Finding enough veterinarians to serve rural communities remains one of the profession’s biggest workforce challenges. Veterinary colleges have expanded enrollment, practices continue to compete for food-animal veterinarians and organizations across the industry have invested in recruitment initiatives aimed at strengthening the rural workforce. Yet many communities continue to struggle to attract and retain veterinarians.
According to Dr. Lisa Greenhill, chief organizational health officer at the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC), the profession may be overlooking an important part of the problem. Greenhill has spent much of the past decade studying veterinary admissions and the educational pipeline that feeds the profession. Her most recent research, published in 2026, examined changing undergraduate enrollment trends and what they could mean for the future veterinary applicant pool. Greenhill spoke on a recent episode of the Have You Herd? podcast, suggesting the profession may need to rethink where it focuses its recruitment efforts.
Rather than asking how to recruit more rural veterinarians, Greenhill argues the more important question may be why fewer students reach the point of applying to veterinary school in the first place.
Looking Beyond Recruitment
The conversation surrounding the rural veterinary shortage often focuses on increasing the number of students from rural communities who pursue veterinary medicine. Greenhill believes that explanation oversimplifies the issue.
“About 20% of our students come from rural backgrounds,” she says.
While that number may seem low, Greenhill noted it is roughly proportional to the percentage of Americans who live in rural communities. More importantly, she says, students from rural and urban backgrounds are “absurdly similar.”
That observation represents an important shift in how Greenhill approaches the workforce discussion. Rather than viewing rural recruitment as the primary challenge, her research suggests the profession should examine the educational pipeline that exists long before students submit a veterinary school application.
Her recent analysis of undergraduate enrollment trends highlights another emerging concern. As the number of traditional college-aged students declines and undergraduate enrollment continues to shift nationally, veterinary medicine could face a smaller applicant pool in the years ahead. If fewer students pursue higher education overall, veterinary schools may have fewer prospective applicants to recruit, regardless of how many seats are available.
The Pipeline Narrows Upstream
Greenhill argues that many of the factors shaping the rural workforce have little to do with veterinary school admissions.
Students growing up in rural communities may have fewer opportunities to take advanced coursework in high school, fewer nearby colleges and universities and greater financial hurdles to pursuing higher education. Those challenges can influence whether students attend college at all, narrowing the veterinary pipeline years before admissions committees review an application.
“Our rural students fall into the lower-income, lower socioeconomic status groups,” Greenhill says.
Those socioeconomic realities intersect with broader national trends. Rural communities continue to trail urban areas in bachelor’s degree attainment, and uncertainty surrounding federal financial aid programs may create additional barriers for students already facing financial constraints. First-generation college students, who are disproportionately represented in many rural communities, often encounter additional challenges navigating higher education.
Taken together, Greenhill argues these forces shape the veterinary workforce well before students begin thinking about veterinary school.
Shifting the Profession’s Perspective
Greenhill isn’t suggesting veterinary schools abandon recruitment initiatives or admissions programs. Instead, she believes the profession needs to broaden its perspective.
“The students are there,” she says, “but there are lots of other levers upstream.”
Those upstream levers include educational opportunity, access to college, financial support, mentorship and community investment. They also extend beyond veterinary medicine itself. Addressing them will require collaboration among educators, policymakers, universities and rural communities rather than relying solely on veterinary colleges to solve the workforce shortage.
It’s a subtle but meaningful shift. Instead of viewing veterinary admissions as the beginning of the pipeline, Greenhill sees it as one of its final stages. By the time an application arrives on an admissions committee’s desk, many of the factors that influence whether a student had the opportunity to pursue veterinary medicine have already taken shape.
A Broader Approach to the Workforce
The rural veterinary shortage is unlikely to disappear anytime soon, but Greenhill believes the profession can make progress by expanding how it defines the problem.
“We won’t be able to affect all of the necessary change,” she says, “but I do hope that changing our thinking will improve our ability to be successful in recruiting.”
Her message isn’t that recruitment efforts have been misplaced. Rather, it’s that recruitment alone cannot solve a workforce challenge rooted in educational opportunity, economic realities and demographic change.
Building the next generation of rural veterinarians begins long before students fill out a veterinary school application. It begins with ensuring they have the opportunity to get there in the first place.
