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Revealed preferences in the real world: black doctors.
I wonder if anyone has studied this? What is going to happen to all the black doctors who are being admitted to med school with inferior credentials and who will likely be socially promoted through residency/licensing as well.
I'm sure a large degree of affirmative action has already affected the supply of doctors, but the post-Great Awokening world seems to have taken that to a new level. Apparently rates of test-failing have increased by nearly 10x in some subjects at UCLA's medical school post 2020.
https://x.com/aaronsibarium/status/1793657774767022569
This is obviously forbidden information. I wonder how many schools will simply cover it up and graduate people as normal despite failures.
I hate to say it, but if I or a loved one was seriously ill, I would try my best to get a non-black doctor. If I wanted the best, I'd probably follow Peter Griffin's advice. I imagine others have similar revealed preferences that we would never admit in public. In the future, will black doctors magically have tons of open appointments while the cue to see Dr. Rosenblatt grows ever longer? I think probably.
I'm looking at the data in the linked article and having some difficulty squaring the two images with each other, and with the thesis more broadly. The second chart, which has data from 20-21, 21-22, and 22-23 does show a substantial rise in fail rates on various exams. However the first chart, which has 22-23 and 23-24 data seems to show an increase in pass rates, in some cases quite a large one (Pediatrics 1A block goes from a > 50% fail rate to around 20%). The data also seems inconsistent between the two charts for the one year (22-23) on which they overlap. For example, the Pediatrics Block 1A failure rate in the first chart seems to be in excess of 50%, but the Pediatrics 1A block in the second chart seems to be < 20%. Similarly the failure rate for Family Medicine block 1B is in excess of 50% for the 22-23 year in the first chart, but is less than 30% for the same year and block in the second chart. Which number is correct?
I look at the charts and see a gigantic increase in fail rates from 2020 to 2023, followed by what appears to be a decrease in fail rate in 2024 (but still massively above the previous baseline).
In honesty, we can never know what these tests look like year to year. Perhaps they gave everyone an A during the Covid years. Perhaps they dumbed down the test in 2024 so more people would pass.
We'll never have the objective data we need, and the powers that be want it that way. I agree that surreptiously-taken screenshots is no proof, but it's not like UCLA is going to publish data that shows they are graduating incompetents.
Who knows, maybe despite lower MCAT scores black doctors are just as good because they compensate in other ways. Are you willing to bet your life on it?
Sure, it definitely seems like there's been an increase in failure rates, but why are the charts inconsistent about failure rates in the same year? It also seems weird to blame black doctors specifically. According to the chart on racial admission data in the article black enrollment over the 2019-2022 time period (the article doesn't have 2023 or 2024) was essentially flat (
2212% to2413%). Unless there is some huge un-shown spike in black enrollment in the last two years it seems hard to see how having a more-black student body is responsible for the increase in failure rates.ETA:
After reading the article a bit more closely I realized I was interpreting the demographic change chart incorrectly in the context of the tests. Medical school takes four years and the shelf exam test scores in the charts are coming in the third of that four years. So the 22-23 class that has the horrible scores is actually the 2021 demographics and the 23-24 class with the improved scores is the 2022 demographics. We don't have test scores for the last two bars on the demographic chart because they haven't taken the tests in question yet. So the improved 23-24 test scores were achieved with a demographic makeup that is less Asian and more black than the worse 22-23 test scores.ETA 2:
As Joyful points out below they removed a year of coursework, so this is happening in their second year, so the 2022 demographics are the 2023-2024 test year.
ETA 3:
Confusing numbers for percentages. Updated.
Most likely UCLA is experiencing much more trouble attracting the limited pool of black students with good test scores now that every other school in the country is aggressively poaching them.
Morehouse college has the same problem despite going from 100% black to 100% Black
The immediately visible effects of AA first show up at the lowest ranked schools and work their way up. When Harvard takes the 1050 SAT guy who would have gone to Evergreen State, Evergreen has to settle for the guy who learned to write his name in his juvie GED program.
Combined with the rise of Grade-Inflation Studies degrees and endless free money, it's the perfect cover for everyone who matters choosing to ignore the consequences.
As a matter of simple mathematics, assuming the first chart with the > 50% fail rates is correct, this cannot be the whole story. In the Family Medicine category failure rates go from around 10% in 21-22 to around 50% in 22-23%. Even if no black students had been failing in 21-22 and every black student failed in 22-23 that would not be enough of a change to explain this difference, unless the fraction of students who are black also doubled.
The article mentions that they also changed the curriculum from two years of coursework to one.
Not sure what they are talking about specifically (the linked data was for clinical "shelf" exams and the course length change is preclinical) but a number of higher tier schools started to condense the traditionally two year preclinical curriculum into a year and a half or so (the spared time was used elsewhere).
This transition predates making Step-1 P/F, COVID, and recent social justice advances, but not every school is picking it up at the same time. They may also start to roll it back because it can be very rough on students.
A number of massive changes have hit medical education all at once, some of which are quality suppressing some are not.
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