INDUSTRY

DSOs are heading back to campus

The hygienist you’ll want to hire tomorrow may not have graduated yet, so naturally now is the perfect time to start recruiting them. 

What’s happening: DSOs are responding to the hiring crunch in dentistry by investing directly in the schools producing tomorrow's clinical workforce, well before the competition can call them about an opening. 

• The largest operators like Heartland and Aspen are in the mix, but smaller DSOs are also engaging with local dental schools, like Mortenson Dental Partners, which donated a Gemini EVO diode laser to the University of Louisville's dental hygiene program.
  

• Peer-reviewed research supports the effectiveness of these partnerships. A paper published in the Journal of Dental Education found that by involving DSOs in its community-based clinical education program, UCLA’s School of Dentistry “strengthened its financial accountability while also delivering on the goal of enhancing dental education and improving access to care for vulnerable populations.”

Go deeper: These deals fall typically into three broad models, each with different capital commitments and payoff windows: 

• Co-branded campuses. One example of this: Heartland Dental and Concorde Career Colleges’ Fort Myers campus. It was announced in 2024 with funding from Heartland to train up to 190 hygienists and assistants annually. Heartland has already hired 325 Concorde hygiene graduates.
  

• Externship-to-hire programs at dental schools. Aspen Dental's Community Based Clinical Education program is an example of this model. It runs across five dental schools, including UCLA, Michigan, and Washington, with plans to add four more in 2025. More than 148 students have completed the program, and Aspen reports roughly 10% accept jobs.
  

• Scholarships, equipment, and endowed schools. The Pacific Dental Services Foundation has awarded more than $2 million to more than 320 dental assistant students at over 120 schools since 2016. Heartland founder Rick Workman gave $32 million through his foundation to launch High Point University's Workman School of Dental Medicine, which opened its inaugural class in fall 2024 as North Carolina's only private dental school.

Why it matters: Recruitment needs to go beyond writing bigger signing bonuses, especially when all your competitors are doing the same thing. Funding the schools that produce future hygienists, assistants, and dentists creates a moat that compounds, with graduates training on your equipment, in your culture, and with your operators.

What you can do now: If you’re considering experimenting with academic partnerships, here are a few tips to keep in mind:

• Start at the hygiene/assistant tier. The shortage is sharpest there and the ROI is fastest. A scholarship endowment or equipment donation at a local community college program could outperform the same dollar spent on broader recruiting.
  

• Build a program with one regional dental school and measure results. Identify a faculty champion, set a hire-conversion benchmark, and budget for several years before reading results.
  

• Look at newer dental schools first. Programs opened more recently tend to face more faculty shortages and have less institutional resistance to industry partnerships than legacy schools with deeper alumni networks.

Bottom line: If you want to give yourself a leg-up over other DSOs in the war for talent, helping  train the talent in the first place is not a bad place to start.