Director: Daniel C. Levy

Concern for Quality of Caribbean For-Profit Medical Schools

(Entry by Prachayani Praphamontripong)

PROPHE Summary:

The quality of Caribbean for-profit medical schools has captured attention in both the United States and the Caribbean due to the lack of governmental oversight in granting licenses to such institutions. The quality of these overseas for-profit medical schools affects the U.S. in particular since U.S. students often seek overseas enrollment in the Caribbean due to limited access to U.S. medical schools. The U.S. government has thus created a committee to deal with concerns on quality issues and to enact special licensure restrictions to ensure that graduates of these schools truly have qualifications to practice medicine. Likewise, academics in the Caribbean (and around the world) have also established an accreditation process including self-evaluation, site-visit, and peer-review, to make certain that medical schools and their graduates maintain high standards.

For the full story (shown with permission), see the Chronicle of Higher Education, October 28, 2005, "Offshore Medical Schools Operate With Minimal Oversight," by Mike Ceaser.
http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=qjtd51ds83hlz8bx529fl3nwyk0shld6

PROPHE Observation:

Literature on private higher education suggests that it is not common for private higher education institutions to offer expensive fields like medicine. However, more and more such institutions are doing so and the Caribbean case is special due to proximity to the high U.S. demand. This means possible profitability even in the high-cost medical field. Indeed these profit-making schools may already do their cost-benefit calculation before offering medicine and they may tend to have advantages over nonprofit counterparts in crafting strategies for markets and profit-making. Such missions and goals logically heighten concern among governments, academics, and students. As in many countries, stricter government regulation is seen to be a primary way to address the issue.