Because, school's rely on the money-making machine that is the traditional lecture system. The traditional lecture system is not only inefficient with respect to today's alternatives, it SHOULD be nearly obsolete. I mean, with the incredible electronic media that we have, why in the hell do we have thousands of people repeating the same material countless times for no good reason?
Not only that, but my experience is that the majority of professors don't really care too much about what we "need". They teach what they want to teach. To anyone who thinks that the majority of your basic science professors really care about spending time identifying what information is board relevant or has some significant clinical relevance, I'd suggest that you have a little bit too much faith in the education system.
We DO NOT need classes. It's a silly waste of time. We should utilize the vast book and multimedia resources that we have available to us to learn material, and redefine the role of the professor. Cut class time down by 80% and make class time an interactive problem-based learning experience that is student-driven and professor guided.
Wow, couldn't agree with this more. Medigrl too. I didn't know if it was like this at other schools too. guess it is, at least some of them. I go to a mid/lower tier school, btw ...
Honestly, the schools charging $45,000 without providing anything, is, i guess, a problem, but not one that bothers me too much. What bothers me is that they high-jack our time and brain's for two years to a service (memorizing random useless facts) that doesn't do anyone any good.
I'm starting to see it like this: its not the actual lecturing that's the money making machine; its the fact that medical liscensing is highly regulated/rationed; making a medical liscense a valuable asset.
Medical institutions are part-owners of this value because they control part of the liscensing procedure (you have to go to a med school, especially a u.s. one to get into a highly paid specialty.) Baisically, tuition is the school selling this scarce resource, which they did not create, but have been given under the current system.
Seen like this, medical schools (im just talking about the first two year here, havent seen third and fourth) are pretty much useless to society. In econ they'd be called rent seekers.
Fine, medicine is regulated, i think it probably should be, and its probably hard to create a perfect regulated system. I dont think its necessiraly the best system, but if med schools end up with some of the value created by limiting medical liscensing, fine. We could pay our $45,000 and go study for the boards for a year or two.
The problem, to me, is that schools are afraid to admit/let it be seen that this is what they are doing. They dont want to take the time to actually make a coherent curriculum that addresses what we will need to know as doctors. But they do want it to look like they are providing something of value. So they make us work really hard, and have voluminous syllabi and lectures and tests that require a lot of work. This way, students are too busy to realize whats going on, and its difficult for someone from the outside to see that nothing is being provided (they are giving us tens of thousands of facts after all!)
I cant prove this, but its the only way to explain what the first two years have been like that I can see. Im exagerating to make a point, I think there are some professors who try to be clear and put effort into helping us be competent clinicians. But in general, no that's not what the curriculum is about ...
end rant for now
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