5 ms·

Medical schools have some of the strongest affirmative action: http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/04/medical-school-acceptance-rates-for-2010-2012-reflect-racial-pr

Medical schools have some of the strongest affirmative action: http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/04/medical-school-acceptance-rates-for-2010-2012-reflect-racial-preferences-for-blacks-and-hispanics/ http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/04/medical-school-acceptance-r...

rdtsc 14y ago
Why is that? Do they implicitly acknowledge that it doesn't take a smart person to become a doctor as long as they get admitted and can get a loan?
- kmax12 14y ago
  one justification I've heard is that doctor like to serve communities they came from. thus, affirmative action ensures minorities have access to doctors.
  - eurleif 14y ago
    Why not make admissions based on geography, then?
    - SoftwareMaven 14y ago
      Serving the community is a different thing than serving in a community. "The" community tends to be "people like the people I've grown up with and lived around most of my life." I can find a community almost anywhere I live. In other words, a Hispanic doctor from LA might find a comfortable life in Miami serving the Hispanics there[1], whereas he may be completely uncomfortable serving a largely white, affluent neighborhood in the LA basin. 1. I have no idea if this is true or not; I'm just laying out the hypothetical of my GP.
    - saraid216 14y ago
      By "geography" do you mean separate urban neighborhoods as well as large rural tracts? Not everyone goes home after they graduate.
    - cturner 14y ago
      It's easy to game this, and there's overwhelming evidence that this already happens in related fields. In countries with state schools with geographic catchment (i.e. most of most English speaking countries), the housing market becomes a proxy for education choice. This entrenches class concentration. You end up with entire geographic regions that are exclusive, and others that are outcast. People who want their kids to be able to be at a certain school value catchment housing higher than others would. As a result, there's a slide of people who care about their kids' education towards certain regions. By consequence, there's a drain of people who are focussed on their kids' education in poorer areas. This pushes parents who would otherwise have been easy-going to join in the same game, which re-enforces the pattern. There are plenty of crazy people with a burning, status-seeking ambition to have their child go to medschool (regardless of the wishes of the child). They would absolutely move their address to a catchment for easy access to med school. In the list of the crazy things these crazy people do, this would be among the least surprising. Regarding schools - there's a policy that would kill this and lead to better schools, called vouchers. In this case, parents apply to schools (anywhere) and the schools choose who they take. But it's very difficult to introduce this when you have a large, highly educated segment of your voting population who are struggling with a huge mortgage that they took on to secure their children access to a certain school catchment. As they see it - they've paid for something, and now the evil government is stealing that from them and leaving their children to compete on an even footing with the children of parents who haven't made the same sacrifices. "Outrageous!" Teachers unions also come out hard against vouchers, because it makes the sector more competitive, and that leads to bad teachers getting fired, and wage discrepancy, which undermines the union interest of bringing the sector towards collectivised bargaining. There's social-engineering arguments that say it's better for people use facilities near them to reduce load on transportation or the like. This is petty rubbish, and also often wrong (mass transit gets more efficient and nicer to use with scale, and that leads to less cars), but it gets trotted out in vouchers debate. Public universities tend to operate on a voucher arrangement at the moment. Their example is a tangible example that vouchers is good policy, and that is very valuable in the campaign to bring good policy to public schools.
      - yardie 14y ago
        > Teachers unions also come out hard against vouchers, because it makes the sector more competitive No they are against them because the money for vouchers comes out of the public school budget. In poor areas this can be quite devastating. Unlike the Harlem Children's Zone, most school districts don't have a rich, billionaire uncle giving them millions of dollars each school year. Teacher's also recognize that charter schools have one ability they do not, unload disruptive and under-performing students before test time. > Public universities tend to operate on a voucher arrangement at the moment. Their example is a tangible example that vouchers is good policy, and that is very valuable in the campaign to bring good policy to public schools. Please explain? I've gone to public universities and don't remember vouchers at any point. You were accepted on merit. Tuition was paid based on merit and need. But, unlike public schools, they were free to kick you out at any point.
  - sachingulaya 14y ago
    To the person below me--admissions are based on geography. One way they do it is with ridiculous out-of-state fees. When I was thinking about transferring to NEOUCOM in Ohio the tuition was $110k/yr for out of state for the 3rd year...compared to 40k/yr in state. However, thats only one aspect of it. See: https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/careers/students/gradstudy/health/guide/part2/appendix https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/careers/students/gradstud...
  - wildgift 13y ago
    I think it's that, but there's some subtlety to it. A minority person seems to be more likely to open a clinic to serve low-income people, perhaps as a side job to doing surgeries. There's also the trust issue between patients and doctors, so having someone who understands a community's needs might achieve better outcomes.
  - LanceH 13y ago
    Another interpretation is that it appeases politicians.
- hashmymustache 14y ago
  the numbers are pretty misleading without context. you gotta compare it to class composition (very low for blacks/hispanics) and raw admissions numbers, not just percentages out of who applied. med school really is a holistic admissions process and that's not just code for affir action. you have to write tons of essays on your values, experiences, obstacles, and interview everywhere you want to go - this is a huge part of the admissions process and a lot of smart kids can't interview for shit. Not to say that it divides along race lines, but the only two metrics listed are GPA and MCAT which aren't the most telling or important things and it's likely that certain groups have more justifiable excuses for low performance than others which are taken into consideration.
- hyperbovine 14y ago
  As the medical school, they decide what it takes to become a doctor. I wouldn't mind it terribly if they decided doctors must be smart people.
tsotha 14y ago
Which is scary as hell.
Kudzu_Bob 14y ago
That's a potentially life-saving bit of information. Thanks! I shall take steps to avoid letting any doctor who might possibly have been a beneficiary of affirmative action treat me or mine.
- bradleyjg 13y ago
  Were you planning on using this site for anything other than spreading your racist, sexist, and xenophobic views? Because looking through your posts so far that about sums them up. Throw in some homophobia and you can try for bigot of the year.
  - Kudzu_Bob 13y ago
    Your question isn't really a question, just a clumsy attempt to use shame to stifle open discussion, a technique that goes WAY back. Priests in the Middle Ages used it to keep the peasants in their place, although I imagine that they employed it more effectively than you do. But here is a real question, one that actually rises to the level of being thought-provoking, just for you: You have a six-year-old girl who has recently begun to complain of headaches, dizziness, and double-vision. Tests show that she has a tumor in an especially difficult-to-reach part of the brain. If left untreated, she will die, but any attempt to remove the rapidly growing mass has a significant chance of leaving her a vegetable. You must choose between two neurosurgeons, both of whom seemingly have very similar resumes, but one of whom is non-white/non-Asian, the other of whom is white/Asian. Do you choose the former to operate on your little girl, knowing that affirmative action policies may well have greased the skids for him all the way from college to medical school to his residency, or do you pick the latter, for whom no such programs exist? If you pick the former, then your commitment to egalitarianism is on a par with Abraham's to Yaweh when he bound Jacob to the sacrificial altar.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
      - Kudzu_Bob 13y ago

rdtsc 14y ago

Why is that? Do they implicitly acknowledge that it doesn't take a smart person to become a doctor as long as they get admitted and can get a loan?

kmax12 14y ago
one justification I've heard is that doctor like to serve communities they came from. thus, affirmative action ensures minorities have access to doctors.
- eurleif 14y ago
  Why not make admissions based on geography, then?
  - SoftwareMaven 14y ago
    Serving the community is a different thing than serving in a community. "The" community tends to be "people like the people I've grown up with and lived around most of my life." I can find a community almost anywhere I live. In other words, a Hispanic doctor from LA might find a comfortable life in Miami serving the Hispanics there[1], whereas he may be completely uncomfortable serving a largely white, affluent neighborhood in the LA basin. 1. I have no idea if this is true or not; I'm just laying out the hypothetical of my GP.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    By "geography" do you mean separate urban neighborhoods as well as large rural tracts? Not everyone goes home after they graduate.
  - cturner 14y ago
    It's easy to game this, and there's overwhelming evidence that this already happens in related fields. In countries with state schools with geographic catchment (i.e. most of most English speaking countries), the housing market becomes a proxy for education choice. This entrenches class concentration. You end up with entire geographic regions that are exclusive, and others that are outcast. People who want their kids to be able to be at a certain school value catchment housing higher than others would. As a result, there's a slide of people who care about their kids' education towards certain regions. By consequence, there's a drain of people who are focussed on their kids' education in poorer areas. This pushes parents who would otherwise have been easy-going to join in the same game, which re-enforces the pattern. There are plenty of crazy people with a burning, status-seeking ambition to have their child go to medschool (regardless of the wishes of the child). They would absolutely move their address to a catchment for easy access to med school. In the list of the crazy things these crazy people do, this would be among the least surprising. Regarding schools - there's a policy that would kill this and lead to better schools, called vouchers. In this case, parents apply to schools (anywhere) and the schools choose who they take. But it's very difficult to introduce this when you have a large, highly educated segment of your voting population who are struggling with a huge mortgage that they took on to secure their children access to a certain school catchment. As they see it - they've paid for something, and now the evil government is stealing that from them and leaving their children to compete on an even footing with the children of parents who haven't made the same sacrifices. "Outrageous!" Teachers unions also come out hard against vouchers, because it makes the sector more competitive, and that leads to bad teachers getting fired, and wage discrepancy, which undermines the union interest of bringing the sector towards collectivised bargaining. There's social-engineering arguments that say it's better for people use facilities near them to reduce load on transportation or the like. This is petty rubbish, and also often wrong (mass transit gets more efficient and nicer to use with scale, and that leads to less cars), but it gets trotted out in vouchers debate. Public universities tend to operate on a voucher arrangement at the moment. Their example is a tangible example that vouchers is good policy, and that is very valuable in the campaign to bring good policy to public schools.
    - yardie 14y ago
      > Teachers unions also come out hard against vouchers, because it makes the sector more competitive No they are against them because the money for vouchers comes out of the public school budget. In poor areas this can be quite devastating. Unlike the Harlem Children's Zone, most school districts don't have a rich, billionaire uncle giving them millions of dollars each school year. Teacher's also recognize that charter schools have one ability they do not, unload disruptive and under-performing students before test time. > Public universities tend to operate on a voucher arrangement at the moment. Their example is a tangible example that vouchers is good policy, and that is very valuable in the campaign to bring good policy to public schools. Please explain? I've gone to public universities and don't remember vouchers at any point. You were accepted on merit. Tuition was paid based on merit and need. But, unlike public schools, they were free to kick you out at any point.
- sachingulaya 14y ago
  To the person below me--admissions are based on geography. One way they do it is with ridiculous out-of-state fees. When I was thinking about transferring to NEOUCOM in Ohio the tuition was $110k/yr for out of state for the 3rd year...compared to 40k/yr in state. However, thats only one aspect of it. See: https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/careers/students/gradstudy/health/guide/part2/appendix https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/careers/students/gradstud...
- wildgift 13y ago
  I think it's that, but there's some subtlety to it. A minority person seems to be more likely to open a clinic to serve low-income people, perhaps as a side job to doing surgeries. There's also the trust issue between patients and doctors, so having someone who understands a community's needs might achieve better outcomes.
- LanceH 13y ago
  Another interpretation is that it appeases politicians.
hashmymustache 14y ago
the numbers are pretty misleading without context. you gotta compare it to class composition (very low for blacks/hispanics) and raw admissions numbers, not just percentages out of who applied. med school really is a holistic admissions process and that's not just code for affir action. you have to write tons of essays on your values, experiences, obstacles, and interview everywhere you want to go - this is a huge part of the admissions process and a lot of smart kids can't interview for shit. Not to say that it divides along race lines, but the only two metrics listed are GPA and MCAT which aren't the most telling or important things and it's likely that certain groups have more justifiable excuses for low performance than others which are taken into consideration.
hyperbovine 14y ago
As the medical school, they decide what it takes to become a doctor. I wouldn't mind it terribly if they decided doctors must be smart people.

tsotha 14y ago

Which is scary as hell.

Kudzu_Bob 14y ago

That's a potentially life-saving bit of information. Thanks! I shall take steps to avoid letting any doctor who might possibly have been a beneficiary of affirmative action treat me or mine.

bradleyjg 13y ago
Were you planning on using this site for anything other than spreading your racist, sexist, and xenophobic views? Because looking through your posts so far that about sums them up. Throw in some homophobia and you can try for bigot of the year.
- Kudzu_Bob 13y ago
  Your question isn't really a question, just a clumsy attempt to use shame to stifle open discussion, a technique that goes WAY back. Priests in the Middle Ages used it to keep the peasants in their place, although I imagine that they employed it more effectively than you do. But here is a real question, one that actually rises to the level of being thought-provoking, just for you: You have a six-year-old girl who has recently begun to complain of headaches, dizziness, and double-vision. Tests show that she has a tumor in an especially difficult-to-reach part of the brain. If left untreated, she will die, but any attempt to remove the rapidly growing mass has a significant chance of leaving her a vegetable. You must choose between two neurosurgeons, both of whom seemingly have very similar resumes, but one of whom is non-white/non-Asian, the other of whom is white/Asian. Do you choose the former to operate on your little girl, knowing that affirmative action policies may well have greased the skids for him all the way from college to medical school to his residency, or do you pick the latter, for whom no such programs exist? If you pick the former, then your commitment to egalitarianism is on a par with Abraham's to Yaweh when he bound Jacob to the sacrificial altar.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    - Kudzu_Bob 13y ago