Wokeism is Doomed

[grarpamp]

> https://twitter.com/EndWokeness
> https://twitter.com/LibsOfTikTok

Even your Surgeon gets an "A" and a scalpel because if
they flunked him because he failed, it'd hurt his feels, etc...


Code Red: Downplaying Academic Excellence In Med School Admissions

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/03/10/code_red_downplaying_academic_excellence_in_med_school_admissions_148958.html

https://www.mdlinx.com/article/harvard-leads-the-way-in-ditching-medical-school-rankings/1bnOCQvzOHHo771y0FrFdQ
https://www.inspiraadvantage.com/blog/medical-schools-that-dont-require-the-mcat-what-you-should-know
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-chart-illustrates-graphically-racial-preferences-for-blacks-and-hispanics-being-admitted-to-us-medical-schools/
https://www.chronicle.com/article/10-ways-colleges-can-diversify-after-affirmative-action
https://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/Fulltext/2022/09000/The_Validity_of_MCAT_Scores_in_Predicting.37.aspx
https://nypost.com/2022/09/02/top-med-schools-putting-wokeism-ahead-of-giving-america-good-doctors/
https://students-residents.aamc.org/choosing-medical-career/post-bacc-program-right-me-seven-benefits-consider

America’s top medical schools, worried they have too few minority
students, are doing something about it.

They are lowering academic standards for admission and trying to hide
the evidence.

Columbia, Harvard, the University of Chicago, Stanford, Mount Sinai,
and the University of Pennsylvania have already done so. The list
already tops forty, and more are sure to follow.

Of course, the universities won’t admit what they are doing – and
certainly not why. All they will say is that their new standards add
“equity” and “lived experience.”

Unfortunately, adding those factors inevitably lessens the weight
given to others.

The harsh reality is medical schools are downplaying academic
achievement and MCAT scores, which give the best evidence of how well
students are prepared for medical school. The MCAT is specifically
tailored for that purpose. In addition to a section on critical
reasoning (similar to the SATs), it examines students on biology and
biochemistry, organic chemistry, the physics of living systems, and
the biological and psychological foundations of behavior. It’s easy to
see how those relate directly to higher education in medical science.
Yet med schools want to downplay them and add inherently subjective
criteria like “lived experience.”

Med schools are especially eager to get rid of the MCATs. After years
of evaluating admissions folders, they know they cannot meet their
goals for minority enrollment if they retain their near-total emphasis
on academic qualifications. They know, too, that standardized tests
and grades leave a statistical trail. They want to kick dust over that
trail before the Supreme Court’s expected ruling against affirmative
action. They fear the statistics will show marked differences in
admission rates for individuals from different groups who have similar
scores and GPAs. That’s not a wild guess. Admission teams know the
evidence from years of experience.

But dropping the tests, or making them optional, presents a thorny PR
problem. Schools fear they would sink below competitors in national
rankings, which include MCAT scores. So, they are doing what
undergraduate colleges have already done. They are colluding. By
withdrawing jointly from US News and World Report rankings, they hope
to soften the blow to each one’s prestige. (It’s an interesting
question whether this collusion violates anti-trust laws, as their
collusion about scholarship awards did.)

What medical schools call “equity” and “lived experience” are code
words for discrimination by racial category. They are using this word
fog to cloud over four crucial but uncomfortable facts.

    First, today’s standardized tests are actually fair and unbiased.
Medical schools don’t deny that. They know test makers have spent
fortunes over the past half century to scrub their tests of any
racial, cultural, or ethnic bias.

    Second, medical schools aren’t claiming the tests are poor
predictors of performance. They can’t.

    Third, they know criteria like “equity” and “lived experience” are
inherently subjective and opaque to outsiders. That’s their magic
potion for admissions officers. These education bureaucrats are
following the advice Humpty Dumpty gave in “Alice in Wonderland.”
Alice asks him, “Must a name mean something?” And Humpty replies, “It
means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” Humpty
Dumpty would be enthralled with code words like “lived experience” and
“equity.” They mean exactly what Humpty and admissions officers choose
them to mean – neither more nor less.

    Finally, by emphasizing non-academic “experience,” these schools
are downplaying the reality that their applicants have already
graduated college, most likely as science majors. That academic
background is the most important “lived experience” for graduate study
in any rigorous field, including medicine.

To implement the bias they prefer and do it secretly, medical schools
are counting on public ignorance and apathy. When patients believe any
subgroup of doctors has systematically higher or lower qualifications,
they will take that into account. They do the same thing in choosing
lawyers, dentists, accountants, and other professionals.

That may be unfair to any individual practitioner, but it’s
inevitable. That’s because ordinary patients (or consumers) have no
direct way of judging professional competence. They can only look for
indirect (and imperfect) signs of a good doctor. Did she go to a top
medical school, for instance, or practice at a teaching hospital? If
they think it is harder for an outstanding Chinese-American
undergraduate to gain admittance, they will reasonably guess she’s a
better student and a more-qualified doctor. They may be wrong about
that particular doctor, but it’s a sensible guess.

There’s a general ­– and inescapable – point here. When admissions,
hiring, or promotion are influenced, either positively or negatively,
because of group membership, when outsiders know that and cannot
measure quality directly, they will see that “group membership” as a
telltale sign of ability.
Are There Any Remedies?

When issues are as divisive as admissions bias and racial
discrimination, it’s wise to begin with shared values. America needs
lots of well-qualified doctors, and getting more from underrepresented
groups is a worthy goal. Getting more African American doctors is
especially important, both because of our country’s scarred racial
history and because younger students need role models from all groups.

At the same time, these would-be physicians should be admitted and
trained without any racial, religious, or ethnic bias, without hiding
evidence of discrimination, and without using subterfuge to evade the
law or public scrutiny.

Nor should medical schools ever require their applicants, as many do,
to submit statements saying they adhere to a leftist vision of
“diversity, equity, and inclusion” and will implement it as part of
their medical education. That’s ideological bullying, and it has no
place in education at any level. It should end immediately.

So should racial bias in admissions. There’s a good way to guard
against it. No matter how heavily medical schools choose to rely on
MCAT scores, they should require them of all applicants. The schools
should be required to retain these scores for all applicants, whether
they are admitted or rejected, along with all other relevant data
about each applicant (after hiding each individual’s name for
privacy). Those mandates will leave a clear statistical trail if legal
challenges arise later.

Congress could easily pass such a law for schools that receive federal
money. It won’t, not as long as Democrats control the Senate and the
White House. Neither will like-minded federal bureaucracies. But the
roadblocks in Washington shouldn’t prevent state legislatures from
undertaking these actions for universities they fund. They can require
all applicants to submit MCATs and grades, and they can require
universities to retain them.

State legislatures shouldn’t stop there. They should pass similar laws
for undergraduate admissions and for all graduate and professional
programs, such as law schools, which are moving swiftly to make these
tests optional for the same reasons medical schools are dropping them.
Again, these mandates would not tell schools how much weight to give
test scores or grades. But requiring their submission and retention
would leave a clear statistical record, which rejected applicants
could use if they believe they faced discrimination. That looming
threat would have a bracing effect on university officials.

Second, medical schools should work hard to increase the number of
strong minority applicants. One possibility is to launch intensive,
one-year programs in the biosciences, aimed at promising college
graduates from underrepresented groups (making sure they are
consistent with anti-discrimination laws). Students in these enriched
programs would be in a far better position to apply successfully to
medical schools on a level playing field. Programs like this already
exist for college graduates in the humanities and social sciences who
later decide to pursue medical careers.

These intensive programs could offer either certificates or degrees
(BA or MA), depending on their length and academic level. Some
graduates would go on to medical school. Others would be qualified to
begin professional positions in the biomedical sciences.

The fundamental problem here is reconciling three laudable goals:
increasing the number of minority medical students, keeping academic
standards high, and avoiding illegal discrimination.

It’s time to launch intensive programs that make the effort instead of
watering down academic standards and pretending no one will notice.