Page:Carnegie Flexner Report.djvu/159

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FINANCIAL ASPECTS
141

institution. Their medical departments will, unless discontinued, prove sources of weakness and reproach, until their income is augmented far beyond their immediate expectations. As a matter of fact, few university administrators yet grasp clearly the fundamental principles of modern medical education. Twenty-seven colleges and universities of the United States and Canada have nominal or affiliated medical departments which they do not control and which they do not help to support. The state universities of Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, and Oregon are in this position. Among endowed institutions that lend their names to proprietary medical schools, for which they can hope to do nothing and which they cannot possibly control as long as they do nothing, are the University of Denver, Washburn College, Cotner University, Epworth, Baylor, Western, and Dalhousie Universities. Some of these institutions are very poor. Among those that are capable of leading respectable lives as colleges, but are little less than absurd as universities, may be mentioned Union University, in New York state, which is the appellation given to the superficial combination of Union College and the Albany Law and Medical Schools. The chancellor of the University of Denver,—a Methodist institution,—affiliated with the Denver and Gross Medical College, finds a strange reason for self-congratulation in the connection. "The University of Denver," he says in a recent report, "has always had a form of organization that is peculiar to itself. From the beginning the professional schools have had autonomous life. The church has never expended one penny for equipment or for buildings or for maintenance of the professional schools. ... It has made a notable extension of its influence in very many ways through the professional schools of the university without the expenditure of a penny for any purpose whatsoever." A highly diverting illustration of the seriousness with which these ties are regarded has been recently furnished at Los Angeles; there a local school, affiliated with he University of Southern California, saw a chance of improving its lot by contracting an alliance with the University of California A divorce was speedily agreed on, and the University of California, protected by contract, however, against any expenditure for two years, promptly became sponsor for a second clinical school. The University of Southern California, 'however, enjoyed only a brief widowhood. Into the vacant place, the Los Angeles College of Physic!ans and Surgeons promptly stepped. The University of Southern California was thus again made whole by the addition of a medical department which, enjoying an estimated total fee income of $4075, will ask nothing for support and still less for supervision.

The strength of the argument advanced in this chapter is not dependent on the absolute accuracy of the figures cited. Actual income may vary from our estimates a few thousand dollars up or down; we may have failed to consider this offset or that. It has been, as a matter of fact, utterly impossible to get figures that represent exactly the same items in all, or even in many, institutions. An improvement in institutional book-keeping would have to be effected in order to make accurate comparison possible. None the less, the picture is on the hole fair and reliable. Medi-