The dental educator. An endangered species.

The dental educator is increasingly an endangered species. Part of the problem rests with the failure of dental educators themselves to convey to new graduates and to seasoned colleagues the variety, excitement and realities of reasonable income and fringe benefits associated with an academic career. Each of us in dental education must make a daily effort to convey this information through personal experience to our potential junior and new senior colleagues. Loan forgiveness protocols and unique training programs for those who choose to pursue full-time academic careers require collaborative financing from all of us in the profession, from our state and federal governments, and, ideally, from private industrial resources as well. The use of new educational technologies to relieve some of the more repetitive and burdensome aspects of education and to free the time of dental educators for more discussion in small groups, for problem-solving discussions, and for one-on-one interaction is imperative. If the current, clear and frightening decrease in the number of dental educators is ignored or even inadvertently fostered through ignorance or inaction, the entire profession will suffer directly. Practitioners, educators, industry and our government must cooperate in an intense and immediate effort to reverse this trend.