- Joined
- Jul 30, 2001
- Messages
- 823
- Reaction score
- 0
This article was from Forbes Magazine
Palm Tree M.D.s
Chana R. Schoenberger, Forbes Magazine
On a recent morning 200 medical students drowse as a professor flashes slides of bile ducts overhead. Biochemistry at 8:30 a.m. is a tough slog anywhere. But at Ross University School of Medicine, located on the tropical island of Dominica, the students have something else to sweat about: In the U.S. medical profession, where they aim to have careers, their diplomas won't be taken very seriously.
But the diploma is still worth something. It entitles the bearer who passes the same tough licensing exam that U.S. med students take, and who fights his or her way into a hospital residency, to practice medicine. And so it is that the vendor of these offshore diplomas is worth something. Last April the school's founder sold a majority stake in Ross and its sister institution, the Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine on nearby St. Kitts, for about $135 million. The chief buyer was Leeds Weld & Co., a New York private equity firm specializing in for-profit educational ventures. Ross' board includes former Massachusetts governor William Weld; onetime Lazard lawyer Jeffrey Leeds; Chairman Benno Schmidt Jr., a former president of Yale who is also chairman of Edison Schools; and Bill Clinton's first chief of staff, Thomas F. (Mack) McLarty III. These guys are making a fair go of busting up the American medical school cartel, which uses tight accreditation rules to restrict the supply of doctors. "The U.S. system is designed to limit access to medical education," says Ross Chief Executive Timothy Foster.
The establishment, predictably, is howling. Last May the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published an article attacking foreign schools like Ross, which aren't accredited by the American Medical Association's licensing boards. The other strike against Ross is that it's in business to make a buck. That conflicts with the public image projected by the medical profession: We're here to serve humanity. Hustle a dollar? Perish the thought.
Ross takes the quality challenge very seriously. It has to, considering its seedy origins. In 1978 grain trader Robert Ross convinced the government of Dominica, a lush, volcanic ex-British colony, to let him build a for-profit medical school catering to Americans whose MCAT scores didn't make the cut at any of the 125 U.S. medical schools. (Ross later gave himself an honorary doctorate from his own school.)
The students came to the oceanside campus. But behind the postcard scenery lay typical offshore problems. Failing a class used to mean repeating?and paying for?the entire semester. Admission standards were an oxymoron: Ross accepted 65% of all applicants, compared with 42% for U.S. schools, and never required the MCAT until last year. At one point the U.S. Department of Education flew in to investigate complaints by a teacher at a competitor school. (It took no action against Ross.)
These days the school attracts people who are hell-bent on being doctors, despite the disadvantages of the lowbrow Ross degree. Students seem to fall into two categories. Half are recent college grads who move to "The Rock" immediately after getting a stack of rejection letters. Jan Phillips, who wants to care for the elderly, graduated from Vanderbilt in 1998 and went home to Texas to get a master's in clinical gerontology. While working in a clinic at Baylor University's hospital, she applied to all the Texas medical schools. Phillips settled on Ross after she couldn't get in anywhere else.
Other students trade up from jobs in nursing, dentistry or other fields. Queens, N.Y. native Stacy Weiner was a physician's assistant for almost three years before deciding on an M.D. She bypassed U.S. schools altogether to avoid waiting two years while taking the MCAT and going through the application process.
Ross students take the standard U.S. medical school curriculum?but at an accelerated pace. The school has a three-semester year, allowing students to finish their four semesters of basic science quickly. After a fifth semester of early clinical training in Miami, Ross students do five semesters of clinical rotations in the U.S. at teaching hospitals in one of nine states, where they train alongside American med students.
No problem getting into Kern Medical Center, in Bakersfield, Calif., which can't lure enough med students from the affiliated University of California system to fill its program. A bit tougher to find a spot at New York University School of Medicine's top-notch Hospital for Joint Diseases, already flooded in the second half of the year with students who are trying to get into its orthopedic surgery residency program. To fill gaps in the first half, NYU takes a few Ross students each month, in return for a nominal administrative fee of $100 per pupil. None have become residents. How are the Ross students? "It's been variable," says Dr. Joseph Zuckerman, who heads the program. "Is it the same curve as students we see from other places? No."
It's up to Foster to get Ross student performance up to par. He once ran NovaCare Inc., a publicly traded outpatient rehabilitation firm based in King of Prussia, Pa., until sliding Medicare reimbursements spurred a fire sale in 1999. Weld, who was on the board of a NovaCare unit, hired Foster at Ross.
Foster is enforcing a new idea in academia: market forces. The 61 med school professors make an average of $60,000 to $90,000, with tax breaks on the first $75,000 for living outside the U.S. There's no tenure and, since they don't have to do research, they're paid on the basis of how well they teach. Pink slips are possible. Student evaluations and low exam scores have landed six profs on probation since last year.
With its reduced-stress tropical setting, Ross has drawn an eclectic faculty. Biochemist Gerhard Meisenberg, a 17-year veteran in colorful sandals who published a textbook while at Ross, wanted to live "far from Chicago." Julie Klotzbach, chairman of the pharmacology department, hated research and hoped to see her kids more often.
Foster is continuing to ratchet up academic performance. Two years ago Ross began requiring a school-administered "shelf exam" a semester before the compulsory U.S. Medical Licensing Exam Step 1 test, the first of three exams on the way to an M.D. Just half of Ross students pass the shelf exam the first time, 75% on the second go-round. Once they're allowed to take the Step 1, 82% to 94% pass on the first try. That's still shy of the 93% for U.S. medical students, but better than the 65% score for foreign med school grads as a whole. In last year's residency match, which assigns medical school seniors to a specialized training program in a U.S. hospital, 70% of Ross students got a spot, again besting overseas grads (52%), but falling short of U.S. medical school graduates (94%). Ross alumna Dr. Nancy Perri, the school's clinical dean, says 96% of graduates eventually find a program, some by negotiating directly with hospitals.
Is the school succeeding at its mission?making money, that is? Foster and his bosses say it is, but are mum on specifics. Here's some idea of what's on the profit and loss statement. Ross probably pulls in $58 million a year from tuition?$27,000 a year for three semesters for each of 2,100 students. Expenses at the two schools?including the costs of recruiting, a technology overhaul, road construction, hurricane and malpractice insurance (for students training in the U.S.) and overhead for the New York office?approach $50 million. Profit: probably less than $10 million, most of it reinvested in the school.
Ross has so far graduated 2,500-plus doctors who, in order to get certified, must pass a battery of exams, including the Test of English as a Foreign Language. Here's a test for the AMA: What does R-E-S-P-E-C-T spell?"
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2001/0514/090.html
Palm Tree M.D.s
Chana R. Schoenberger, Forbes Magazine
On a recent morning 200 medical students drowse as a professor flashes slides of bile ducts overhead. Biochemistry at 8:30 a.m. is a tough slog anywhere. But at Ross University School of Medicine, located on the tropical island of Dominica, the students have something else to sweat about: In the U.S. medical profession, where they aim to have careers, their diplomas won't be taken very seriously.
But the diploma is still worth something. It entitles the bearer who passes the same tough licensing exam that U.S. med students take, and who fights his or her way into a hospital residency, to practice medicine. And so it is that the vendor of these offshore diplomas is worth something. Last April the school's founder sold a majority stake in Ross and its sister institution, the Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine on nearby St. Kitts, for about $135 million. The chief buyer was Leeds Weld & Co., a New York private equity firm specializing in for-profit educational ventures. Ross' board includes former Massachusetts governor William Weld; onetime Lazard lawyer Jeffrey Leeds; Chairman Benno Schmidt Jr., a former president of Yale who is also chairman of Edison Schools; and Bill Clinton's first chief of staff, Thomas F. (Mack) McLarty III. These guys are making a fair go of busting up the American medical school cartel, which uses tight accreditation rules to restrict the supply of doctors. "The U.S. system is designed to limit access to medical education," says Ross Chief Executive Timothy Foster.
The establishment, predictably, is howling. Last May the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published an article attacking foreign schools like Ross, which aren't accredited by the American Medical Association's licensing boards. The other strike against Ross is that it's in business to make a buck. That conflicts with the public image projected by the medical profession: We're here to serve humanity. Hustle a dollar? Perish the thought.
Ross takes the quality challenge very seriously. It has to, considering its seedy origins. In 1978 grain trader Robert Ross convinced the government of Dominica, a lush, volcanic ex-British colony, to let him build a for-profit medical school catering to Americans whose MCAT scores didn't make the cut at any of the 125 U.S. medical schools. (Ross later gave himself an honorary doctorate from his own school.)
The students came to the oceanside campus. But behind the postcard scenery lay typical offshore problems. Failing a class used to mean repeating?and paying for?the entire semester. Admission standards were an oxymoron: Ross accepted 65% of all applicants, compared with 42% for U.S. schools, and never required the MCAT until last year. At one point the U.S. Department of Education flew in to investigate complaints by a teacher at a competitor school. (It took no action against Ross.)
These days the school attracts people who are hell-bent on being doctors, despite the disadvantages of the lowbrow Ross degree. Students seem to fall into two categories. Half are recent college grads who move to "The Rock" immediately after getting a stack of rejection letters. Jan Phillips, who wants to care for the elderly, graduated from Vanderbilt in 1998 and went home to Texas to get a master's in clinical gerontology. While working in a clinic at Baylor University's hospital, she applied to all the Texas medical schools. Phillips settled on Ross after she couldn't get in anywhere else.
Other students trade up from jobs in nursing, dentistry or other fields. Queens, N.Y. native Stacy Weiner was a physician's assistant for almost three years before deciding on an M.D. She bypassed U.S. schools altogether to avoid waiting two years while taking the MCAT and going through the application process.
Ross students take the standard U.S. medical school curriculum?but at an accelerated pace. The school has a three-semester year, allowing students to finish their four semesters of basic science quickly. After a fifth semester of early clinical training in Miami, Ross students do five semesters of clinical rotations in the U.S. at teaching hospitals in one of nine states, where they train alongside American med students.
No problem getting into Kern Medical Center, in Bakersfield, Calif., which can't lure enough med students from the affiliated University of California system to fill its program. A bit tougher to find a spot at New York University School of Medicine's top-notch Hospital for Joint Diseases, already flooded in the second half of the year with students who are trying to get into its orthopedic surgery residency program. To fill gaps in the first half, NYU takes a few Ross students each month, in return for a nominal administrative fee of $100 per pupil. None have become residents. How are the Ross students? "It's been variable," says Dr. Joseph Zuckerman, who heads the program. "Is it the same curve as students we see from other places? No."
It's up to Foster to get Ross student performance up to par. He once ran NovaCare Inc., a publicly traded outpatient rehabilitation firm based in King of Prussia, Pa., until sliding Medicare reimbursements spurred a fire sale in 1999. Weld, who was on the board of a NovaCare unit, hired Foster at Ross.
Foster is enforcing a new idea in academia: market forces. The 61 med school professors make an average of $60,000 to $90,000, with tax breaks on the first $75,000 for living outside the U.S. There's no tenure and, since they don't have to do research, they're paid on the basis of how well they teach. Pink slips are possible. Student evaluations and low exam scores have landed six profs on probation since last year.
With its reduced-stress tropical setting, Ross has drawn an eclectic faculty. Biochemist Gerhard Meisenberg, a 17-year veteran in colorful sandals who published a textbook while at Ross, wanted to live "far from Chicago." Julie Klotzbach, chairman of the pharmacology department, hated research and hoped to see her kids more often.
Foster is continuing to ratchet up academic performance. Two years ago Ross began requiring a school-administered "shelf exam" a semester before the compulsory U.S. Medical Licensing Exam Step 1 test, the first of three exams on the way to an M.D. Just half of Ross students pass the shelf exam the first time, 75% on the second go-round. Once they're allowed to take the Step 1, 82% to 94% pass on the first try. That's still shy of the 93% for U.S. medical students, but better than the 65% score for foreign med school grads as a whole. In last year's residency match, which assigns medical school seniors to a specialized training program in a U.S. hospital, 70% of Ross students got a spot, again besting overseas grads (52%), but falling short of U.S. medical school graduates (94%). Ross alumna Dr. Nancy Perri, the school's clinical dean, says 96% of graduates eventually find a program, some by negotiating directly with hospitals.
Is the school succeeding at its mission?making money, that is? Foster and his bosses say it is, but are mum on specifics. Here's some idea of what's on the profit and loss statement. Ross probably pulls in $58 million a year from tuition?$27,000 a year for three semesters for each of 2,100 students. Expenses at the two schools?including the costs of recruiting, a technology overhaul, road construction, hurricane and malpractice insurance (for students training in the U.S.) and overhead for the New York office?approach $50 million. Profit: probably less than $10 million, most of it reinvested in the school.
Ross has so far graduated 2,500-plus doctors who, in order to get certified, must pass a battery of exams, including the Test of English as a Foreign Language. Here's a test for the AMA: What does R-E-S-P-E-C-T spell?"
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2001/0514/090.html
Ok, a well established "diploma mill" since 1978 that is recognised by the US Department of Education, and all of the 4 states that "approve" foreign schools. A "diploma mill" that places all of its graduates in US residency programs, and has graduated more than 4000 MDs who are lisenced in ALL 50 states. Not to mention recognition by the British medical board/council too. 
