ISU Medical School

[GTO]

Why even bother? Just open a Holiday Inn Express and have the students stay there. Next day? Boom! Doing surgeries

 

[Entropy]

I'm way late to this, but Minnesota has twice our population and only two graduate medical schools, UM and Mayo Clinic, and even Mayo Clinic is a unique medical school.

It's best practice to do what you do well and not try to compete directly with what others do well in

Not sure if you are counting the Duluth campus as well (part of the UM system).
https://med.umn.edu/about/duluth-campus

 

[agrabes]

A fair point. Bad money is usually easy to spot. I'd pose this question: How do we agree on what is "good money"?

According to some, the only "good money" for ISU is dumping every dollar into engineering or ag. This is not a winning strategy long-term, and it is apparent that many alumni have a somewhat inflated view of our engineering department.

I think in terms of good money, I'm just saying we should not go after strategies that seem very unlikely to work. I'm not saying there's no chance of an ISU Medical school working, but at least from the things I know and understand it seems like a bad idea. Not an expert in that area though. You are probably right that we alumni do have a somewhat inflated view of our engineering department, at least relative to the ranking organizations. In terms of how ISU is viewed in industry, I think the ranking organizations have a deflated view of the department. The view in industry and among alumni may result from being compared with other schools more regionally than nationally.

Where should ISU prioritize money and/or effort? I think that question is answered by looking at existing ISU programs that are considered weak or weakening. My assumption is that if ISU's rankings are dropping, then it is probably from one of a few causes:
1) Ratings organizations are placing more and more value on having a law or medical school over time.
2) Many/most of ISU's high ranked programs have remained strong, but others have slipped from "average" to "below average" or worse.
3) Increased enrollment has lowered average test scores and graduation rates.

Out of these, #2 makes the most sense to me to address. First, shore up any engineering or ag programs significantly slipping in the rankings to keep ISU's reputation as a strong engineering and ag school. Second, focus on the other programs to get them up to at least "average" level - things like business, education, chemistry, physics, sociology, etc. Or maybe the reverse. But either way, focus on improving existing programs rather than adding new.

That said, you haven't offered any thoughts or answers to my questions. It's hard for those of us not tuned in to these kinds of issues to really understand why this is a concern.

 

[Cypow]

Not sure if you are counting the Duluth campus as well (part of the UM system).
https://med.umn.edu/about/duluth-campus

Glad you mention this. UMN Medical School has two campuses. Then there is the UMN Rochester campus that is essentially a health/medical sciences campus offering bachelor's degrees. Then there's the Mayo Clinic med school. So Minnesota has much more activity in the areas of medicine and heath sciences than its "only two" medical schools would lead you to believe.

 

[Rabbuk]

I didn't go over every post with a fine-toothed comb, but I don't know if anyone addressed the point about ISU acquiring MGMC. I believe that Mary Greeley is city-operated, but governed by their board, and sustains itself largely by the foundation and profits. Speaking from experience, there's sometimes a little bit of a murky area between ISU and the city, and i can't imagine that being an easy transition.

Easy we just build a second hospital right next door to it.

 

[BCClone]

Any entity -- including for-profit corporations and nonprofit public and private institutions, such as most hospitals and universities -- have to cover their costs.

If it does not, then it will not be around in the long-term.

This is how an economy decides if something is really worth having... by asking the question if it is wanted more than what it costs to provide it.

Even if an institution has a mission that is more magnanimous than the bottom line alone (and I would say there are certainly corporations out there who would say they do not purely see their mission and goal as shareholder value, and there are definitely "nonprofits" that act a lot like for-profits... "Church" of $cientology...), it still needs to meet its costs. This is complex and based around a series of continua rather than simple binaries, but the bedrock rule about covering costs in the long-term applies no matter who you are.

Any expansion to Iowa State has to work a similar way.

Many people fail to understand that a not-for-profit actually has to make a profit on average yearly. To just replace the assets they have they can depreciate out their current price but with inflation they will cost more in the future so therefore they need to create a profit so they can replace those assets in a future otherwise over a matter of 20 to 40 years it will close them up.

 

[Cybball37]

Is this all just so we could have a historic WAVE? Oh, and F*&# Iowa.