gofer articles

With a reputation as diploma mills, Caribbean medical schools are dedicated for-profit businesses that serve rejected applicants from the United States – but they still depend on American hospitals for the crucial clinical experience required during the second half 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. But how is it possible for foreign medical schools to threaten turf belonging to American ones?

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. At an elite institution like Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, donors from investment banker Sanford I. Weill to real estate developer Isaac Toussie provide a lot of money, resulting in tuition and fees of about forty-five thousand dollars a year. In contrast, a Caribbean medical school can charge as much as 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.

Thus the turf war.

Traditionally, hospitals agree to mentor, in effect, a medical school’s students because they like to be associated with prestigious names. And though Caribbean institutions are not prestigious, they have tons of money, which is a most important consideration, naturally.

And what administrator is going to do without such money, especially in this economy?