On Feb. 6, Duane Compton, the Geisel School of Medicine’s senior associate dean for research, informed current M.D./Ph.D. candidates that the administration was placing an indefinite hold on admissions due to budgetary concerns. Applicants who had already interviewed received notice that Geisel would no longer offer seats in the incoming class. After the meeting, M.D./Ph.D. students, like Andrew Giustini, tried to speak with Geisel Dean Wiley “Chip” Souba, who had left town. Neither students nor the faculty had been consulted before the applicants were notified, and the Dean’s Office had directly overridden the will of Geisel’s faculty council, which showed unanimous support for maintaining the program in May.
Current M.D./Ph.D. students and concerned members of the faculty set up an online petition that has received an outpouring of support. On Feb. 13, the Dean’s Office sent an email to the Geisel faculty explaining the decision. The email said that the Office planned to “review structure and funding, and how [the M.D./Ph.D.] program fits into the School’s overall strategic goal of sustainability and excellence” — a markedly different statement than what was originally told to M.D./Ph.D. students. The statement also stressed that the suspension would have no bearing on Geisel’s goal to become a top 20 medical school by 2020.
The decision and its justifications raise a number of important questions. An M.D./Ph.D. program, which draws in talented students and researchers, demonstrates an institution’s commitment to the basic sciences. Every medical school in the U.S. News and World Report’s top 30 for research has its own M.D./Ph.D. program, and despite the administration’s assertions to the contrary, the suspension will tarnish Geisel’s reputation, deter top researchers and students from coming to Geisel and stifle its ambition of becoming a top medical school.
Furthermore, the savings of halting the program would be minimal. According to Souba, supporting all 25 M.D./Ph.D. students costs Geisel at least $1,000,000 a year. However, this figure is misleading. Many M.D./Ph.D. students bring funding through individual fellowships or successful lab grants, meaning that the administration receives money from grant overhead rates. In addition, because Geisel only matriculates two to three M.D./Ph.D. students every year and will continue to fund enrolled students, the full savings will not be realized unless the program is suspended for the next eight to 10 years. At that point, any institutional gains made by the program for the last two decades would be lost, leading a steep decline in its quality.
Finally, the Geisel administration’s actions demonstrate a lack of respect to students, faculty and applicants. If the Dean’s Office at Geisel still thought that the program had to be reevaluated, it should have acted with the full input of the students and faculty. It is hard to imagine such a scenario befalling the College, where major program revisions must pass the scrutiny of standard committees. It was also unacceptable to penalize those who had already interviewed at Dartmouth. Interviewees ultimately ended up making a futile trip to Hanover for a school that could not even maintain their desired course of study.
Although Geisel must honor the offers that it has already made, announcing this decision in the middle of application season will undoubtedly deter accepted students with alternative options from matriculating into the program — now and in the future.
Overall, the suspension diminishes the College’s reputation by association and denies future undergraduates an opportunity to learn from some of the strongest medical and graduate students at the College.
This decision is an affront to students, faculty members, applicants and the Dartmouth community. To improve Geisel’s standing among its peers, the administration must fully reinstate the M.D./Ph.D. program as soon as possible. Indeed, Geisel must increase, rather than decrease, its commitment to producing more physician-scientist leaders if it ever hopes to receive funding from the National Institute of Health’s Medical Scientist Training Program, as all of the top 20 medical schools do. Additionally, safeguards must be put into place to check future misuse of administrative power, lest we allow another executive decision to bring down a long-standing academic program.
