Caribbean medical schools have long been decried as diploma mills for the rich and undeserving; they are strictly for-profit institutions serving American kids rejected by U.S. medical schools, yet they rely on hospitals in the U.S. to provide the necessary clinical experience in the third and fourth years of a medical education. Recently, however, an effort has begun in New York City to limit their access to local hospitals since there are only a certain number of spots available for such field work, and charges of elitism are flying. Yet how did foreign and domestic medical schools come to be competing for the same spots in domestic hospitals?
Because Caribbean medical schools are first and foremost businesses, they take just about anyone able to pay, especially those rejected by more prestigious American schools. Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, for example, has the likes of investment banker Sanford I. Weill to real estate developer Isaac Toussie with all their money, resulting in tuition and fees of about forty-five thousand dollars every year. Compare that to the Caribbean ones, where it can cost up to sixty thousand dollars!
Now, due to such high fees, it’s no wonder that Caribbean schools can easily pay New York hospitals to let in their students – and no wonder, what’s more, the movement to restrict such access to American schools, which otherwise lose out.
This is the business of a medical education today.
Traditionally, what hospitals do is mentor medical students in exchange for using the school’s prestige. Caribbean medicals schools have no brand name to offer, but they do have several tens of millions of dollars to pump into a hospital’s coffers, in effect paying for their students to be placed.
And what hospital administration could possibly refuse such funds, particularly with this economy?