Canadian Med Students: Lost to Money & Endowments

by Barry Artiste | June 2, 2008 at 05:39 am | 32 views | add comment | 0 recommendations

Opinion
Barry Artiste, Now Public Contributor

Canadian Med students looking for that MD shingle to hang on their door are finding countless roadblocks trying to get into medical schools in their own country, a country suffering a shortfall of doctors.

One reason I am told is that Canadian Medical schools set aside large blocks of openings for foriegn students, thus displacing hundreds of Canadians who cannot get into Universities Canadians taxes pay for.

Why are Universities doing this? Money, plain and simple. Foriegn students pay a higher premium to get into Canadian medical schools, and most likely upon graduation and internship, fly off for Greener Pastures such as the USA where Money is King!

Hence part and parcel of the Problem of what is a Canadian crisis in finding Doctors.

Toronto native Craig Stewart holds a B.Sc. from Queen's University in Kingston, and a Master's in behavioural neuroscience from Brock University in St. Catharines. From his early teens, he wanted to be a doctor.

But when he finally succeeds, it will be no thanks to Canada's education system. Stewart, now 32, has never been granted so much as an interview by any Canadian med school to which he has applied.

On the other hand, Ireland's University College Dublin wanted him badly.

Last September, it welcomed Stewart into first-year medicine.

Since the 1850s, this venerable European institution of higher learning, scenically located just south of Dublin's city centre, has produced five Irish prime ministers and the great writer James Joyce.