The Cost of Our Education is Not Matching Our Training
Have you ever wondered if your doctor was competent enough to take care of you? Well if the curriculum in medical school increases, you’d never have to worry again!
Hello all! My name is Britney Young and I am a first-year Biology major on the pre-med track here at the University of Florida. For a long time, I knew in my heart that I wanted to be a doctor, so I have always looked up medical schools trying to see which ones I would like to attend. From all of my research that I did before coming to college, I realized how costly medical school actually is. This topic is important to me personally and to many people around the world that want to go to medical school and have questions about cost and education, they’ll be receiving. It is important because most of their life will be spent going through medical school.
It is clear that the majority is aware that medical school is extremely expensive. Students have to take out loans in order to attend and follow their dreams. You’d think with the cost of medical school these students would be getting the best training and education there is; however, there is much to be done to the curriculum. The only problem is, an increase in training would call for an increase in cost and this is not ideal for most students. I recently read an article called “Weighing the cost of educational inflation in undergraduate medical education”(2016), which essentially discussed the amount of medical school and the things that will have to happen to give a better curriculum.
Alterations in the educational training students receive will likely come from those inside the medical school itself. As mentioned in the text, “These course chairs are typically passionate about their subspecialty content and ensuring that learners know the latest developments in this field, which creates pressure to add new teaching content and evaluation items each year.” (p.790). If there is a change that needs to happen it will need to be from the inside. The text reveals, “For example, for the 2015 version of the Medical Council of Canada Qualifying Examination (MCCQE) Part I the scoring scale was revised and a new pass score approved by the Central Examination Committee that represented an increase in pass score of 12.8 % (increase from 390 to 440 on the former scale)”(p.790). The change in the curriculum would help students be more successful in the field.
The increase in training can lead to the enlargement of the cost to attend medical school and get your education. According to the text, "And, if we require additional resources to meet changing training requirements, will this increase the cost of training, add to student debt burden, and make medical school training too expensive for some students?"(p.793) Students are already on the verge of being in debt because of student loans they had to take out in undergraduate school and this occurrence would add more stress to the students. Based upon recent data from the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC), the current average debt of graduating medical students in Canada is in excess of CDN$160,000 (p.793). There needs to be a way to increase educational while avoiding the increase of the cost. This change would help many students succeed and it would also ensure better healthcare workers.
I found your post interesting because my goal is to attend veterinary medical school, and we face the same problem of having large student debt to face after our education. I love your conversational and engaging tone in your writing, it's perfect for the blog post genre. Your personal connection and explanation of the significance is also great. You could also consider how many people complete a residency or further specialization after medical school to fill in the gaps of things that they didn't get out of it. I think you explained your article really well, but in some cases there were small punctuation errors with your in text citations. For APA it should be (Author last name, year, Page number if its a direct quote) placed at the very end of your sentence with the period after it. Other than that, I don't see anything else, nice job!
ReplyDeleteThis topic is very interesting to me because I too, wish to attend medical school in the future. It is unfortunate that most students face these debts after receiving their education and it is something that should not be overlooked. I really enjoyed how you related to the audience with your own personal significance and discussed how a change needs to happen without students facing additional costs. I would adjust the sentence structure in a few paragraphs and correct a few grammar errors, but other than that great job!
ReplyDeleteFor the second article, there are a lot of good points being presented, I enjoy the subject and message behind it. School is expensive and making sure one can afford school to get a top education is important. My one question is how do we prepare students and equip them with tools that will help them in the real world while keeping costs low for them and the schools? Great blog topic and post!
ReplyDeleteThis blogpost is really good as it addresses many issues such as student debt and medical qualification. I really liked how u considered these points. It could also be interesting to consider the student debt related to undergraduate programs for medical school students. In addition, it could be interesting to compare medical school student debt to that of other graduate programs such as law school.
ReplyDeleteThis is a interesting topic to choose for your article. I also plan to attend medical school in the near future. Honestly, the issue of the cost of medical school has been going on for awhile. My uncle who attended medical school about 15 years ago is still paying off his loans. It sucks that you have to essentially be in debt to pursue your goals. I liked how you asked questions throughtout the article and provided effective examples and feedback from your source. Overall, nice work!
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