Higher-Ed Board Mulls Access for Caribbean Med School

Depending on what the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board decides today, Texas hospitals could soon open their doors to medical students from the Caribbean, and that prospect has the state’s medical schools fuming.

The American University of the Caribbean, a for-profit medical school owned by DeVry Inc., has requested authorization from the coordinating board to allow its students — and in particular those from Texas — to have the opportunity to spend years three and four of medical school in Texas hospitals, clerking or taking clinical electives.

AUC officials say they have followed the appropriate protocol for applying for a “certificate of authority,” received a positive recommendation from the coordinating board’s outside medical consultants, and are one step away from getting the green light to start paying Texas hospitals to train their students. Yet they are facing stiff opposition from in-state medical schools, which fear they will wrest clerkship slots from in-state students.

In March, leaders from the state’s public medical schools sent a letter to Texas Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes, who has recommended that the board grant AUC approval. The school leaders argued that allowing students from foreign schools into Texas clerkships would “displace Texas medical students in already limited clinical training settings at hospitals in our state.”

http://www.texastribune.org/texas-education/higher-education/higher-ed-board-mulls-access-caribbean-med-school/