The Dartmouth-Hitchcock Alliance, a group of eleven organizations working to improve locally directed healthcare, will change its name to the New England Alliance for Health. The group will also transition to a limited-liability company at the beginning of next year to eliminate the complications of the current legal-corporate structure and appeal to a more regional group of organizations, according to Jason Aldous, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center media relations manager. Aldous said he hopes the inclusion of "New England" in the title will attract organizations from outside the Alliance's New Hampshire-centered sphere. The new Alliance will have a "bare-bones" bureaucratic structure, which will allow it to operate more efficiently, he said. Currently, the Alliance's Board of Trustees must approve all initiatives, including budgets, major capital expansions and hiring of chief executives. Aldous said the process seemed obsolete, as the board rarely rejected a proposal. Patient care will not be effected and community members should not be concerned by the change, Aldous said.
The University of Western Australia is the latest school in an Austrailian trend to plan a complete transformation of academic programs. The announcement to adopt a new curriculum will make the undergraduate program similar to that of American colleges. This plan will include construction of a three-year liberal arts program before allowing students to continue on to earn a law or medical degree, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported. This change would mean a shift away from the British system, in which students must decide their major directly after high school and immediately pursue a professional degree. These institutions are hoping that the change will deter students from attending international schools.
The University of Michigan Law School has announced its plan to begin admitting some students who have not taken the Law School Admission Test. The LSAT, a standardized test for applicants, is compulsory for most universities, and Michigan's decision has thus created some public scorn. University officials argue that this plan will only apply to Michigan undergraduates with a grade point average of at least 3.8 and is intended to increase the number of in-state law students, who currently make up 22 percent of the class. Critics believe the plan is intended to boost the school's U.S. News national ranking, since the ranking system factors in both GPA and LSAT scores.