UC Riverside makes rare second attempt to add medical school
UC Riverside’s long-held dream to have a full medical school was badly battered last year when the state refused to pay for it and then national accreditors wouldn’t allow it to open. Those denials were a blow to the UC system’s proud tradition of adding campuses and programs to serve a growing state. Now, UC Riverside is making what national experts say is a rare second attempt to gain approval for a medical school. Campus officials say they have obtained alternative financial backing, worth about $10 million a year for a decade, from private donors, local government and the UC system in hopes that the medical school can enroll its first 50 students in fall 2013… UC’s medical centers and its health education programs constitute about half of the system’s $22-billion annual budget. Some skeptics say that UC is in a new era of limits and that even noble causes must be put on hold to preserve the academic quality of its 10 campuses at a time of rising tuition and cutbacks in undergraduate course offerings.
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by Larry Gordon, The Los Angeles Times.