Good news
Recent developments at the Dartmouth Medical School have so improved its financial health, President Kemeny reported following the February trustee meeting, that the board no longer faces the prospect of closing the school. "Enormous improvements have been made," Kemeny said, "and if all the plans we have work out, the Medical School's problems can be solved. We hope to see a balanced budget four years from now."
The improvements include the "positive impact" of the Campaign for Dartmouth, a substantial amount of deficit-reducing financial support from Mary Hitchcock Hospital and Hitchcock Clinic, full accreditation of the school's new four-year program, and a plan for affiliation with Brown Medical School recently approved by the Dartmouth trustees and the Brown University Corporation. Under the plan, 20 medical students enrolled in a joint Brown-Dartmouth program would spend their first two years in Hanover and their second two years in Providence, receiving on completion of the combined course of instruction the M.D. degree from Brown. The students enrolled in the joint program would be in addition to the 64 M.D. candidates regularly enrolled each year at Dartmouth and the 60 enrolled annually at Brown. The program is not a merger of the two medical schools, and the agreement specifies that "following a trial period of seven years after the initial enrollment at Dartmouth of students in the joint program, each institution shall retain the option of discontinuing the association after meeting its commitments to the students already enrolled."
The opportunity would be made known to all applicants, who would indicate interest in either the combined program or the entire four years at Dartmouth. Admission committees from the two schools would have joint responsibility for selecting students for the joint program.
For students taking their basic medicalscience training here and the clinical years at Brown, the program would be similar to that available to Dartmouth's two-year students between 1914 and the early seventies, when Dartmouth returned to a degreegranting program. For those electing to spend the full four years in residence here, the difference would be primarily in larger class sizes during their first two years. For the Medical School, the greatest advantage would apparently be additional tuition revenue from the additional students.
To the surprise of no one at all, medical students entering Dartmouth next September under the four-year program will pay higher tuition: $9,500 for their first year, by sheer happenstance the same that beginning students are now paying for the 11-month Phase I. Second-year students continuing under the former three-year curriculum will be paying $10,900 and third-year students $10,100, up from current levels of $9,500 and $8,755, respectively.
Medical school spokesmen attribute the sharp rise in fees to soaring costs of medical education coincident with drastic cuts in government support, hitherto forthcoming in the form of "capitation funds," or per-pupil subsidies.
Owing in large part to the financial crisis endemic at medical schools across the nation, a new administrative position has been established to free Dean James Strickler '50 to concentrate on fund-raising and external relations.
Dr. Peter Whybrow, former chairman of the Department of Psychiatry, became the school's first executive dean on January 1 of this year. Born and educated in England, with advanced training both there and in this country, he has been a member of the Dartmouth faculty for ten years. In his new three-year appointment recommended by Dr. Strickler and President Kemeny, Whybrow will have primary responsibility for the internal management of the Medical School.
"ONE of our students was led a year or two since by a certain blare of trumpets to exchange Dartmouth for Cornell. After a time he returned to us. 'What has brought you back?' I said, as he applied for readmission. 'Oh,' said he, 'I would rather be where there is more discipline.'" President Asa Dodge Smith, 1873
