Caribbean medical schools have long been decried as diploma mills for the rich and undeserving; they are strictly for-profit institutions serving American kids rejected by U.S. medical schools, yet they rely on hospitals in the U.S. to provide the necessary clinical experience in the third and fourth years of a medical education. Of late, however, efforts have been afoot in New York City to preserve the limited space available in hospitals for those studying at American schools. Yet how did foreign and domestic medical schools come to be competing for the same spots in domestic hospitals?

As the foreign schools were profit-making businesses above all, they take just about anyone able to pay, especially those rejected by more prestigious American schools. At an elite institution like Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, donors from investment banker Sanford I. Weill to real estate developer Isaac Toussie with all their money, resulting in tuition and fees of about forty-five thousand dollars a year. In contrast, a Caribbean medical school can charge as much as sixty thousand dollars!

Now, due to such high fees, it’s no wonder that Caribbean schools can easily pay New York hospitals to let in their students – and no wonder, what’s more, the movement to restrict such access to American schools, which otherwise lose out.

Thus the turf war.

You see, what hospitals do is mentor medical students in exchange for using the school’s prestige. Caribbean medicals schools have no brand name to offer, but they do have several tens of millions of dollars to pump into a hospital’s coffers, in effect paying for their students to be placed.

And what hospital administration could possibly refuse such funds, particularly with this economy?