Still Lopsided

The modern premedical student may get years and years of training, but does he get a well-rounded education? This week, in the first comprehensive report of premedical education in the U.S., three eminent deans--Aura E. Severinghaus, associate dean of Columbia University's faculty of medicine, William E. Cadbury Jr. of Haverford and Dean Emeritus Harry Carman of Columbia College--gave their answer: "No." As far as the liberal arts are concerned, says the report, the pre-med is shortchanged.

The deans spent more than two years studying 115 colleges. Wherever they went, they found "vocationally oriented" students "with little or no conception of the meaning of a liberal education." Since only one out of three candidates gets into medical school, the student feels he must load up on science. He takes not only the required courses, but also the recommended ones, often tries to satisfy the conflicting demands of three or more schools. At some colleges, he is virtually segregated into a whole special program.

The result, says the report, is a hopelessly lopsided education. For all their progress, the colleges and the medical schools are still turning out too many physicians "with little or no interest in the cultural implications of their profession, much less in those things which would enable them to formulate for themselves a satisfying philosophy of life."

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