On a thread that already has close to 500 posts, many of which are going in circles, perhaps the discussion of physician shortage / med school admissions / validity of weed out classes can move to its own thread.
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Why? It is moving the discussion forward. Finally. And it is a core issue here.
If posters (like yourself) are going to repeatedly insist that students looking to reform these classes are lazy snowflakes who don’t deserve to be doctors, surely it is worth exploring whether this is actually the case, or whether the system for choosing doctors is failing.
This contributes as well.
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And how do we measure all these things amongst students?
The physician shortage is already being addressed by the boom in hiring Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants. These clinicians are much cheaper to train (less money wasted on hoop jumping classes such as calculus and 2 semesters of O-Chem) and thus are cheaper to employ. Clinical outcomes are typically excellent: The cost-effectiveness of physician assistants/associates: A systematic review of international evidence - PMC
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You would think by the 500 +/- posts in this thread that physicians are important in our society.
What we really need to address is growing shortage of accountants. I mean, those doctors and medical corporations need someone to help them with their books. 
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I don’t know the answer, but Professor Jones gives a pretty good example of how NOT to measure for this things.
medicine is not all empathy and communication. it is also actual skills and treatment. let’s not get carried away.
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I’ll thank you in the future to neither put words in my mouth nor inaccurately paraphrase me.
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There is one more reason why doctors need to take orgchem: to be able to appreciate the research and the hard work that goes into the creation of this or that little pill they prescribe. 
Just kidding. 
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Of course. But there is more than one way to teach “skills and treatment.” And some are better than others.
Kidding aside, I’d think they need to know more about the impact of all those pills and their potential interactions. Not just what (from the drug makers), but how and why.
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Absolutely. That would be pharmacology and drug metabolism etc. - these classes require knowledge of organic chemistry and biochemistry.
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I think there are often two kinds of students. For example, I was told of two profs teaching the same course in one of my kid’s schools (CS in this case). One set of kids liked the rigor that Prof A offered, and found Prof B too shallow. Another set of kids found Prof B understandable, and Prof A too abstruse. The two sets of kids have different needs. The first set of kids are learning the material for its own sake. The second set of kids have other goals. But often their understanding is shallow and brittle. The medical establishment needs to determine which type of kids it needs. Universities often have both types of kids. If indeed, all the kids at NYU are type B, that reflects poorly on NYU. It is the type A kids that advance the science. And it is the type A kids that more often get the As. Often this type of learning is more efficient, and sticks longer. My son told me a long time ago, that the kids that get As in OC at Princeton have an innate intuition for the way the whole thing hangs together, and is a result of spending years thinking about chemistry the proper way in high school, and these kids make OC look easy. They don’t even spend that much time on it. These are the kids that need the rigorous Profs. I always hoped for my kids to figure out the right way of learning anything – and that may wary from subject to subject. I always told them this is the more important skill to learn.
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Moderators Note:
This discussion is veering way off track. This is not a debate, if the discussion cannot be about the original topic, then you will leave us no other choice but to close the discussion.
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We don’t have certainty about the NYU class, but the fear I have is the shift towards students and their parents being treated as consumers by universities. I think that is a sign of the times.
This opinion piece by a physician educator speaks to that. I too remember my hardest professors with fondness, and I think many people do the same.
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My opinions are based on your posts and the many similar posts by other users. Because there too many such posts to list, I’ll focus on just yours . . .
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Earlier in the thread you suggested that Jones’s class was made up of "a high percentage of entitled snowflakes.”
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When a poster wrote that it makes CC less welcoming place when posters assume students are "lazy, entitled complainers” you confirmed that that you and other users believe that this description (“lazy entitled complainers”) fits a subset of these students. (“Some users, including myself, have said that the description fits a subset of that age group.”)
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When I wrote "at 19, some kids need professors who are more adept at teaching” your response was, "Then those students probably should not be in the pre-med path.”
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You also indicated that the complaining students were “milking Covid for all its worth” and that "if all these students need to be held by the hand at 19, then they are in for a world of hurt in later years. I hope none are ever my doctor.”
In my opinion, these statements (and the many similar statements by others) all indicate that students who dared complain about Jones’ class are lazy snowflakes who don’t deserve to be doctors. I disagree. In my opinion, these students may well have had something to complain about with regard to both Jones’ class in particular and with the pre-med process in general, and their willingness to complain has little or nothing to do with whether these students are equipped to be doctors. We’ll just have to disagree on this.
I don’t think kids can be divided into two sets. Far from it. But I do agree that, generally, some kids take a course like Organic Chemistry because they want to, while others take Organic Chemstry because they have to. Dividing Chemistry majors from Premed and other majors in organic chemistry might make some sense.
It sounds like that is what NYU wanted to do — let Jones teach Chem majors, but not non-majors. Too bad Jones wasn’t willing to even discuss this.
Unfortunately, not every kid has the opportunity to spend "years thinking about chemistry the proper way in high school.” Some of those who don’t would make fine doctors, regardless of whether they ace Organic Chemistry.
I very much agree with this sentiment, as regards to both what’s reasonable to expect of colleges and our individual limitations.
Of course, that’s not to say that colleges need not make any effort to help underprivileged students become successful academically. I live in the UK and the top universities here have been experimenting with different initiatives to reduce societal inequality without (substantially) lowering academic standards. One such efffort is Oxford’s new ‘Astrophoria Foundation Year’ program, which provides up to 50 students (agree this might be too small a group, but it’s a start) the opportunity to spend a year at Oxford (free of charge) to develop the “academic skills and confidence to meet the challenges of a demanding undergraduate degree” there.
The program is funded by a private donor and is presently offered to students wishing to study humanities (classics, history, English and theology), chemistry, engineering, materials science, PPE and law.
What’s more, once a student completes the foundation year program, they can proceed directly to their course of study at Oxford without having to reapply.
Does anything like this exist at a top US university? Could it work in the US?
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The only thing similar in the US to the Oxford model you describe seems to be a program called the Myra Kraft Transitional Year at Brandeis University. There is a program called Posse at several top schools that recruits students from diverse urban areas and provides pre-collegiate training the last year of secondary school and then added support to its college students, but not quite the same.
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