Admissability | Multicultural Meanderings

Urback: A hard diversity quota for medical-school admissions is a terrible, counterproductive idea

2024/10/21 Leave a comment

Lot’s of (negative) commentary on the latest TMU initiative.

…All of this is in service to a genuinely noble goal. But the school’s execution – it’s practically boasting of its lax admission requirements – is clumsy, short-sighted and does a disservice to its own prospective students. The unintended consequences are obvious: Canadian patients will start Googling their physician’s educational background and wonder if the resident doctor performing their next procedure was one of the TMU students who got into med school with an art-history degree, a 3.3 GPA and a compelling personal essay. Indeed, the school’s quota system will inevitably condemn all of its graduates to public skepticism about their qualifications and capabilities, even if the physicians TMU produces are in fact very capable, qualified and skilled. It’s a bias of the school’s own making that it will have to fight to counter, and probably lose anyway….

Source: A hard diversity quota for medical-school admissions is a terrible, counterproductive idea

What is striking about most of the similar commentary I have seen, is that most do not look at what the data says about med school diversity. Earlier and the most recent study I found show largely an issue for Blacks and Indigenous; Chinese and South Asians are over-represented, whites under-represented.The latest analysis of diversity among medical students (English universities) that I found shows that:

A total of 1388 students responded to the survey, representing a response rate of 16.6%. Most respondents identified as women (63.1%) and were born after 1989 (82.1%). Respondents were less likely, compared to the Canadian Census population, to identify as black (1.7% vs 6.4%) (P < 0.001) or Aboriginal (3.5% vs. 7.4%) (P < 0.001), and have grown up in a rural area (6.4% vs. 18.7%) (P < 0.001). Respondents had higher socioeconomic status, indicated by parental education (29.0% of respondents’ parents had a master’s or doctoral degree, compared to 6.6% of Canadians aged 45–64), occupation (59.7% of respondents’ parents were high-level managers or professionals, compared to 19.2% of Canadians aged 45–64), and income (62.9% of respondents grew up in households with income >$100,000/year, compared to 32.4% of Canadians). [2016 census]

Source: Demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of Canadian medical students: a cross-sectional study

Filed under Admissability, bias, Multiculturalism, Racism Tagged with admissions, Blacks, medical schools, preference, Robyn Urback, TMU

Nenshi and ‘people like him’ are the ones politicizing niqab issue, Jason Kenney says (with a straight face)

2015/10/03 Leave a comment

The back and forth between Calgary Mayor Nenshi and senior Minister Jason Kenney on the politicization of the niqab, starting with Nenshi (who I think has it nailed):

Stephen Harper is playing a “dangerous” political game with his position on the niqab and “dog whistle politics” when he speaks about the Syrian refugee crisis, said Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi.

In an interview on SiriusXM’s Everything is Political, Nenshi told Evan Solomon that Harper’s decision to challenge the Federal Court of Appeal decision over the ability of a woman to wear a niqab during citizenship ceremonies is being done merely in the service of scoring political points.

“This is unbelievably dangerous stuff,” Nenshi said. “I spoke with a group of mayors and councillors from all over Alberta last week, and in my speech with all of these people from small town Alberta, I stood up and said this is disgusting and it is time for us to say stop it—to say this is enough,” Nenshi said.

He called out the Conservatives’ request for stay on the Federal Court of Appeal decision on the niqab. “They are spending millions of millions of dollars of yours and my money on what is an unwinable appeal in order to appeal to a certain political segment because they think the polls say that most people don’t want this,” Nenshi said.

Nenshi was complimentary on the stances both Thomas Mulcair and Justin Trudeau have taken on the issue.

Source: Nenshi’s harsh words for Harper – Macleans.ca

Hard to imagine him saying this with a straight face as he knows better (no matter how seriously he believes in the substance of the Government’s position):

But Kenney, the Conservative cabinet minister from Calgary who introduced the niqab ban, denied the Tories are seeking to gain political advantage from the issue.

“If anything’s dangerous, it would be legitimizing a medieval tribal custom that treats women as property rather than people,” Kenney, currently running for re-election in Calgary Midnapore, said in an interview Thursday.

“It seems to me that it’s the mayor and people like him who are politicizing it. I don’t think this should be an issue of contention.”

The Conservatives point to surveys showing public support for banning the niqab in citizenship ceremonies and they have jumped in the polls since the issue became prominent during the campaign, which will see voters cast their ballots on Oct. 19.

Kenney, who is currently defence minister, said Nenshi’s comments would have no impact on the campaign, either nationally or in Calgary.

And he said it would have no affect on his working relationship with Calgary’s mayor moving forward.

“We’re all used to Naheed’s running social commentary on everything. That’s nothing new,” said Kenney.

Source: Nenshi and ‘people like him’ are the ones politicizing niqab issue, Jason Kenney says

Filed under Admissability, Multiculturalism Tagged with Election 2015, Mayor Nenshi, Minister Kenney, Niqab