The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) David Geffen Medical School’s academic standards are rapidly deteriorating as the school continues admitting students based on race instead of merit.
Race-based admissions were banned by the Supreme Court in 2022, and in the state of California, it’s been illegal since 1996. Neither state law nor the Supreme Court ruling has stopped UCLA Dean of Admissions Jennifer Lucero from inserting Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in the admission process.
Within three years of Lucero's hiring in 2020, UCLA dropped from 6th to 18th place in U.S. News & World Report's rankings for medical research,” reported the Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium.
“And in some of the cohorts she admitted, more than 50 percent of students failed standardized tests on emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics,” Sibarium continued. “Those tests, known as shelf exams, which are typically taken at the end of each clinical rotation, measure basic medical knowledge and play a pivotal role in residency applications. Though only 5 percent of students fail each test nationally, the rates are much higher at UCLA, having increased tenfold in some subjects since 2020, according to internal data obtained by the Free Beacon.”
In a disturbing example of how Lucero impacts the admission process, Sibarium detailed a time the admissions committee considered a November 2021 black applicant with grades and test scores far below the UCLA average.
Some members of the committee did not believe the candidate was equipped for the top-tier medical school. Lucero responded by exploding in anger. "Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?" Lucero reportedly asked. According to Lucero, the candidate's scores shouldn't matter because "we need people like this in the medical school."
A committee member wrote to one of their colleagues after the incident, saying, “We are not consistent in the way we apply the metrics to these applicants.”
“I wondered...if this applicant had been [a] white male, or [an] Asian female for that matter, [whether] we would have had that much discussion,” the official added.
Sibarium interviewed several committee members who claimed that many of the diversity-admitted students have difficulty keeping up. “I have students on their rotation who don’t know anything,” one admissions committee member stated. “People get in and they struggle.”
“I wouldn’t normally talk to a reporter...But there’s no way to stop this without embarrassing the medical school,” admitted a different UCLA faculty member.
One professor said that during an operating room incident, a student could not identify a major artery when asked. The student apparently became angry and began yelling at the professor, complaining that they were put on the spot.
”I don’t know how some of these students are going to be junior doctors,” said the professor. ”Faculty are seeing a shocking decline in knowledge of medical students.”
”What they’re doing in our medical system is bringing DEI into it,” Rep. Burgess Owens told Campus Reform. “So now that we know we’re going to defund this mess, we just have been allowed to happen.”
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