CHAPTER III
THE ACTUAL BASIS OF MEDICAL EDUCATION
Taking a two-year college course, largely constituted of the sciences, as the normal point of departure, let us now survey the existing status. The one hundred and fifty-five medical schools of the United States and Canada fall readily into three divisions: the first includes those that require two or more years of college work for entrance; the second, those that demand actual graduation from a four-year high school or oscillate about its supposed "equivalent;" the third, those that ask little or nothing more than the rudiments or the recollection of a common school education.
To the first division sixteen institutions already belong;[1] six more, now demanding one year of college work, will fully enter the division in the fall of 1910 by requiring a second;[2] and several more, at this date still in the second division, will shortly take the step from the high school to the two-year college requirement.[3] The Johns Hopkins requires for entrance a college degree which, whatever else it represents, must include the three fundamental sciences, French, and German. No exception has ever been made to this degree requirement; but recently admission to the second-year class has been granted to students holding an A.B. degree earned by four years' study, the last of them devoted to medical subjects in institutions where those subjects were excellently taught.[4] At Harvard the degree requirement has been somewhat unsettled by a recent decision to admit students without degree, provided they have had two years of college science; they are to be grouped as "spe-
- ↑ Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Western Reserve, Rush (University of Chicago), Cornell, Stanford, Wake Forest (N. C.) Yale, and the state universities of California, Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Michigan (exclusive of the homeopathic department), Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota.
- ↑ Universities of Indiana, Iowa (exclusive of the homeopathic department), Missouri, Pennsylvania, Utah, Syracuse. Several institutions ask one year of college work, without as yet definite announcement as to requirement of the second, e.g., Virginia, Fordham, Northwestern, North Carolina. In general, the one-year college requirement is hard to distinguish from the high school requirement, for if conditions are allowed, —and they always are, —it adds but little to the better type of high school education. Northwestern has had two years experience under the one-year college requirement, but has not yet really enforced it. The University of North Carolina was to require a year of college work, 1909-10, but students were admitted on the strength of their unsupported statements "as having had a college year .... Practically, thin means that the entrance requirements were not enforced."
- ↑ Columbia, Dartmouth, Colorado.
- ↑ Practically, this amounts to a recognition of the A.B. degree won after three years of study,—a movement deserving encouragement rather than criticism, as matters now stand. In fat, the Johns Hopkins degree was originally conferred at the close of three years of study, but the academic matriculation requirement was considerably higher than in institutions granting the A.B. degree after four years of study. Recently the academic matriculation has been lowered and the A.B. course lengthened to four years. In consequence, the action of the medical department above described involves unwittingly a curious discrimination against the Johns Hopkins A.B. degree, for this degree now requires four years and may no include medical s,u2!ects. To get the johns Hopkins M.D., a student has two roads open to him: he may work four ears for the Johns Hopkins A.B. and four more for its M.D.,—eight in all; or, starting at exactly the same point, he may get his A.B. in four years at an institution that includes in its A.B. the first year in medicine, then enter the Johns Hopkins medical school and get its M.D. in three years,— that is, seven years in all. A B.S. degree earned in three years, followed by the M.D. earned in four, gives the same result,—a preference, once more, that operates against the Johns Hopkins A.B.
