Competition

Discerning visitors may note that I have neglected a critical factor when I talk about who should be admitted to the medical school.

To put it simply, when there are two competing schools, the consideration becomes more tricky.

You may think we should not worry too much about what happen on the other side of the harbour. As long as we do our best and recruit students whom we think would become good doctors, we would have done a good job. Unfortunately, as I mentioned half a dozen of times, the standard of our graduates depends very little on how well we teach them, but almost entirely on the underlying quality of themselves.

And, the recent development is, if one medical school announce they are going to train up budding leaders of the field, how could the friendly counterpart declare they would accept and train up enthusiastic mediocre as followers?

PS. From the society point of view, it is obvious that we need just a handful of leaders but a whole lot more followers. The sobering truth is, it is against the interest of the two medical schools to direct their effort away from the few high fliers.