Fairview bought the University Hospital, NOT the med school. So now the teaching hospital that surrounds the U of M med students is Fairview-University Medical Center (FUMC). As is bound to occur when such a thing happens, some people were screaming about the sky falling when it first happened. Now I'm not sure if it's an issue - it certainly isn't among preclinical students, and I haven't heard a thing from the MS3's and 4's I've talked with. It's still a major referral hospital for a huge geographic area and it's clear that it's connected with a major research university (one of the "Top 3 public research universities," I believe). If you don't appreciate that, there's always the VA medical center, Abbot-Northwestern Hospital, Hennepin County Medical center, and others.
Because of the Najarian "thing" (we rode the elevator together a few weeks back- so he's still around doing something or another), from what I've heard, the U of M is now considered a national leader in human subjects protection. This is a plus. Not sure if his "thing" ever affected the rankings. I think we went up a spot or two this past year. We're getting more applicants than ever, admitting "smarter" students, the latest class (not to brag) is doing fabulous compared to previous years, and the current seniors had an outsanding match. So from my perspective things are going up.
Our tuition is going up 3% next year - it went up 3% the year before. The overall U of MN is looking to go up about 12% and I would guess that many other universitites and medical schools are looking at double-digit price increases. The new-ish dean of the medical school (now she's apparently a VP of the University as well) has publicly stated that she wants to keep our tuition low so we fall back in line with most other public universities, and it looks like she's doing exactly that.
