The University of Denver is looking to capture a piece of
the lucrative medical school market and mainstream news outlets across the
city are trumpeting the good news accordingly, which means no one is asking any
hard questions about how this proposed move would impact the surrounding community.
So far, news coverage echoes DU chancellor Robert Coombe’s well-orchestrated
announcement that the college is launching a feasibility study on medical school expansion. The announcement was fashioned as an email sent to DU students and faculty earlier this
week, and today the happy news banners the front page of the Denver Post, which apparently
was the first to officially break the story.
DU claims that its interest in medical schools is altruistically
spurred by a nationwide doctor shortage, particularly a shortage of primary
care providers. It is all about the
“public good” says the DU brass, again quoted by obedient media outlets
across town.
However, even the sketchiest research shows that plenty
of med students already exist – but they eschew primary care medicine in favor
of more lucrative specialties such as obstetrics, radiology, surgery and
dermatology. And in a way you can’t blame them - according to the Association
of American Medical Colleges in 2010 the median debt for graduating med
students was $150,000 at public institutions, $180,000 at private, and $160,000
combined. That’s a challenge to payoff on a relatively modest primary care
physician’s salary. But if you were a university looking at that money…well, it would appear to be a lucrative business. Follow
the money kids, and that’s where DU’s real interest lies.
Coombe is quoted in the Denver Post story as saying DU’s
feasibility study will be conducted by consultants. I haven’t heard anything
spelling out who, exactly, these well-heeled and highly-paid consultants are,
or who they will be talking to for their “study,” but it is a foregone
conclusion that the study will be pleasing to DU’s Coombe & Co. I also feel confident predicting widespread
city council support as well, especially here in District 7.
You’d like to think the quality of living in the
neighborhood would be a consideration, but it never played a major role has in past DU
expansions and I don’t see why it should now. Indeed, DU has never been
required to provide levels of on-campus parking or housing to match its ambitious
goals.
We’d like to see
the City of Denver
require a connection between enrollment increases and on-campus DU
housing availability, along with mitigating traffic and parking impacts on the
neighborhood. (Sorry, dismissively suggesting the city implement neighborhood
street-parking passes doesn’t really mitigate a damn thing. It just heaps
another layer of inconvenience on local residents.)
Those of us who live here understand and appreciate the
value of having a world-class educational institution in our midst. But
without a plan for responsible growth DU assumes the role of neighborhood
bully, forcing the adjacent neighborhood into decline.
1 comment:
We already have a world class medical school in the Denver metro area - the University of Colorado medical school at Anschutz is one of the top in the country.
Like you said, the idea that adding another medical school will contribute to solving the primary care physician shortage is misguided. It is simply a new profit stream for DU.
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