@ScottAdamsSays

On a recent episode of CWSA, Scott voiced a concern about the implications of DEI in medical schools. I worked in higher education for a decade. At one point in 2019, I was an academic advisor at one of the most respected nursing schools in Texas. During my time in that position, the highly esteemed dean of the School of Nursing (an Asian man) accepted a position as a dean of a school of health sciences and technology in New York.

The new dean of the School of Nursing was selected from the current faculty and is a white bleeding-heart liberal woman. Upon assuming the position, one of the very first “problems” that she identified was a lack of “diversity,” most notably students of color in the program. As an academic advisor, one of my duties was on the admissions committee. The new dean of the college voiced her concern about the number of white and Asian students in the program and that that the enrollment did not “reflect the community,” and, thus did not, “express an environment of welcoming to students of color and students from underprivileged backgrounds.” She insisted that our recruiters were not making an acceptable effort to reach out to those communities to recruit students.

I distinctly remember one of my fellow advisors commenting that there had been several efforts to identify and recruit qualified candidates at the local junior colleges. Speaking from experience, there are three key factors which consistently identified whether a candidate would be a successful student in the nursing program:
1) Has the student passed all nursing prerequisite courses with a minimum of B+, but mostly all A’s?
2) Did the student take and pass Pathophysiology at a 4-year university (not a com-co or ju-co) and the first time they attempted the class?
3) Has the student made all A’s in other math and science courses (chemistry, A&P 1&2, college algebra, statistics)?

If the answer to any of those questions is “No,” the chances that the student will successfully complete the nursing program at this school was low. Furthermore, when the former dean was in charge of the program, the program only accepted Pathophysiology as taken and passed with a B or better and from only a 4-year university. The class was not accepted from any junior or community college and was not accepted if the class was not passed with lower than a B. In order for an applicant to the program to be eligible for admission consideration, their overall GPA had to be 3.5 or higher. The minimum threshold for remaining in good standing once accepted to the program was maintaining an overall GPA of 3.0. If a student dropped to below a 3.0, the student was placed on academic probation for one semester. If the student was unsuccessful in improving their GPA to above a 3.0 in that semester, the student was dismissed from the program. Finally, a student was restricted to repeating a class only once and grades below a C+ were counted as Failures (F)- meaning there was no “D,” and a 75% was the cut-off for a passing grade in the program.

We discussed at length that many students could not meet these requirements, and that was for a reason. The school graduated highly qualified students that the surrounding medical community found confidence in employing to work at the multiple healthcare facilities in the area.

Well, the new dean did not like the results that this rigorous system was producing, racially, so she made immediate changes. She began accepting Pathophysiology from community and junior colleges. She lowered the acceptable GPA for admission eligibility to 2.0. She lowered the required minimum GPA to remain in good standing in the program from 3.0 to 2.0 (she began accepting C- and D’s), and she eliminated the one repeat policy.

Now, the students who graduated from the program after she became dean expectedly increased in number and in diversity. However, the percentage of graduates from this respected program who passed the NCLEX (both on the first try and ever) dramatically declined. The last I heard, all of the advisors and half of the faculty who were there when she began as dean had left the program, and one of the major hospitals had cut ties with the program and would no longer allow nursing students from the School of Nursing to do their clinicals at their facility.

This woman was BIG on DEI. She frequently used the word “privileged” to describe any white person regardless of any other factor in the person's life or history. She used the word “equity” during faculty meetings while reprimanding faculty members for grading harshly or holding high expectations with regard to things like punctuality to class, hygiene and attire, and communication skills (both professionalism and articulation). I can tell you about a specific instance when she accused me of being a racist for giving specific academic advice on how important these kinds of values are in this type of program to a black student who was summarily dismissed from the program for not following the very advice I had given him.

This is what DEI did to this program. And, should anyone shrug their shoulders and say, “Well… they’re just nurses. It’s not a medical school putting out MDs.” Think about how much time patients spend with nurses vs the actual doctors. Nurses stabilize a patient until the doctor can arrive. A nurse checks your vitals. A nurse dresses your wounds. A nurse is entrusted with many decisions of most importance, with observing and noting symptoms of injury and illness. I hated to see that this program was declining from an exemplary nursing school to mediocrity all because a person in a very important position valued her own obligation to “diversity” and “equity” over the judgement of her faculty and of the man who proceeded her.