Race-based admissions have turned UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine into a “failed medical school” where half of students can’t even complete the most basic tests of medical competence.
The problem, multiple critics said to the Washington Free Beacon, is the school’s “woke” dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, a white woman.
UCLA medical school hired a new dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, In 2020. Since then, the number of students failing their shelf exams—standardized tests taken after each clinical rotation—has exploded, rising as much as tenfold in some subjects.
That wasn’t a coincidence. pic.twitter.com/tLJZCqZAQf
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) May 23, 2024
The problem became abundantly clear in November of 2021 when a black applicant with relatively poor grades and test scores applied to the school. When multiple members of the admissions committee complained that the candidate wasn’t qualified, Lucero snapped.
“Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?!” she exclaimed, according to sources who spoke with the Free Beacon.
She added that the student’s scores shouldn’t matter because “we need people like this in the medical school.”
The stunning outburst unnerved several committee members.
“We are not consistent in the way we apply the metrics to these applicants,” one of the members told the Free Beacon. “This is troubling. I wondered if this applicant had been [a] white male, or [an] Asian female for that matter, [whether] we would have had that much discussion.”
But the outburst inadvertently did a great job demonstrating the problem at UCLA’s medical school under Lucero’s tenure: Identity is now more important than merit, and as a result, students at the school are becoming progressively dumber and dumber.
“UCLA still produces some very good graduates, but a third to a half of the medical school is incredibly unqualified,” one anonymous professor told the Free Beacon.
Indeed, under Lucero’s admissions policies, “the number of students failing their shelf exams has soared, trends professors at the medical school say are connected,” according to the Free Beacon.
“This has been a colossal failure,” one professor posted in April on a forum for medical school applicants. “The new curriculum is not working and the students are grossly unprepared for clinical rotations.” https://t.co/o4PTPmiWlY
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) May 23, 2024
“Between 2020, the year Lucero assumed her post, and 2023, when the first classes she admitted were taking their shelf exams, the failure rate rose dramatically across all subjects, in some cases increasing tenfold relative to the 2020 baseline,” the Free Beacon notes.
UCLA’s decision in 2020 to reportedly “compress” its preclinical curriculum from two years to one so students have more time for research and community service hasn’t helped, as it means students enter their clinical rotations having completed just a year of courses — many of which have NOTHING to do with medicine.
“First-year students spend three to four hours every other week in ‘Structural Racism and Health Equity,’ a required class that covers topics like ‘fatphobia,’ has featured anti-Semitic speakers, and is now the subject of an internal review,” according to the Free Beacon.
“They spend an additional seven hours a week in ‘Foundations of Practice,’ which includes units on ‘interpersonal communication skills’ and, according to one medical student, basically ‘tells us how to be a good person.’ The two courses eat up time that could be spent on physiology or anatomy, professors say, and leave struggling students with fewer hours to learn the basics,” the paper notes.
Things are so bad at UCLA that in 2021 nearly a fourth of medical students failed three or more shelf exams.
According to BeMo Academic Consulting, shelf exams “are used to test a student’s practical application of medical knowledge.”
All the failures meant many students had to repeat their classes and also postpone their Step 2 licensing exam, which is usually taken in the third year and is a prerequisite for entering most residency programs.
Nearly 1/4 of UCLA students failed three or more shelf exams in 2021, forcing some students to repeat classes and persuading others to postpone the Step 2 licensing exam that’s typically taken in the third year of medical school and is a prerequisite for most residency programs. pic.twitter.com/tpq5O76ejw
— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) May 23, 2024
In addition to propping up blacks, Lucero also has a predictable habit of pushing down whites and Asians.
“Led by Lucero, who also serves as the vice chair for equity, diversity, and inclusion of UCLA’s anesthesiology department, the admissions committee routinely gives black and Latino applicants a pass for subpar metrics, four people who served on it said, while whites and Asians need near perfect scores to even be considered,” according to the Free Beacon.
The Free Beacon’s stunning reporting has inspired massive backlash, with even the top scholar of civil rights law saying the school needs to be held accountable ASAP:
You’d have to go pretty far for me to say that a medical school should either be sued entirely out of existence or denied any additional federal funds, which would amount to the same thing. But if even half the allegations in this article are true, UCLA Medical School should…
— David Bernstein (@ProfDBernstein) May 23, 2024
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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