Here's the article by Kristin Consillio of Pacific Business News about HICDM.
Of note: check out what it will set you back to go there for one year.
Also, in the last paragraph, the Dean of the UH College of Medicine shares his opinion of HICP.
I hope it's OK to post this here. You have to be a registered user to read the article on the newspaper's website.
PRIVATE COMPANY PLANS HAWAII'S FIRST DENTAL SCHOOL
The same Nevada-based company that opened Hawaii's first pharmacy school in Kapolei last October plans to launch the state's first dental college next year.
Pacific Educational Services, dba Hawaii College of Pharmacy, is planning groundbreaking this fall on a 120,000-square-foot Hawaii College of Dental Medicine, set to be the corporation's flagship college in Kapolei.
The two colleges combined -- totaling nearly 300,000 square feet -- are estimated to cost more than $100 million. The financing structure hasn't been finalized but likely will include personal investors and donations and a partnership with the Maryl Group Inc., which along with another investor would pay some of the construction costs and lease it back to the college.
"Their first wish would be to own the project and to have a development person and contractor design build," said Robert Freeman, Maryl Group vice president of development. "But they understand that they may not be able to fund 100 percent of it."
Pacific Educational Services is negotiating to buy three acres and the Maryl Group is buying another three acres in Kapolei for the pharmacy and dental colleges. The company also has bid on another 21 acres in the same area for the dental college.
The company started last year as a new for-profit business, but recently applied to become a nonprofit corporation, which will oversee both schools as separate entities.
Because the company doesn't have a track record, it will be difficult to get accreditation and build a sizable student body. The pharmacy college has yet to gain accreditation from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy.
"The pharmacy college is well on its way toward accreditation," said the dental college's founding dean, Raymond Rawson, former director of dental programs in the University of Nevada System, who recently moved to Makakilo Heights.
The dental school expects its first students in September 2006 and already has 500 applicants, Rawson said.
"We'll be certified or accredited to accept up to 100 students when we open," he said, adding that the school won't accept students if accreditation isn't approved by the American Dental Association's Council on Dental Practice by the time the school opens. The company will apply for accreditation in October.
"A lot of colleges start without accreditation because that's the only way to really start up," he said. "For dental schools, it's not reasonable to start without accreditation because students are not able to take any state boards or practice anywhere if they graduate from an unaccredited college."
Rawson says there's another partnership in the works that would boost the school's credibility. Pacific Educational Services has offered a contract to Dentists Without Borders, an international volunteer organization that provides free dental care to the poor and indigent in rural and Third-World countries.
"They're very interested in working with us and willing to move their headquarters here," Rawson said. "We'll have a requirement for all students to do rotations in underserved areas worldwide."
Rawson admits that Hawaii doesn't need more dentists in an already saturated market, aside from its rural communities. However, he says a national need for dentists and future local dentists is what the proposed college is banking on.
"We graduate 4,300 dentists a year all over the country," he said. "That's about the same number we graduated 25 years ago."
Over the next four years, Pacific Educational Services plans to hire 100 part-time local dentists as faculty. In its first year, it intends to hire 35 faculty and already is preparing contracts for between eight and 10 local dentists. The company plans to hire about 10 percent of its faculty from the Mainland.
Student tuition is set for
$45,000 a year, among the highest in the country.
"A typical state school will charge $15,000 in tuition and gain the rest of that from the state, but we will not be asking for any state appropriations," Rawson said.
While the company has no official ties with the University of Hawaii, Rawson says UH faculty have indicated a willingness to work part-time to help the startup with some of the basic sciences.
Rawson says the proposed dental school will have first-class clinical facilities and the potential to generate millions in research grants and contracts for the state.
"There's tremendous research potential in DNA stem cell; the medicine of dentistry is a very hot field now," he said. "With any new project there's always concerns and people who are afraid of competition, but this is a tremendous opportunity. In a very short time we will develop leaders in dentistry. This isn't just a mediocre school that's going to start -- it's a first-class, impressive school coming together."
Others in the medical field are less optimistic about a new venture putting together a quality dental school.
"We don't believe they're putting a quality product together in the college of pharmacy realm, so we don't have any interest in partnering with them," said Sam Shomaker, UH John A. Burns School of Medicine interim dean. "We're not interested in dealing with any institutions that aren't accredited."
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