[ceeplusplus]

Probably because the people pushing for free college etc tend to be ones studying the humanities, which gives people a bad impression of the whole thing. People make fun of Fox News touting lesbian dance studies majors, but the reality is most people don't support funding your bullshit gender studies degree with their tax dollars.

> the AMA agrees there is a problem and is onboard with expanding the pipeline

Oh come on, they could start by accepting everyone with a 3.5+ and decent MCAT instead of requiring that you have a 3.95, volunteering experience, clinical experience, and near perfect MCATs. The path is unattractive because it's filled with bullshit requirements that don't matter.

On top of this most med schools discriminate against their largest pool of potential top students: Asians. It's well known if you're Asian you need much higher MCATs and GPA to get into med school. How many people have been pushed out of considering medicine because of this?

[ejb999]

>>Oh come on, they could start by accepting everyone with a 3.5+ and decent MCAT instead of requiring that you have a 3.95, volunteering experience, clinical experience, and near perfect MCATs. The path is unattractive because it's filled with bullshit requirements that don't matter.

I for one am glad that it s hard for doctors to get into med school - allowing less qualified people to practice medicine sure doesn't sound like a recipe for good outcomes.

As far as the non-academic 'bullshit requirements' as you put it, they matter - last thing you want is someone going to med school because they were above average smart, and there parents told them to goto med school (it happens) - much better to have people that have been in the trenches dealing with medical issues at some level who know what they are getting into - i.e. people who perhaps were a nurse first, or EMT or paramedic, or even a non-skilled person who provided personal care to dementia patients in nursing home - just being smart isn't enough to be a good doctor - doctors deal with a lot of things that most of society would find distasteful - better to weed out those folks before they ever set foot on campus taking up the slot of someone else that is more well rounded and proven they are not choosing medicine just because it pays well and their parents pushed them to it.

[ceeplusplus]

I would take a smart doctor motivated by money over a dumber one motivated by caring for people.

The reality is all of the top surgeons, cardiologists, etc. didn't become those professions just because they were "well rounded", they were smart and they wanted prestige/money. It would be good for medicine to have more smart and ambitious people.

Well rounded is just a euphemism to discriminate against Asians through affirmative action.