Veterinary interns earned less per hour than fast food workers in 2021 — while holding six-figure student debt and working 60-hour weeks — and a federal lawsuit now alleges that was the plan all along.

The Vet School Cartel

How VCA, Private Equity Vet Chains, and Elite Universities Allegedly Conspired to Keep Veterinary Workers Broke

The Setup: A System Designed to Lock You In

If you want to become a veterinary specialist in America — a cardiologist, oncologist, or surgeon for animals — there is essentially one path. You go to veterinary school, you graduate with a mountain of debt, and then you participate in a program called the Veterinary Internship and Residency Matching Program (VIRMP), known informally as “the Match.” The Match controls over 90% of all veterinary intern and resident positions in the United States. There is no real alternative.

A class action lawsuit filed on May 30, 2025, alleges that the institutions running and benefiting from the Match — for-profit hospital chains, private equity-backed veterinary companies, and some of the most well-endowed universities in America — used that monopoly power to construct an airtight wage-fixing conspiracy. The complaint, brought on behalf of Dr. Mete Ender Tuncay and more than 5,500 other veterinary workers, accuses them all of violating Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act: the foundational federal law that prohibits corporations from conspiring to rig markets.

The alleged mechanism is elegant in its cruelty. Employers enter their positions into the VIRMP database. A computer algorithm matches applicants to jobs. On “Match Day” each March, workers learn their fate. They receive one offer. They must accept it. They cannot negotiate. They cannot go elsewhere. And if they break the rules, they are banned from the entire system for at least three years — effectively ending their career before it begins.

The Players: From Ivy League to Private Equity

The defendant list reads like a who’s-who of institutional power in American veterinary medicine. On the for-profit side: VCA Animal Hospitals, which Mars Inc. purchased for $9.1 billion ($9.1 billion — more than the GDP of several small nations, and roughly what 60,000 average American households earn over an entire lifetime) in 2017. Ethos Veterinary Health, acquired by private equity giant JAB Consumer Partners for $1.65 billion ($1.65 billion — enough to pay every veterinary intern in the class for roughly 300 years at their alleged suppressed salaries). Thrive Pet Healthcare, owned by private equity firm TSG Consumer. And MedVet Associates, operating over 35 locations across 17 states.

On the academic side: the University of Pennsylvania with a $20.5 billion endowment ($20.5 billion — enough to pay every veterinary intern and resident in America their suppressed salary for over 700 years). Cornell University with a $10.7 billion endowment ($10.7 billion — enough to fund the entire U.S. federal nutrition assistance program for nearly two months). Ohio State University with a $7.9 billion endowment ($7.9 billion — more than many countries spend on public education annually). Tufts University with $2.6 billion. And the University of Florida with $2.4 billion.

These are institutions with more money than most people can comprehend. The lawsuit says they coordinated to pay veterinary workers below McDonald’s wages.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Can’t Quantify

The lawsuit lists the numbers, but numbers don’t get at what it actually means to arrive at your first job as a trained doctor — carrying $178,585 ($178,585 — equal to the average American worker’s salary for roughly 3.5 years) in student debt — and discover that the system has already decided what your labor is worth, and that you have no say in the matter. You ranked your preferences. A computer made your choice. You signed a contract before you knew the offer. You will not negotiate. You will report to work and you will be grateful.

The lawsuit describes interns and residents working 11 to 13 hour weekdays on average, with some specialties demanding 14 or more hours. Nearly half also work weekends, often six hours or more per shift. This is not the life advertised in veterinary school brochures. This is a conveyor belt, running seven days a week, staffed by people who spent their twenties and early thirties accumulating debt and credentials, funneled into a system that the complaint says was deliberately designed to deny them the power to demand better.

The mental health toll described in the complaint is staggering. Veterinary interns and residents experience unusually high rates of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidal ideation. The complaint draws a direct connection between the workload demands, the financial insecurity, and these outcomes. This is not a coincidence of individual circumstance. These are the predictable consequences of a system that extracts maximum labor for minimum pay from workers who have no exit.

The Match Program’s structure makes the betrayal institutional. These workers are not casual hires. They are doctors. Many of them completed four years of undergraduate education and four years of veterinary school, then borrowed money they will spend the next decade repaying. They chose a career in healing. They followed every rule, hit every benchmark, and earned every credential the system told them they needed. And then they entered the Match Program and discovered that the same institutions that trained them — Penn, Tufts, Cornell, Ohio State, University of Florida — were allegedly sitting on the other side of the table, sharing salary data with each other and issuing “guidance” calibrated to keep pay as low as possible.

That guidance is documented. In 2022, the Match Program published salary guidelines that included a suggested “living wage” of $15 per hour as a reference point. The complaint says that after 2022, average salaries for interns and residents clustered around that figure — precisely what you would expect if employers were using the guidance as a ceiling rather than a floor. The institutions that trained these workers turned around and used coordinated data to ensure those same workers could not earn a competitive wage anywhere in their field. The complaint frames this as a horizontal conspiracy among competitors. In plain language: they colluded.

The Mechanism: How a “Matching Program” Became a Wage Trap

Step One: Lock Out the Exits

The Match Program was established in 1978. For decades it grew quietly, until it now controls roughly 90% of the veterinary internship and residency market. Institutions that participate must sign “Institution Terms of Service.” Workers must sign “Applicant Terms of Service.” Both sets of terms prohibit negotiation. The institution cannot make offers. The applicant cannot negotiate. Neither party can communicate about pay before Match Day. Violate the rules, and you are banned for at least three years.

A three-year ban from the Match Program is, in practice, a career death sentence for anyone pursuing veterinary specialization. Residencies require internships. Board certification requires residencies. Board certification is the only formal route to practicing as a specialist. The system has one door, and the defendants control the lock. The complaint argues that because “veterinary school graduates seeking to become specialists are effectively forced to participate in the Match Program,” the wage-fixing conspiracy faces essentially zero resistance from the workforce it exploits.

Step Two: Share the Data, Set the Ceiling

Participating institutions do more than just run the algorithm. They share detailed salary information with the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC), which then analyzes the data and publishes highly specific salary benchmarks broken down by geographic location and practice area. The AAVMC’s annual revenue in 2023 was $7.69 million ($7.69 million — enough to give every veterinary intern a $1,400 bonus). The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), which reported $49.5 million in 2022 revenue ($49.5 million — more than the combined annual salaries of over 1,700 veterinary interns), also participates in shaping policy and guidance for the program.

The complaint identifies this data sharing as a second, reinforcing layer of the conspiracy. When everyone knows what everyone else is paying, and when workers cannot negotiate anyway, there is no competitive pressure to pay more. Employers can set salaries at or near the guidance figure and know with certainty that applicants have nowhere else to go. The complaint says this is precisely what happened after the Match Program issued its 2022 salary guidance citing $15/hour as a “living wage” example: intern and resident salaries clustered around that figure, not above it.

Step Three: Make Compliance the Only Option

The Match Program’s website states the rule plainly, with no ambiguity: “Neither [applicants nor institutions] may negotiate inside or outside the matching program until the match results have been announced. Doing so is a violation of VIRMP rules and will result in a sanction.” This is not a guideline. It is a binding contractual obligation backed by a multi-year ban. The complaint notes that this structure “effectively eliminates all negotiation after match results are released” — and also before them.

Institutions also pay $100 per position submitted to the Match Program each year. The complaint makes a sharp observation about that fee: no employer would pay to participate in a system that doesn’t deliver value. The value the Match delivers to employers is not a streamlined hiring process. The value is the elimination of wage competition. The complaint argues that paying to participate in the Match is, itself, evidence that the employers know exactly what they are buying.

Legal Receipts: The Documents That Don’t Lie

“Defendants are for-profit veterinary practices and companies, veterinary teaching institutions, and veterinary associations that have engaged in a long-standing, nationwide conspiracy to depress compensation for veterinary interns and residents.” — Class Action Complaint, §1

“Veterinary resident and intern salaries are approximately half the national average earned by new veterinary school graduates, and when examined on an hourly basis, often do not even constitute a living wage.” — Class Action Complaint, §62

“Neither [applicants nor institutions] may negotiate inside or outside the matching program until the match results have been announced. Doing so is a violation of VIRMP rules and will result in a sanction.” — Match Program Terms of Service, quoted in Class Action Complaint, §51

“After 2022, average salaries for interns and residents clustered around the ‘living wage’ example offered in the Match Program’s 2022 guidance. On information and belief, Defendants exchange this salary information in furtherance of their conspiracy to suppress resident and intern compensation.” — Class Action Complaint, §55

“A study published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association found that typical work weeks for interns and residents exceeded 60 hours, meaning the average intern and resident are earning only approximately $9.09 and $11.25 per hour in the 2020-2021 training year. By contrast, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the median hourly wage for fast food and counter workers in 2021 was $12.07.” — Class Action Complaint, §69

“92% of internship programs and 87% of residency programs paid below an hourly living wage when considering average hours worked against annual salary.” — Class Action Complaint, §69, citing Morello, JAVMA 261:758 (2023)

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health

The public health consequences of this alleged conspiracy operate on two tracks simultaneously: the workers, and the animals they treat. On the worker side, the complaint is explicit. Veterinary interns and residents “experience unusually high rates of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidal ideation, often associated with workload demands and financial insecurity.” These are not vague wellness concerns. These are clinical diagnoses appearing in a population of educated, motivated young professionals who chose a career in care and found themselves trapped in a system designed to deny them financial security.

The financial insecurity is not incidental to the mental health crisis; it is causal. An intern earning $28,372 per year ($28,372 — less than what the average American spends on housing, food, and transportation combined) while carrying $178,585 in student debt is not simply “stressed.” That person is in financial crisis. Add 60+ hour weeks with no bargaining power, no exit, and no timeline for improvement, and the mental health outcomes described in the complaint become entirely predictable. The conspiracy, if proven, created these conditions deliberately.

On the animal care side, the systemic devaluation of veterinary specialist training threatens the long-term pipeline of qualified specialists. When the career path to veterinary specialization is characterized by poverty wages, crushing debt, documented mental health crises, and institutional exploitation, fewer talented people will pursue it. The animals that depend on specialist care — and the families who love them — ultimately bear part of this cost.

Economic Inequality

The economic inequality angle here is particularly sharp because the defendants include some of the most financially powerful educational institutions in America, all allegedly coordinating to keep the workers they train and employ as poor as possible. The University of Pennsylvania sits on a $20.5 billion endowment ($20.5 billion — more than the GDP of Iceland). Cornell’s endowment stands at $10.7 billion ($10.7 billion — enough to give every veterinary intern in America a $100,000 raise for over a century). Ohio State holds $7.9 billion ($7.9 billion — enough to eliminate the student debt of over 44,000 veterinary graduates at the mean debt load). These institutions are not struggling to pay competitive wages. They are choosing not to.

The private equity dimension adds another layer of wealth extraction. VCA was purchased for $9.1 billion ($9.1 billion — more than the entire veterinary industry labor pool could earn in decades at suppressed wages). Ethos changed hands for $1.65 billion ($1.65 billion — enough to pay every veterinary intern in the proposed class their full suppressed annual salary for over 290 years). These buyouts returned enormous profits to investors while the workers doing the actual medical labor earned below fast food wages. Private equity entered veterinary medicine specifically to extract margin — and the Match Program allegedly handed them a ready-made labor suppression tool to do it.

The complaint makes an observation with enormous implications for economic justice: new veterinary graduates who skip the Match Program and go directly into private practice earn a mean salary of $125,416 per year ($125,416 — roughly 4.4 times what a veterinary intern earns). There is no antitrust match process for those jobs. The wage gap between matched and unmatched positions is, the lawsuit argues, direct evidence of how much the conspiracy costs workers. The difference between a competitive wage and the Match-suppressed wage is not tens of dollars. For interns, it is nearly $100,000 per year.

This is a story about who gets to benefit from a decade of professional sacrifice. The defendants collected tuition, collected residency fees, collected private equity returns, and collected the labor of some of the most trained workers in American medicine — all while allegedly ensuring those workers could not bargain their way into a living wage.