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While I agree with a portion of your post, the first sentence is problematic because if they loosened the standards of admission because it was "unfair", just what do you think they will do with the boards or schools if a disproportionate number cannot pass?
Loosen standards again because the process must be racist?
Where do you start to recognize that the problem may be far downstream, still due to historic racism where the family environment is not good and education is not a focus? That the pool of candidates may actually just not be prepared and that the filtering process is not the problem and cannot be fixed with shortcuts?
I agree, the problem is further down stream. The Democrats are going back to the days of slavery by lowering the school standards, grading and testing because these things are racist. In the days of slavery it was illegal to educate a slave because knowing how to read and write is deemed to be dangerous by the Democrats. An educated slave might start to question and demand more.
The Democrat party seems content to keep the Black folk perpetually oppressed by the white supremacist Republicans and Big business because when you are oppressed you are more easily controlled.
Education is the key to get oneself out of "the hood" because sports and rap only work for a lucky and skilled few.
I think this is where Obama and currently BLM have let down "their" People. Instead of challenging them they allowed them to make excuses for their failures while blaming outside forces like racism.
It is such a shame because Black people are just as smart as any other race but giving them shortcuts and lowering the standards to ensure they are included is not the answer. They need to be challenged.
It is such a shame the Democrats either want to keep them down or they don't think they can handle the same work load as other students.
If they pass their boards and are well trained I don’t see a problem.
Not every doctor needs to be a genius to do a good job.
Different skills are needed for different specialties. Some require more strength and stamina, some greater artistic abilities, some must have a bedside manner and many need to have business sense.
The problem is they should be taking the most qualified people possible.I don't care what race they are.We don't need standards being lowered and we don't need to enact racist policies to admit lower candidates.
My primary care doctor is black.The surgeon who took out my appendix was a Hispanic woman.A dentist who removed 2 of my wisdom teeth last week is Asian.My old dentist who retired just prior to covid is white.
We don't need to lower standards in this country.Medical care is bad enough.We need to raise them.
Is it well documented for medical schools? I’ve never seen that stat.
And not actuarial exams as you must know as a “math guy”. I had to study my butt off and still didn’t pass some of them.
The other guy is correct. Per medical school, engineering grad school etc. Those admitted with lower metrics regardless of race, sex, etc. perform worse and fail more others.
AAMC has data on all this by race, sex etc. going back many years.
Sorry nit-pick a little. Some of that is overstated.
Per your comments:
1. Work life - stipulated at least early career......medical school and residency are brutal no two ways about it. However, many docs. once licensed work 25-35 hours per week. IIRC a Medscape survey indicated the average practicing doc. works 51 hours per week, excluding part timers - that's not crazy.
1.1. When my son, he's a neurosurgery resident, was in college he attended a speech/talk given by a neurosurgeon from Houston. The guy opened with something like this, "I made $955,000 last year......anyone going into medicine for the money is a fool if medicine isn't a calling do anything else."
2. So far as big hospital groups dominating that's very much state and even city specific and specialty specific as well. Texas has numerous doc. owned practices. However, Dallas has more of that than Houston - Houston's medical scene being dominated by TMC. FE there are several doc. owned neurology partnerships/practices in DFW....in Houston the overwhelming majority of neurologists are fully or mostly hospital staff. Texas Oncology has something like 450 partners and 50 or 60 rising partners etc.
3. Per your 10% vs. 3% comment. Among all college grads those at the 90th percentile have practically no shot at medical school. Among STEM students those at the 90th percentile have a better but still limited shot. The fact is only top students are able to earn excellent grades in the majors well represented or the prerequisites required for medical school admission and score enough well on the MCAT and gather all the volunteer and leadership bits generally required. Keep in mind the bare minimum prerequisites are typically - 8 hrs. bio + lab, physics, calculus, and 4 chemistry/bio chemistry classes including o-chem and either o-chem II or analytical chem. etc.
I'd wager 95-97% of all college graduates would be decimated by MCAT test. What percentage of college students do you believe are capable of earnings mostly in o-chem 1 let alone o-chem II and analytical chem.?
4. Per your risk reward comment. My son always knew he wanted to become a doc. One of his best HS friends is literally a genius per IQ scores graduating Stanford's combined ME+robotics UG+masters program. This young man has worked for three startups that have each gone bust over a six-ish year span....his potential millions turned into nothing and he worked like a servant for artisanal wages the entire time, long stretches for nothing. He now has a great software engineering gig with Google tho. I'm going to avoid specifics but my son has a job offer he will likely accept that would pay right at 4x what the other young man makes.
5. Medical school graduates do not simply decide which area they will go into.......most are coerced into areas stratified by/indicated by med. school grades/rank, USMLE results, rotational eval. scores and research accomplishments. .
6. There's a significant list of docs. who have valuable patents, copyrights and executive positions.
Your number 5 needs to be emphasized and repeated.
If they pass their boards and are well trained I don’t see a problem.
Not every doctor needs to be a genius to do a good job.
Different skills are needed for different specialties. Some require more strength and stamina, some greater artistic abilities, some must have a bedside manner and many need to have business sense.
In an age where math is racist, where hard work, punctuality and "reliance on the scientific method" are examples of "whiteness."
Overnight? This was a 30 year process. I remember when the goal was to have minority kids finish highschool or get a GED, that was early 90's.
Now we are talking graduate school and medical school. That is significant improvement and not something that happened due to overnight standard changes or a change to a test from last year.
I think some people here just don't like the progress minority groups are making given statements like the one above.
Why are so many upset at minorities attempting to live the American dream? Why get mad when minorities do not want to be another statistic on the news, but want a better life for themselves and family?
We are talking about a very significant change in 1 year.
No one, at least that I know, is upset about minorities attempting to live the American dream. People are concerned that the many among the net new 1 year increase of blacks and Hispanics are not well qualified or at least less qualified as groups than the mean. And I guarantee you that is the case.
In medical schools they fail out? I don’t think so. Do you have a stat on that?
The problem is that we are discussing more recent standard changes to increase diversity....so that takes a number of years before the enrolees translate into graduates (or not). So what you are asking for is not cleanly available.
What is available though, are the enrollment numbers vs. completion numbers in the tables below which do show a racial disparity but I do not think it's fair to try to apply this to what is a newer situation but it does show notable differences.
My entire position is that we need to do more to fix imbalances and inequities EARLIER in the educational process so that we don't have to try to fudge things later on which can lead to more failure.
The problem is they should be taking the most qualified people possible.I don't care what race they are.We don't need standards being lowered and we don't need to enact racist policies to admit lower candidates.
My primary care doctor is black.The surgeon who took out my appendix was a Hispanic woman.A dentist who removed 2 of my wisdom teeth last week is Asian.My old dentist who retired just prior to covid is white.
We don't need to lower standards in this country.Medical care is bad enough.We need to raise them.
I think the difference is what constitutes “qualified.”
Keep in mind that most medical schools only accept something like 3-10% of applicants. It’s likely that other applicants who are near those very top percentiles will do fine. The problem we have now is that patients find themselves in situations where the providers in their area can’t relate to them. That results in the doctor having a problem obtaining an appropriate patient history and providing the right treatment. You can have the best scores in the world, but if you don’t have the right rapport with the patient to actually obtain the relevant information, treatment will suffer.
At this point, the worst students are weeded out in the match. I don’t see that changing. The students who aren’t going to cut it are still going to have trouble finding a match, with those slots going to the highest achieving foreign medical students. Medical school is still only one step in the process, and residency programs are not required to take people if they don’t feel they are qualified.
The problem is that we are discussing more recent standard changes to increase diversity....so that takes a number of years before the enrolees translate into graduates (or not). So what you are asking for is not cleanly available.
What is available though, are the enrollment numbers vs. completion numbers in the tables below which do show a racial disparity but I do not think it's fair to try to apply this to what is a newer situation but it does show notable differences.
My entire position is that we need to do more to fix imbalances and inequities EARLIER in the educational process so that we don't have to try to fudge things later on which can lead to more failure.
Thank you for posting those medical schools tables. I reviewed them visually and did not see the same result as you did. A lower completion rate for minorities did not jump out from those numbers. And we are both trained statisticians, am I missing something.
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