There are only 28 Colleges of Veterinary Medicine in the USA.  Due to the absence of a College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) in New Jersey, NJ has contracted up to 24 seats at other CVMs to be reserved for NJ residents since 1971 to help get more NJ residents become veterinarians. Without these seats our students have a 1 in 30 chance of being accepted to an American College of Veterinary Medicine.  The contract seats improve that access by over 600%.  The program has provided access to education to over 26% of the 1675 veterinarins in NJ.  This program has saved NJ millions in educating its veterinarians.  The cost of a contract seat is only 2.6% of the cost of educating a veterinarian if the state had established its own veterinary college!

      New Jersey's need for veterinarians is projected to rise by 69% in the next 10 years, the highest increase in the nation.  Veterinarians not only take care of pets but they are also part of Homeland Security, anti-bio-terrorism and take care of equine and food animal health and bio security.

      For the second year in the row, Govenor Corzine has tried to eliminate this program.  The NJ annual budget has allocated less than 55% of New Jersey's Contractural Obligation to the 7 Colleges of Veterinary Medicne participating in the progarm for the seats they had contracted.  As a result, 4 of the 7 colleges have dropped out of the program and are no longer reserving seats exclusivelyu for New Jersey students (Ohio State, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University, University of Illinois and Iowa State University.)  The 3 remaining schools will not tolerate a third year of breached contracts and will cease to admit NJ residents under the preferred contract status.  The students were forced at most schools to pay the missing fees from the State of New Jersey. 

       We need you to write or call your State Assemblyman, Senator and the Govenor to complain about the loss of these programs.  Without your support this very valuable program will be lost and the veterinarian shortage will grow.  Please go to the NJ VMA website for more information at njvma.org