Bill Targets Caribbean Medical School With Eye on Texas
For more than a year, a foreign medical school has been seeking approval to operate in Texas, and its controversial bid has overcome a number of roadblocks. This legislative session, a recently filed bill will put it to one more high-stakes test.
What the American University of the Caribbean, a for-profit medical school owned by DeVry Inc., wants is a certificate of authority from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. This would allow it to send some Texas students back to their home state to complete their third and fourth years of medical school, which consist of clerkships and clinical ...
Comments (3)
audrey fisher
An odd confluence of event's:
The GOV has stated that the newest State backed medical schools should not be built until there is a need, aka, it is a supply / demand issue. And at the same time - it appears that some are saying that we can outsource this training.
Resident's of TX - do we know that the cost of this proposed private education and how much this is better / worse than having students stay in the US. Does anyone know if the education at AUC is compatible with US medical schools.
The TX Legislature has several bills that have called for radical educational equivalency - meaning that if all the courses taken have the same "numbering" that they should be considered "equal". That should be a cause for concern - as some of the private higher ed schools don't even offer degrees, but instead "letters of certification".
It appears that TX is attempting to dumb down higher education to the "least common denominator" rather than to have high quality.
Sadly, it also appears that TX legislature sole focus for higher education is all about "the benjamins" .
Chris Struve
@Audrey
If you would bother to educate yourself with freely available data then you would know that every doctor in the US regardless of where they attended school has to take the same tests. In fact those licensing tests currently show that AUC students perform at the same level as US students. Not surprising since 95% of them are US citizens and most of us work far harder for what we get then our US medical school brethren. We also financially support the programs we attend unlike US medical students where the all their tuition goes to feed growing university employee wages...
As someone who grew up in the state and who would consider returning home I am actually appalled at TX, which is one of only 3 states in the US that blanket denies AUC access to even try to get clinical spots (the others being PA and NJ).
As a former West Point grad I would have qualified for free in-state tuition at a Texas school but would have had to wait almost 2 years to get in. Instead I opted to start immediately so I could start my new career that much quicker (and pay for my kids eminent college costs). Other areas in the country (or the Army for that matter) will give me upwards of $300K to come there when I am done so the school cost is covered. This is what TX is competing against. If the state hadn't changed your medical malpractice laws the state would have remained a medically under-served market. Let me guess you have some skin in this game? I know I do.
Chris, one of those "dumb downed" AUC students as you will see below
BS, West Point (the most selective school in the world the year I attended)
MBA, University of Michigan (#2 business school in the world according to BusinessWeek the year I was accepted)
Chris Struve
Oh I forgot one :)
MD, AUC (2014)