Schools War with Money and Prestige
Caribbean medical schools have long been decried as diploma mills for the rich and undeserving; they are strictly for-profit institutions serving American kids rejected by U.S. medical schools, yet they rely on hospitals in the U.S. to provide the necessary clinical experience in the third and fourth years of a medical education. Of late, however, efforts have been afoot in New York City to preserve the limited space available in hospitals for those studying at American schools. But how is it possible for foreign medical schools to threaten turf belonging to American ones?
Because Caribbean medical schools are first and foremost businesses, they take just about anyone able to pay, especially those rejected by more prestigious American schools. Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, for example, has the likes of investment banker Sanford I. Weill to real estate developer Isaac Toussie with all their money, reducing costs to around forty-five thousand dollars a year. In contrast, a Caribbean medical school can charge as much as sixty thousand dollars!
And with so much money available, it’s no wonder that Caribbean schools can easily pay New York hospitals to let in their students – and no wonder, what’s more, the movement to restrict such access to American schools, which otherwise lose out.
Thus the turf war.
Traditionally, what hospitals do is mentor medical students in exchange for using the school’s prestige. Caribbean medicals schools have no brand name to offer, but they do have several tens of millions of dollars to pump into a hospital’s coffers, in effect paying for their students to be placed.
And what hospital administration could possibly refuse such funds, particularly with this economy?