Interesting. And I don’t get the need:
Tech’s El Paso Medical School Accredited
Texas Tech University’s Paul L. Foster School of Medicine in El Paso is now the first accredited four-year medical school on the Texas-Mexico border. University officials were notified Tuesday that the school has received accreditation from the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME).The LCME told Texas Tech officials they can begin recruiting students for the fall of 2009. The school is expected to eventually accept some 80 students per year.
Texas Tech has a nice medical school in Lubbock, where the class all does their MS1 and 2 years together. Then the class splits into thirds: 1/3 goes to Amarillo, 1/3 stays in Lubbock and 1/3 go to El Paso for their MS3 and 4 years.
Tech (Lubbock) accepts about 125 students a year, so sends about 40 students to El Paso for their 3rd and 4th years, to be added to the 80 they’re going to eventually get up to? I wonder where they’ll put them all?
Perhaps someone better acquainted with the Tech master plan can enlighten me…
I’m an MSI at Tech this year. For as far as they’ve told us (my class is grandfathered into the “old” way of splitting us all up) they’re planning on opening up their Odessa campus to medical students to take the strain off the Amarillo and Lubbock campuses. As of right now the Permian Basin campus is residents only. I believe the plan is to slowly reduce the number of 3rd and 4th years going from Tech out to El Paso until they are ready to sustain their own student program. Hope that helps!
Almost all med schools are increasing enrollment–and many have plans of nearly 50% increases on already full classes.
So, probably Tech wants a double slice of the pie.
The Legislature has put a lot of emphasis on increasing the number of medical school spots in Texas. Don’t even try to understand why. Texas has the highest number of public medical school spots per capita of any state already. What we’re really lacking is residency spots.
In any case, Tech really is just responding to the pressure for such. And I can almost promise you that in the next ten years:
1) We’ll have a University of Texas medical school in Austin (see the CTI)
2) The University of Houston will open a medical school in Houston which will be affiliated with Methodist Healthcare (after that health care system’s unceremonious break up with Baylor)
It’s all a little crazy, but Tech’s new 4-year El Paso campus is just part of a larger trend in the state and really wasn’t totally at the discretion of the Tech system itself.
Tech sucks at managing money.
I agree with the previous commenter though.
Update: We had a presentation today from the Permian Basin campus trying to get us to go there. My post about their plans on phasing out the El Paso campus is how they’re planning on doing things. If you’re still curious.