If its a US citizen, then purely for the MD title and nothing more even though it isn't truly an MD rather an MBBS...
The majority of the Caribbean schools confer an "MD" degree. For countries without major medical education systems in place (and even in countries with such systems) the schools can confer the degree they wish, provided its recognized. Since these schools primarily target US students, they chose to confer the MD degree, which makes sense. It should be known though that MD degrees were not created equal, and an MD degree from the US, which is accepted virtually everywhere internationally, is very different from a Carib MD, which is simply not recognized in many countries. In any case, an MBBS is identical to an MD degree just as they are both identical to an MBChB, BMBS, etc.
Up until recently, Canadians were better off going to say a school like Saba where they could get federal loans and pay a little over $100k for the entire tuition there. Now the AOA and COA has done a lot in Canada to make the DO degree easier to transition, which is bringing more Canadians to bordering US DO schools like MSUCOM.
Also in terms of going God knows where for rotations, a lot of DO students have to do that too. If we are talking about the Carib schools outside of the big4 + AUA, I don't even know how they get rotations.
I'm honestly amazed that tuition is so low at those schools. After getting down with these DO school numbers, that sounds pretty nice.
But I guess they have to keep tuition low if milk costs like $8 a gallon. Taking interest into account, that's some expensive milk.
Tuition is only really low at the less accredited schools, because they aren't eligible for federal loans. There's something like 40-50 Carib MD schools. One guy I know is at one I've barely heard of and is paying $6k a semester, but he also won't be able to practice in 13 states when he comes back (he's in rotations now).
As of right now, of the 5 Carib MD schools that actually are accredited across all 50 states, I believe only Ross, AUC, and SGU are eligible for federal loans. Otherwise people are either paying out of pocket or paying with private loans with variable rates. Ross and AUC cost a bit more tuition-wise than the DO school I attend and SGU costs double ($30k per term, so $60k per year).
As is obvious, DO is the way to go if you have the choice. That was the case even in 2008, and its even more so now given the residency and legal climate.
