There's a very peculiar article making the rounds from the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news site. The gist of the piece is that ever since 2020, when Jennifer Lucero took over as dean of admissions for the UCLA Medical School, diversity has ruled the day and standards have plummeted:
Race-based admissions have turned UCLA into a "failed medical school," said one former member of the admissions staff. "We want racial diversity so badly, we're willing to cut corners to get it."
....In some of the cohorts [Lucero] admitted, more than 50 percent of students failed standardized tests on emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics.... That uptick coincided with a steep drop in the number of Asian matriculants and tracks the subjective impressions of faculty who say that students have never been more poorly prepared.
.... "UCLA still produces some very good graduates," one professor said. "But a third to a half of the medical school is incredibly unqualified."
Needless to say, I know nothing about UCLA and nothing about medical school. But I can read. First off, here's a chart from the article itself showing admission demographics at UCLA med school:
Sorry about the fuzziness. But the bottom line is pretty clear: between 2019 and 2022, the number of non-white and non-Asian students increased by 30. Even in the worst case, if every single one of these students was woefully unqualified, that's about 17% of the class. How do you get from there to "a third to a half"?
Then there's this:
The average MCAT score of UCLA's incoming classes has gone up. Average GPA has also gone up, as has selectivity. Those are very strange stats for a bunch of kids who are supposedly barely functional.
And there's this about the admissions process:
Race is rarely mentioned outright, and unlike the committee for anesthesiology residents, the committee for students does not see the race or ethnicity of applicants.
If the admissions committee doesn't see the race of applicants, how can Lucero and her allies be badgering everyone into admitting fewer Asians and more Hispanics?
Nothing about this adds up. As it happens, though, the article also notes something else: UCLA recently changed its curriculum so that students start doing clinical rounds in their second year, instead of their third. It's certainly possible—inevitable, even—that this would lead to students being considerably less prepared for rounds. And it might be responsible for lower grades on the "shelf exams" that follow rotations. Who knows? Maybe this new curriculum is a failure. But even if it is, it has nothing to do with race.
The article itself is entirely blind: not a single critic of the school is named. Nor is there any acknowledgement of rising admission standards. There's just a complaint that one of the first year classes is "Structural Racism and Health Equity." I'd take this piece with a very large grain of salt.
On the "don't hold your breath" list is the fact that fortunately for humans in general, when you really think about it very, very little of the human existence is zero sum. But don't hold your breath waiting for people to realize that. If they do, they would realize the silliness of the article Kevin easily tears apart.
Oh sure, on a theoretical level the good fortune of a group may be partially, attributable to the bad fortune of another group. But where direct connections have been found in recent human history there has been public policy push back to sever such connections, and then, if a remedy is available, provide it.
As if the promotion of diversity, especially in elite institutions where there are already multiple qualified applicants has either (1) some sort of harmful effect generally, or (2) any harmful effect on any one person. The only reason Alan Bakke became "the Alan Bakke" was that he insisted on applying to one medical school. His later career showed that he would have easily had a completely unremarkable career had he done the usual thing and applied to multiple schools.
Yet, Leo and those who can't wait to weigh in on this commit this analytical flaw again and again. Overall human career progression is not zero sum. If it was, I don't know if the violence would ever end.
By zero sum, in this context, by the way, I mean that you can accurately connect every bad outcome for yourself to a good outcome for some other, indentifiable, person.
When I met Bakke at the engineering dept at Ames Res Ctr, he seemed like just another engineer. Most engineers I met there were rethuglican oriented.
Not really. Tech engineers are heavily Libertarian.
Is there actually a "difference"? It's pretty clear that most "Libertarians" are soul-less wanna-be billionaires who like to puff ganja, and/or tickle their sinuses with blow. Ergo, ganja is now quasi-legal in 2/3 of the states of the union. Bloys will be bloys.
Ask Boeing and the families of some of the recent crash survivors how well the libertarian approach to regulation has worked for them.
Make $170 per hour. its very hard to find jobs nowadays. In this situation, you have access to a wealth of resources to help you with your working abilities. Be motivated to promote Thousands of works such as copy paste things through job boards and career ac-03 websites on internet
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Today, the vast majority of engineers are democrats. The higher the quality of education one has, the more likely one is to being a democrat and engineers pride themselves for having very rigorous curriculum.
i'd like to see the mcat scores for the staff of the washington free beacon
hell. i'd settle for their SATs
+2000!
You know when UCLA medical school failed? I can pinpoint the date: it's when they renamed the UCLA hospital the ronald reagon medical center when Reagan who had nothing to do with UCLA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan_UCLA_Medical_Center
I bet everyone still calls it the UCLA Med School. Just like they call the airport at the Capitol "National".
This practice they had of naming things after Reagan was just a dominance move. "Eat this shit and smile!" was the message. There were few places in the US that liked Reagan less than Washington, DC, so they get their airport named after him without any say in the matter.
Even more of a dominance move: wanting to rename Dulles airport, which you may notice is already named after someone unlike National, as Trump International.
I'm pretty sure I didn't make that up.
I don't read that rag, but I did inquire about one of their articles saying that Barack Obama wouldn't answer the question of whether or not he donated 5% of his salary because of the GOP sequester.
https://freebeacon.com/politics/did-the-president-take-a-pay-cut-like-he-promised-white-house-wont-say/
When I wrote her to point out that other publicans confirmed that he did, this reporter responded,
"Ha yeah will write up. Thanks
--
Elizabeth Harrington
Staff Writer
Washington Free Beacon"
Suffice to say she never did. They are lying hacks who lie.
Is the WFB a farm team for Fox News?
They wish.
But it fits their reality, so.....
OT, but perhaps our returning blogger hasn't had time to see this CNN item:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/24/world/thomas-midgley-jr-leaded-gas-freon-scn/index.html
One million lives lost to this poison every year..
Our host has been jabbering about lead for quite a bit.
Yes. he certainly has- but this scientist's history was new to me, with ties to two environmentally detrimental products & an unexpected ending to his life.
Ironically, it looks to me as if the author of the piece, Aaron Sibarium, failed journalism school but I would not expect anything different from Yale.
So Sibarium, the author of the Free Beacon piece, is Jewish. Turns out that UCLA Med School now has a required first year class called "Structural Racism and Health Equity." One of the two organizers of the course is Dr. Shamsher Samra, who is pro-Palestine freedom and also believes in Palestinian right of return. Meanwhile, Sibarium gets most of his criticisms of the course from Dr. Jeffrey Flier, former dean of the Harvard Medical School. Flier is Jewish, right-wing (though a never-Trumper) and very pro-Isreal.
So much of this probably has nothing to do with the UCLA Med School per se. It's about Dr. Shamsher Samra and his pro-Palestine stance.
Conservatives blame DEI is the universal cause for any problem (or even just imaginary perceived problem). In recent days I have seen conservatives cite DEI as the reason the Dali collided with the Francis Scott Key Bridge and the reason Boeing forgot to bolt on the doors on a 737 MAX. The Nazi's blamed everything on the Jews, using the same thought process modern American conservatives blame DEI.
That's this year. Last time, it was the Caravan. And like the Caravan, it will totally vanish the day after election day.
My college gave us some guidelines about DEI recently. It was things like "learn your students' names," what I would call being a good teacher and a decent human being. I've been doing all that for 30 years.
I am afraid they have stirred up the racists and the reactionaries far too much for it to just go away.
But that's exactly the reason it will go away. The point is to stir them up and you can't keep people inflamed over the same topic forever..... the need to provoke and inflame creates the need for a new topic, a new reason for outrage and most importantly, an opportunity for opportunists to raise their profile by spearheading the outrage for the new topic.
So DEI administrators at your college assume you aren't that bright and that you can't remember to know students names, be a good teacher and be a decent person l beyond the school year. Therefore, you and other faculty need to be retrained like a puppy each fall.
That’s inane.
Administrators don’t “assume” that professors do not know students’ names.
Administrators get complaints from students that their professors do not learn their names.
DERP
Roboto is a proper troll and you should ignore it.
But Kevin, you fail to realize that what is most important here is the oppression against White people, which may or may not be actually evident here but certainly is implicated and therefore is OUTRAGEOUS!!11!!
I'm actually surprised that you don't see this! Are you a Race Traitor?!?!
This feels like some person doing a hit on the dean, or maybe the school in general.
The kid of some PR player in a conservative noise shop get rejected, maybe?
Yes. So what did UCLA, and/or its med school, or the new dean do that twisted the knickers of the magaverse? Or was it, as you suggest, just personal?
" the committee for students does not see the race or ethnicity of applicants"
Do they see their names?
No.
Indeed. There are many factors that can be used to impute the race with a good degree of accuracy.
Univ of Florida Med surely will be a failure w the gov’s handpicked and board approved by the guv’s close donator bud - the one and only ignorant Dr… geez what is his name but he hates science. Lapdog or something like that..
I'd call it total bullshit but that's just me.
The Washington Free Beacon (Readership of a couple of dozen) complaining that not enough Asians are admitted to UCLA Med?
If this is true, then it does indeed constitute a potential issue:
“There's just a complaint that one of the first year classes is ‘Structural Racism and Health Equity.’ I'd take this piece with a very large grain of salt.”
The existence of structural racism is a topic that can certainly be debated. But is that in fact what’s happening in this class?
Likewise, the concept of equity is an entirely legitimate subject of analysis. I personally come out against it. And so did Kevin (whether he realized it or not) when, a few days ago, he wrote a blog post lambasting the San Francisco school district’s failed attempt to remove algebra from the 8th grade. That effort was guided by the concept of equity (or the lowering of standards to produce equal racial outcomes).
So is UCLA actually promoting debate on the “antiracist” concepts of systemic racism and equity? Is their class on the topic discussing the ideas of Coleman Hughes (opposed) as well as Ibram Kendi (supports)? If so: fine. That’s what good schools do.
But if, instead, UCLA now allows and promotes only the Leftist view supporting so-called “anti-racism,” and if its doctors-in-training are therefore forced to feign allegiance to a deeply disputed and highly contentious ideology, then that is indeed a serious betrayal of academia.
So the nature of that class needs to be understood before conclusions can be drawn: but, it sounds to me like there is a serious possibility that UCLA has in fact discredited itself.
Leo, don't you have better things to do with your billions than lecture a bunch of unwashed lefties on a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little blog? Priorities man.
Obviously he doesn't. I clicked the comments link to see how far down I'd have to go before he showed up whining again. I love how he takes the existence of a single course, makes up how it's taught and then concludes there's a serious possibility that the entire school is discredited. That's a beautiful strawman he's built there.
"concept of equity (or the lowering of standards to produce equal racial outcomes). " Why publicly document that you are lying scum?
What to do about those lesser brown people has always been the biggest problem for much of America. That those people can be in our schools is always particularly troubling for this permanently aggreived group.
This is just another episode of the same show.
There are people who are terribly disturbed that USC's Keck's average MCAT score is 517 and think UCLA's US News' medical school ranking relative to USC's means that UCLA's average MCAT is too low.
And also, they're upset that sports economists pegged UCLA's football value at less than 1/4 that of USC's.
Makes me wonder if it's the start of another hate-on campaign by conservative media to try and get a prominent progressive figure at a major university fired. Fortunately they're in the wrong state for that, but we'll see.
Well, there are the recent successes in getting a few Ivy presidents fired/forced to resign, so the maganuts have tasted blood and are once again drunk on their vast power. Will it help the "Q: Party electorally? Will it help the Defendant at the ballot box?
Hey bros, the Washington Be Freakin' is just another cesspit of brown-nosing lackeys of the rich.
You know what else happened in 2020?
We stopped getting overseas students from Asia.
Like, how do they write this without mentioning the travel bans due to Bigotry and COVID?
I doubt that had anything to do with it. Correlation≠causation. Very few immigrants get into med school right off the boat. Even fewer in a state medical school, and fewer still at a California state medical school, where the competition among state residents is fierce. Undergrads? Sure, if they're paying full tuition. Foreign-trained residents? Yes. But not medical students.
It certainly didn't have zero to do with it. My neighbor's wife was stuck in China for most of 2020. He hung prayer flags for her safe return.
And your neighbor's wife was a Chinese citizen who was admitted to UCLA medical school directly from China in 2020?
When I graduated medical school I had only the vaguest idea about the trade I ultimately ended up plying. My hands on experience was very very limited. It was only in the four years after that I learned medicine and the specialty that I chose. And not bragging because 90% of people pass, I also passed every board exam I took.
After graduation and before taking any exam graduates have another 3-4 years of training where they actually learn medicine and the field in which they are specializing. My guess is that this conclusion is not based on any data but is someone’s not-so-bright idea and is actually an undocumented biased opinion.
And one other thing. The specialty exam data reflects graduates of three to 5 years earlier because of the postgraduate training that is required before taking the specialty exam. I have no idea what this bogus article is analyzing.
If the info presented in this post are taken at face value, and I have no doubt that they should be -- with one exception, then the referenced article is promoting a conspiracy theory.
The one exception: how does promoting conspiracy theories qualify as the act of someone who is being conservative? A conservative justifiably wants to defend the status quo from kooky ideas.
Progressives are supposed to be the ones coming up with what appears to be all the kooky ideas until an existentially necessary adult dialogue between real conservatives and real progressives separates the wheat from the chaff.
Demonizing all conservatives demonizes the real and the phony, which is in and of itself an easy-to-refute conspiracy theory.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process the monsters are not unintentionally being helped.
Conservatives have morphed into reactionaries a while ago. They keep losing in the market place of ideas, so they moved away from trying to get better ideas or make better arguments to throwing tantrums.
You missed my point. Those people you are referring to are not conservatives. Don't be like the fish that notices the worm without noticing the hook.
You will get nowhere using the word "conservative", because too many people use it to mean something different from the literal menaing.
The last real attempt by conservatives to come up with new ideas was probably heritage foundations invention of obamacare. The lesson they learned from that was "never again".
A key tactic of the right wing in the last half century or so has been debasing the language. They keep calling themselves "conservative", a word with a pretty good pedigree, even though they act like reactionary psychos. And the infotainment journos just accept it -- battle won!
More examples include demonizing formerly good and useful words like "liberal", "socialist", "asylum", "immigration", "college education", vaccination", "voting" ...
If Option One of two is winning all the battles, and Option Two of two is winning the war, who cares about losing a battle?
Another example of a formerly good and useful, but now demonized, word is Christian. Who told Speaker Mike and MTG they were Christians? If being a Christian means hating your neighbor, I have one thing to say:
"Show me where it says that! Show me the words!" - Stormy Daniels
Although I'm a raised Catholic nonbeliever, I often point out in comments that those who have claimed the word "Christian" and turned it into meaning right wing Southern based fundamentalist evangelical bible thumping holy rollers are not representative of most Christians at all, or the early Christianity they claim to be based on, or the meanings of most of what their Jesus was supposed to have said.
Rotations in their second year? How is that even possible? Of course they're less well prepared than students who have had twice as much training.
I'm old. We didn't have a "systemic racism" class in medical school. That was a topic discussed at length in the year-long "ethics" class, but it was definitely discussed. Pulling individual topics out of the curriculum and giving them dedicated course names doesn’t change what's discussed.
Actually, many medical schools (including the one I've taught at for 37 years) have moved to starting clinical clerkship during the second year. I believe UVa starts at the beginning of the second year.
The reason we started about 2/3 of the way through year two is so students can do more rotations before selecting a residency.
DEI and CRT criticisms are just dog whistles to the racists. It's nice that KD took the time to point out that this particular screed was based on nothing but quotes from some anonymous racists and had no basis in verifiable facts but that is pretty much always the case.
What a change from the days my people were routinely accused of ruining the curve for whitey.
Progress, I guess.
At my medical school (Ivy League) we started clinical rotations in the second year. Worked out OK.
Steve
so, Mr. Drum has told us the Beacon is full of shit.
gee. good to know.
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