MD & DO Online medical school (Didactics only)

[de Ribas]

Getting back on track here, I’m not saying make tuition 0 for the first 2 years, obviously that wouldn’t work. Just shift it accordingly. It doesn’t cost 50k+ A year to learn basic sciences... For the clinical years, sure I get it. There are a lot of pockets that need greasing.
I’m surprised the government is basically writing blank checks to these schools. Aren’t they like over a trillion in debt? Once **** hits the fan, the golden goose ain’t gonna be laying eggs no more and that sucks for the people who need to finish their education.
Example: CCOM charges 70k per student (tuition only btw) with a class of 200. That’s 14mill a year in tuition only. Drop in the bucket for big brother but quite the nest egg for others...

We could make even a better case for undergrad institutions. Some undergrad schools have higher tuition and COA then most state med schools. My HS buddy went to undergrad with COA of ~60k/yr.

I agree that pre-clinical years do not cost ~40k just for lectures alone, but there are other resources students use during those 2 years. Plus, that 40k pays for library place and resources, people taking care of the facilities, administration, utilities, wellness center (if you have one), labs, clinical exposure or SIM, SIM patients, exam software and support, IT support, etc. There is a lot more we can list that is paid by our tuition.

Unless we get rid of physical med school completely for the first 2 years, I dont see how we can really unjustify tuition for the first 2 years. Even if you study on your own somehow through other resources and do board prep on your own, you would have to pay for all the tests and support that comes with it. And then go straight into clinical years. But again, you need the school and its support for rotation spots.

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[nimbus]

ive never heard of a school where med students do not complain. it is a favorite pastime at my school.

Indeed. As a med student, it's your job to complain!

Gotta start early and practice, practice, practice. How else would doctors become the world class complainers that we are?

 

[Med Ed]

Getting back on track here, I’m not saying make tuition 0 for the first 2 years, obviously that wouldn’t work. Just shift it accordingly. It doesn’t cost 50k+ A year to learn basic sciences... For the clinical years, sure I get it. There are a lot of pockets that need greasing.

I suggest you become a dean someday. One of the perks is getting to choose the hill you die on.

 

[libertyyne]

What a wild time it would be to see an apprenticeship model for medical school. For the first preclinical years there could be alternative ways of obtaining tuition dollars from students, like fee's for administrative costs related to tracking USMLE progresss, to access the library, to obtain basic materials, to get access to skill labs and SPs.

Arent there already 3 year MD programs, so it must be sustainable or close to it.

 

[SouthernGent]

I Choose the hill you die on.

The number of times I have heard this uttered by someone relative to students who argue every point...

 

[chemphysicsinstructor]

Flipped classroom is literally a symptom of schools trying to justify their tuition and the "superiority of their curriculum."

I would recommend reading journal articles on medical education since the "flipped classroom" approach may actually give better learning outcomes.

 

[ooh a bean]

I would recommend reading journal articles on medical education since the "flipped classroom" approach may actually give better learning outcomes.

I would recommend sitting in on an actual medical school flipped classroom and see how useless it is yourself in person.

 

[chemphysicsinstructor]

I would recommend sitting in on an actual medical school flipped classroom and see how useless it is yourself in person.

I would do that if I had more time...

 

[LongLiveThanos]

It wouldn't be bad to centralize medical education through online lectures and reinforce them through group activities.

 

[DOCMARTIN95]

I would recommend sitting in on an actual medical school flipped classroom and see how useless it is yourself in person.

I second this. As a person who has experienced the horrors of flipped classroom first hand, I would not recommend

 

[Deecee2DO]

Even better idea. Have no "preclinical curriculum". Just have students take STEP 1 as their entrance exam then apply to the last two years of medical school.

That sounds like overkill. Taking step as an undergrad? I know I barely have a life now but I once had one and it was nice especially in my late teens and early twenties lol I get the whole switching to online med school idea though I basically do that now and pay a ton for it. I never go to class like ever even OMM lab (im supposed to and its going to affect my grade but idc) and anatomy lab since it gives me time to study for the courses that require the most time for me

 

[Obnoxious Dad]

Based on the data published by AACOM it appears that medical schools like Marian in Indiana, which perform zero research or community service, can inefficiently crank out clinicians at a cost of about $25,000 per student per year. If medical education adopted a hyper efficient model, I would wager that it would be more like $18,000 per student per year.

https://www.aacom.org/docs/default-source/data-and-trends/fy2016-revenues-and-expenditures-by-osteopathic-medical-college.pdf?sfvrsn=fa392597_10

There is simply no rational reason to force medical students to pay the freight for unfunded preclinical teachers, policy analysts, scholarships for some but not for all, care for the indigent etc. However, students bear these costs because they are faced with a "take it or leave it" proposition and they take it.

 

[Obnoxious Dad]

What even is this thread?

Y'all are sorely mistaken if you think the med school professors during the first two years have anything at all to do with your tuition. That is almost all related to your clinical rotations. People who give lectures in the basic science portion of your curriculum are either tenured professors who do it out of the goodness of their heart on top of all of the research/clinical work they do because they love to teach, or are junior faculty who are roped into doing it because nobody else wants to.

You're just wrong if you think you could get the same education from imaging as you could from anatomy. You wouldn't ask a radiologist to do surgery on you, right? And not everyone is going to be a surgeon, but an MD is still a general medical degree so you need the basics.

Yeah a lot of the basic sciences can probably be turned into recorded lectures, which probably is more convenient for professors anyways. But I really don't see this saving you lots of money, or profs losing jobs.

Let's see the independent, reviewed cost accounting studies proving that four years of medical school tuition are required to finance years three and four of medical school. Even if that were true (and I don't believe it for a nanosecond) it would still be irrational for the schools to hire and pay professors for the preclinical years when the students could watch canned streaming video and read canned outlines prepared efficiently in the private market..

One basic problem in American medicine is a complete lack of cost transparency. It's true of medical billing and it's true of medical education.

In the most recent match 4,224 non US IMGs matched into American medical residencies. Do you think that medical students in Poland are paying $300,000 for a medical degree? If its cheap in other countries that qualify their graduates for American medical residencies, why isn't it cheap here? It's expensive here because the number of American medical school seats has been artificially constrained and the medical schools can demand these ridiculous prices.

 

[afib123]

Let's see the independent, reviewed cost accounting studies proving that four years of medical school tuition are required to finance years three and four of medical school. Even if that were true (and I don't believe it for a nanosecond) it would still be irrational for the schools to hire and pay professors for the preclinical years when the students could watch canned streaming video and read canned outlines prepared efficiently in the private market..

One basic problem in American medicine is a complete lack of cost transparency. It's true of medical billing and it's true of medical education.

In the most recent match 4,224 non US IMGs matched into American medical residencies. Do you think that medical students in Poland are paying $300,000 for a medical degree? If its cheap in other countries that qualify their graduates for American medical residencies, why isn't it cheap here? It's expensive here because the number of American medical school seats has been artificially constrained and the medical schools can demand these ridiculous prices.

It does surprise me that when you provide actual facts, no one counters those. I have seen that in few threads where you post these shocking numbers and no one says anything to it.

 

[Goro]

It does surprise me that when you provide actual facts, no one counters those. I have seen that in few threads where you post these shocking numbers and no one says anything to it.

That's because it's a waste of time arguing with him. When you challenge him with actual data, he simply moves the goal posts then complains about ad hominem attacks.

BTW, most FMGs (IMGs are taken to be US citizens gone overseqas, especially the Carib) tend to come from some of the best med schools in the world, like Aga Khan, Oxford, Heidelberg etc.

 

[Obnoxious Dad]

That's because it's a waste of time arguing with him. When you challenge him with actual data, he simply moves the goal posts then complains about ad hominem attacks.

BTW, most FMGs (IMGs are taken to be US citizens gone overseqas, especially the Carib) tend to come from some of the best med schools in the world, like Aga Khan, Oxford, Heidelberg etc.

Can you cite any reports published by independent third parties showing how many residents in U.S. programs come from each foreign medical school? I have looked at the rosters of current residents at lots of programs and I have never seen one resident from Oxford or Heidelberg. Perhaps you saw a resident with a shaving cut and thought he acquired a fencing scar while studying at Heidelberg. Most of the Non-US IMGs that I have seen come from the Indian subcontinent, other parts of Asia or Latin America. I am sure they are all nice people and smart as whips but they didn't pay $300 grand for tuition. Here's the current roster of Internal Medicine residents at Western Michigan.

Residents | WMed

www.med.wmich.edu

See anybody from Jolly Old England?

It still hasn't been explained to me how Marian in the 2016 academic year made a profit of 41 cents for every tuition dollar it took in. Here's that cite again: https://www.aacom.org/docs/default-...pathic-medical-college.pdf?sfvrsn=fa392597_10

 

[Obnoxious Dad]

It does surprise me that when you provide actual facts, no one counters those. I have seen that in few threads where you post these shocking numbers and no one says anything to it.

They don't refute the numbers head on because they can't.

 

[GoSpursGo]

Let's see the independent, reviewed cost accounting studies proving that four years of medical school tuition are required to finance years three and four of medical school. Even if that were true (and I don't believe it for a nanosecond) it would still be irrational for the schools to hire and pay professors for the preclinical years when the students could watch canned streaming video and read canned outlines prepared efficiently in the private market..

One basic problem in American medicine is a complete lack of cost transparency. It's true of medical billing and it's true of medical education.

In the most recent match 4,224 non US IMGs matched into American medical residencies. Do you think that medical students in Poland are paying $300,000 for a medical degree? If its cheap in other countries that qualify their graduates for American medical residencies, why isn't it cheap here? It's expensive here because the number of American medical school seats has been artificially constrained and the medical schools can demand these ridiculous prices.

As I said, very few professors are there only to teach preclinical years. Most, except maybe for your anatomy prof and a handful of others, also do research to justify their job. The rest of your post isn't really relevant to this thread about the importance of an in person vs online preclinical curriculum, you just decided to shoehorn in one of your pet soapbox issues since it's tangentially related--I was not saying the cost of med school is necessarily justified, just that the cost has little to do with those preclinical years.

 

[Obnoxious Dad]

100 percent. Reduce the cost of medical school to a fraction of what it is now and make it all online. This ridiculous flipped classroom or whatever was brought on to prevent this from happening and keeping med school costs high.

I don't see the point of your post or what it contributes to the conversation. Gunners come in all shapes, sizes and forms. I'm sure there are gunners at allo and osteo schools that like going to class. As I've stated I go to a school with allopatric students so I know plenty of allo gunners that swear going to lecture. Sitting in front. And asking every question on their mind. Lets not ruin this thread into a medical school vs podiatry school.

Let us all come together and bond on how draining and expensive the didactic years are lol.

As I said, very few professors are there only to teach preclinical years. Most, except maybe for your anatomy prof and a handful of others, also do research to justify their job. The rest of your post isn't really relevant to this thread about the importance of an in person vs online preclinical curriculum, you just decided to shoehorn in one of your pet soapbox issues since it's tangentially related--I was not saying the cost of med school is necessarily justified, just that the cost has little to do with those preclinical years.

Really? My post isn't relevant to this thread. It appears that other posters, who are actually footing the bill for this nonsense, agree that tuition is preposterously high and utterly unjustified.

 

[GoSpursGo]

Really? My post isn't relevant to this thread. It appears that other posters, who are actually footing the bill for this nonsense, agree that tuition is preposterously high and utterly unjustified.

Go back and read the title of the thread and the original post. The question posed was whether the first two years could be transitioned to completely online. I don't think they can be--that's just my opinion, though I do think they could be shortened to 1.5 or even 1 year.

The thread then kind of went off on a tangent about how much medical education costs, and specifically how the OP's proposal would decrease costs. If lowering the cost that is your goal, I stand by my opinion that the OP's proposal wouldn't change much.

Finally, I'm not sure what you mean by "other posters, who are actually footing the bill for this nonsense." I graduated in the last decade, am still in training, and don't know when I'm going to get my first attending paycheck. So it is offensive to me that you seem to believe that anyone who disagrees with you is automatically somehow out of touch with current medical students and the cost of medical education--I feel that cost very acutely. While you and I fundamentally agree that the cost of medical education is too high, we can rationally disagree on the value of the basic science curriculum.