunny, and I'm glad I could help!
Thank you for your positivity and nuance! I for one am grateful for increasing diversity in dentistry (we still have a long way to go). And I am also excited that suicide rates in dentistry are dropping.
I wish I found this channel sooner!! You do not beat around the Bush with all your videos and they are so well edited. All the info is just what I need too.
ty Tray! happy to have you along for the ride
Hey Joel! I just wanted to say thank you for helping me with the PAT for the DAT. You were clutch. Iâm about to apply for dental school this application cycle. I hope we can meet one day as colleagues! Keep up the good work!
Thanks Kendall! Good luck, you got this!!
This video came as a blessing
It was so well presented!!
Thank you so much!!!!!!
Loved this video as a D1, definitely keeps me going! This may be outside your area but can you make a video or comment about ideals people have about medicine vs the problems it has now?
ty, glad the video was inspiring! interesting idea, will consider
What an amazing video! To the point. My wife is a dentist and we can vouch everything you just said
Really appreciate it!
Hi Joel! Super awesome videos! Can you also do an exploration of the other specialties? It was super helpful to see the info about oral surgery!
Very nice video Joel, I think I'm becoming addicted to your content.
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Hey Joel, love your videos! Iâm starting dental school and n the fall and this video really gave me a lot of encouragement and motivation :)
ty! made my day
How is it going with dental school?:)
@@harvestingseason2725 It's going great! Thanks for asking. Time is flying by but I love what I'm doing :)
@@andrespalacios3129 that's awesome man! Did you had to move across many states for dental school? I'm in that current situation and is so scary!! Hahah
@@harvestingseason2725 Yes, I lived in the east and had to relocate to the west. It was completely new territory for me, but it has been such a wonderful experience. Wouldn't trade it for the world! I wish you all the best in your dental career
I am a dentist in the middle east and the saturation down here is crazy. Fresh grads are working for free, they end up making money off of commissions. Three years in, if you are lucky, you start getting paid the equivalent of 1.5 to 2 thousand dollars per month. I think the prevailing advice to anyone wanting to go into any feild is that nothing is easy any more and that you need to love the feild you wanna potentially part of so much that you dont mind the bs you will go through to get where you want.
Which country? Egypt?
@@psharalla6275 egypt is in africa lmfao
Hi which country are you from ? I'm also from the Middle East (Iraq) and the same thing is happening here , both pharmacy and dentistry, and it has made me go crazy on which one to choose !
@@psharalla6275 Saudi Arabia
@@Charles-xk2mjđđ
Almost never comment on videos but I gotta say I enjoyed this video. I agree with your pointsđ
ty Mario, appreciate your support!
dentistry is my dream, I'm still in high school but I live in the middle east and studying dentistry there isn't really the best way to go. im worried about the future and that I wouldn't be able to pursue my dream, anyways your videos have helped me a lot and gave me hope, I will forever be a big fan of yours!
Thank you Dr. Joel
just a add on, at 6:25, if a the IBR payment is is way less than the interest payment, then the loan instead of decreasing or staying still, it will increase instead.
in order words, for example, if you own 500k for DS loan, at 7% ,you will spending about ~5.5k for student loan at 10 years plan normally at federal loan.
for IBR loan repayment at 20 years plan, instead of 5.5k, you will be paying 10% of what you make instead, which is possibly 1.4k a month if you make about 14k/ month. after 20 years the remain balance is forgiven BUT, is consider taxable income. (meaning you have pay tax on that xxx$ or whatever you own)
but since you are paying 1.4k instead of 5.5k, your loan will increase from 500k to xxx$$ or who ever know how after 20 years. ex: 1 mil
then after 20 years, you will have to pay tax on that 1 mil. so you better save up a chunk of money after 20 years to pay of that tax bomb or you will be in deep $#$$.
Hey, can you make videos related to dentistry in Canada? I feel like thereâs already so much info out there for US students but these type of videos for Canadians (using Canadian data/stats) would be more helpful due to lack of info
This. All the info out there is helpful for US students only.. i thought he works in canada, one of the reasons i subscribed. Oh well still worthwhile knowing!
Most of my viewers are in the States, so I need to make content that appeals to most! Feel free to message me on IG if you have specific questions I can help with though, @meyersonjoel
@@jmey I guess you could maybe include both US and Canada stats to help both?
Honestly I came out of school with close to 200k worth of debt but I realized that I should always pay myself first since the interests are so low on those loans. My money gets me better return in almost any financial instrument.
as long as you know what you're doing and don't overextend yourself in a worse case scenario, this can work!
Many of the students in American dental schools are from countries all over the world and practice there after they graduate.
Hey Joel, loved the video it was super informative. One thing I just wanted to comment on was the income based loan repayment that you briefly discussed. Based on my understanding, the loan forgiveness at the end of term results in a massive "tax bomb" where the loans + interest accrued that are forgiven are counted as income and subjected to federal /state income tax. In the example you presented, the tax bomb would be massive and wouldn't he end up paying the same amount anyway?
yes, going to be doing a video on this in the near future!
@@jmey thank you!
The problem with income is that people cherry pick stories from the top earners in other professions or they forget that even with the debt they will be making a lot more money than most and way more money once they pay it off
Hey great video! Just wanted to clarify what you said about Dr. Meruâs debt being forgiven. I believe at the end of 20 years he will owe income tax on the amount that is forgiven. So I his example he would owe income tax on the $2mil that his loan has grown to become. He will probably need to have $400-600k saved up for this I imagine
yes, going to make a video on the tax bomb in the future!
Great video. I am wondering if you took into account the saving for the tax-bomb of what goes into the loan forgiveness program? Keep the great work up.
going to talk about this in a future video :)
Those average student debt numbers are also averaging in all the students whose family is paying for everything.
700,000 in debt đž ? As a person out of debt Iâd say thatâs highly risky. Never đ
You should do a video on endo I hear thatâs a good specialty!
Endo is a dying specialty imo
Great video! Informational as always!
ty!
If you do the income repayment plan and pay the minimum on what you owe, you have to pay the taxes on the amount forgiven unless something has changed in the last 6 months. The individual that was mentioned in this video would have to write a 600-800k check on the 2 million that is âforgivenâ at the end of the 20 years
I love your work Joel. Just to be clear with Dentists..the golden age was ALWAYS approximately twenty years before they started dental school. The same was true in 1980 when I started and the same question was always is it worth it to be a dentist. Back then the vaccine against dental caries was just a year away and thousands of dentists would be out of work. Nobody could believe that the yearly cost for dental school might top 10 thousand dollars but it actually did in my junior and senior year. I left school with a staggering debt of 30k from Columbia. Many dental schools closed during the eighties.
When you get together with other dentists everybody is complaining how slow it is and how malpractice insurance is way too crazy.
We start talking about retirement from year one. Yet a lot of dentists are still going strong into their seventies and beyond.
Its actually one of those fields where you really get much better at it with age and if you are in good health you can go on indefinitely.
The key is to always make it interesting and try new things. Almost everything I do today was not really around back in dental school...and thats a good thing.
I do worry about corporate dentistry. I can see that it can be structured to discourage innovation and growth. Having your own practice allows you to learn things like endo implants and cad cam. If you have a corporate structure a lot of that work will always be given to the specialists who might be more efficient.
Bottom line is ..if you feel this work is challenging and interesting you will find a way to get into the profession and make it work. If you are going because your parents or your uncle says "go into dentistry...my dentist has a yacht " that a terrible idea and it makes for unhappy people
Couldn't have said this better myself, Chaim. Thank you!
As a nurse I dont even recommend nursing hence why I am looking for a career change. Though travel nursing has been lucrative as of late due to covid and the shortage of nurses but once it is over rates will go back down.
There is a no nursing shortage that is a lie.
@@user-lu6yg3vk9z depends on state
â@@user-lu6yg3vk9z It's more so in rural and some suburban areas. Most of the workforce want to live and work in the cities.
Dentistry is one of the most challenging fields period. The scope of responsibility plus the vast array of "hats" you wear as an owner, added to the actual challenge of the work you do makes it a ridiculously challenging field. In today's day and age there are many other easier ways to make money and have a much less stressful time away from the office. Getting spit and blood shot in your face while bending your neck angling your face down and having gravity giving you a reverse face lift for 30 years boarders insanity.
Name one way thatâs easier to make money
@@xplicitgoofy1015software engineer
be informative about the loan forgiveness. Thereâs a tax bomb at the end of 25 year of IBR. If you live in California, youâre looking at (up to) 50% tax with the forgiveness amount. Key: work hard during those years and live somewhere else other than Cali
Video on tax bomb is in the pipeline
Something I've really noticed in this profession is this culture of disrespect amongst dental colleagues. I.e. quick to bad-mouth other dentists' work despite not knowing full story; older dentists "cherry-picking" high prodn cases from their associates; I can go on. I can understand the saying "Dentists eat their young" or "Dentists eat their own" that is often repeated on DentalTown. I bet this is worse in saturated areas where there is fierce competition.
I think it depends who you're talking to. Myself and most colleagues I know wouldn't talk down about another dentist on seeing their work, I wasn't there when the procedure happened and am not sure of the circumstances. But yes, sadly you get a few bad apples with the law of large numbers.
These inflation calculators are usually conservative⊠often more inflation has taken place.
It's crazy how bigger cities haves more debt than smaller cities which is about 70k in debt which you can EASILY pay it off.
How about, as a video suggestion, talking about some of the physical challenges of dentistry? From what I understand it can be very physically demanding at times and a lot of dentists develop tendonitis. What are your thoughts and how do you deal with this?
it's a common suggestion but I haven't figured out how to make an interesting video beyond the usual suspects (stretching, posture, taking breaks, etc.)
Hey Joel,
you post awesome stuff.
BTW, I was wondering do you guys need a video editor and CZcams growth strategies who works specifically?
If this something you are considering?
Let me know if you want to see my work samples!
Did u mention the tax bomb?
Purchasing power was much more than today. You said it backwards.
thanks for the video. Taking the DAT august 20th. Gonna worry about not shitting myself over the test first T.T
GL!!
HEY JOEL I just finished my DAT and scored a 24 AA! Just wanted to lyk idk. : ^)
@@isliu that's awesome - congratulations!! huge accomplishment :)
Did you just say that you could buy a soda for a nickel in 1996âŠ.whatâŠ
Either go into tech or pa
the music is distracting
USC orthodontist Mike Meru has over a million dollars in student loan debt. Holy shit.
3:00 _The purchasing power of dollars back then were a lot less than they are today._
Incorrect -- purchasing power was higher in 1996. And no, sodas did not cost a nickel. You couldn't buy a candy bar in 1969 for less than 15Âą. (Which I guess I shouldn't mention in front of a dentist.) Nor, a can of soda. You have to go to the way-back machine to discover what ordinary items cost in 1996, or 1969, or 1960. A small amalgam filling in 1968 cost $15...I saw the bill my parents or the insurance company paid.
Over the 14 years of dental education tuition displayed in your graph, tuition costs at public universities have risen at an _obscene rate of 7.3%!_ This is the source of crippling dental student debt. Worth examining further is why _private_ university dental school tuition has risen at a slower, but still excessive 5.18%.
Americans are not going to have a viable health care system if students in dentistry and medicine graduate with excessive debt, and are compelled to establish high-fee practices which prioritize costly procedures over conventional preventative dentistry -- the kind that keeps citizens healthy. Congress must either subsidize medical tuition, or create incentives for private endowments to subsidize it. The dental products industry has healthier profit margins than most other segments of health care (check out the very high cost of products sold to dental practices). Perhaps those profits can be taxed to help fund dental education and reduce tuition costs.
You know something is wrong with dentistry as a field when the primary selling point of virtually all dental product manufacturers is increased profit margins for the practitioner. Health care must be a science- and technology-based profession that pays competitively compared with practitioners in other countries, but ultimately, does not have an overriding profit motive like it has for decades in the US.
There was a newly minted female orthodontist with one year's experience under her belt in Southern California; she made $400,000.00 a YEAR in 2023!!!!!!!!
Iâm an engineer, but Im really interested in becoming a dentist. Not sure if itâs too late for me. PS: I really love your voice! â€ïž
it's (almost) never too late! and thank you đ
I'm an engineer too. Why do you want to become a dentist? I was always interested in science, biology and medical stuff and into doing something practical, something you could do if you know what i mean. I became an engineer because i was pressured and because i let it get into my head that engineering was so much better. The truth is i had no clear view of what i would be doing and what i would earn and the result of that is that i'm not motivated to do most engineering jobs and that i don't want to do it, not even for the money. Most of the work is also NOT practical...
@@davek1728 Hey I'm an engineering student and I'm thinking of switching to dental school but I'm not really sure. You said the work is not practical, how so? and what is your experience in engineering?
@@nadael6533 I am a civil engineer but i work in survey now. When i say not practical i mean not hands on work. As an engineer you supervise, plan and oversee the work or design something that will be created. Maybe it depends on what you define as practical, i see it as using your hands like a dentist does. Maybe you will get that in mechanical/electronics but not so much in civil.
@@davek1728 Oh i see thank you so much for the reply
Make $120k or $150k as dentist with $400k-500k student loans in some cases, versus dental hygienist needs no 4 years of college and two years education after high school and makes $80,000 or 100k with $10-$20k in total debt load with no stress.
Think twice about dentistry and consider hygiene because way better money considering debt load for education (only 2 years after HIGH SCHOOL NO COLLEGE).
Typically u will spend 2 years of pre recs and 2 years at minimum for the program. So typically hygienist have 4-5 years of schooling.
The Inflation calculator used in this video uses the ' official ' CPI .. Fun fact: the way inflation is calculated has changes numerous times since 1980. Today gas , food , housing and electricity prices are no longer used to calculate inflation... If they did we would have a drastically different out look on how impoverished americans have gotten.
You didn't mention the huge tax bomb Dr. Meru will need to pay after 25 years.
going to be discussing this in a future vid
@@jmey đ
Looking forward to it. Thank you for the great content.
is it a bad reason to pursue dentistry for money?
if that's the main reason, I think so!
There is nothing wrong with wanting to make money, we all want that. Like he said in other video's, he likes making money... BUT you have to think about what you are going to do for it. In his video's he talks about working with his hands, working in the medical field, having a good work/life balance, feeling uselfull by helping people and providing a service, working in a field that potentially pays good if your skills are good. He also mentioned that he practised his skills a lot to become efficiënt. I do think that if you like what a dentist does and you are interested in the field, the outlook to a descent salary can be motivating.
What about orthodontics?
in the future I will probably make a video about ortho too!
Debt to attend Dental school + Debt to open a practice + Tax tax tax = Corporate dentistry slave.
Given dentists are so integral to good human health than why not train NHS only dentists. All training and fees paid with guaranteed salaries and NHS only practices. Well funded, well equppied, well staffed. If we can blow billions on pointless IT system and unnecessary foreign aid we can look after the nations dental heapth. But, tied to NHS for a minimum of 10 to 15 years post qualifying. That would provide a service and breathing room for long term solutions. And, we all start looking after our teeth properly.
#1 when talking about tech you compare people making 400k to dentist making 200k and then say these 400k people are rare , you know whatâs not rare and is found in practically every respectful tech or non tech company? People making 150-200k as seniors. Say what you want thatâs the reality , yes they arenât makings 400 , 500 , 600k these are the 1% but practically everyone is making 100k + as mid levels and 150+ as seniors google or not google. Thatâs with a 4 year degree.
Somebody has to fix teeth
The "well-intentioned" comment that suggests doing nursing instead and complains about stress... Sir (or ma'am/ person), are you sure about that? Cuz I don't think that all of the nurses leaving their jobs in the middle of this pandemic would agree with you... lol
Aw man, I just found your channel and love your other content but this clickbait is way over the top for me. How in the world could the dental industry die? Maybe you're spending too much time learning dental techniques and not enough time learning basic evolutionary biology... Humans have teeth and we will keep growing them.
not clickbait, common question predents and dental students ask. just type into google "is dentistry dying" and you'll see plenty of forum posts asking about it. I agree it's not going anywhere, the title is just supposed to convey the question that the video seeks to ask. almost no one is worried there won't be a need for dentists (lack of dental issues), but rather is the profession still worth it with increasing student debt, practice debt, and potential competition
@@jmey If you look at all of those questions in the google results, the further context and reasoning that is provided in nearly every one of them is just ludicrous, and addressing this kind of question only appeals to that same audience, who I would never trust working on my teeth. Concerns about debt and competition exist in literally every single field, failing to recognize alternative payment methods, online education, side practices & other streams of income, producing valuable content (like youtube vids & articles), and ignoring the calling to the profession is an indicator of poor cognitive function and a lack of critical thinking and research. I appreciate your response, and I'm sorry if I came off rude or disrespectful. I have absolutely no desire to be a dentist, but I find your videos informative and entertaining to watch.
DUDE, A CAN OF COCA COLA WAS 95 CENTS IN 1996 NOT 5 CENTS. GET YER EASY FACTS RIGHT.
With everything that he said, THIS is what you decided to focus on? No one cares what a can of coke cost in 1996...